Common Sense Digital Magazine                                  

An on-line public domain e-text available from cyberspace
published on the DeepCove Bulletin Board System and on the Internet

Send Internet e-mail to: jurgen.hesse@deepcove.com 

All-Mexican Travel-and-Living Edition
With a Special Chiapas Supplement
And a Heart-breaking Refugee Story 

Vol. II No 1 
Publisher/Editor: Jurgen Hesse
Winter 1994

[This is a limited-edition hard copy]
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A Note to Our Readers:

This is the second issue of Common Sense Digital Magazine, and it is devoted entirely to Mexico, the recent events in Chiapas, the implications for NAFTA/TLC, the lifestyles for expatriates, the high cost-of-living, the bargain-basement real estate, the late novelist B. Traven, travelling to and around Mexico, and more.
	Publisher/Editor Jurgen Hesse has just returned from a month-long working holiday in Mexico. He travelled without a camera but with a black notebook and one of the oldest laptop computers extant, the Toshiba T1000, on which he wrote most of this special edition of The Common Sense Digital Magazine.

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The Chiapas Revolt:

Life and Death Behind
the Tortilla Curtain

I had every intention of making this second issue of Common Sense Digital Magazine a positive, upbeat special edition dealing with Mexico, its people, its customs, and its future vis-a-vis our relationship via NAFTA.
	But the events starting on January 1, 1994, made it imperative for me to recap the rebellion of the natives and the campesinos. I hope I can do the events justice--I have collected several points of view from Mexico and from around the world, and I have added my personal opinion.
	The result is this attempted portrait of a rebellion. No one who writes about such events will have an impartial view of such events, but then, impartiality has never been the intent of this magazine.
	Rather what we want to convey is how such historical events relate to the theme of this magazine, common sense.
	Is it common sense for native Indians and the campesinos in Chiapas--in most cases the peasants in this poor Mexican state are native Indians and mestizos, while the criollos (pronounced cree-oyos) tend to occupy positions of power and wealth--to rise against its own rgime? 
	The native Indians/campesinos of Chiapas showed they meant business when they rebelled. What other choices did they have? How else could they make a case for their plight? Whether their "declaration of war" against the government was an act of common sense I am not qualified to judge.

New Year's Rude Awakening In Chiapas Was Planned
But Unexpected, and It Shocked the Government

Mexico's New Year celebrations always include the discharging of tens of thousands of handguns into the year by Mexican men, a sort of macho sport mostly the result of tradition and too much alcohol. Women and children cower in fear and stay indoors, thinking of all the .32, .38, and .45-calibre bullets raining down again. Dozens of people get drilled in the head or shoulders by this steel rain every year.
	While this is supposedly all in good fun, the 1994 New Year came with a fusillade of bullets fired horizontally and with deadly intent. The timing was carefully chosen by those who launched this Mexican civil insurrection in the first minutes of the first hour of the first month of the new year, the exact time when the North American Trade Agreement came into force. (In Mexico, NAFTA is called TLC, for Tratado de Libre Comercio.)

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The government designed an "orchestrated campaign of blame," according to Catholic News Service reporter Mike Tangeman, writing in the January 23, 1994, issue of The B.C. Catholic.
	"Repeated charges of local Church as well as foreign incitement and leadership of the rebellion are a smokescreen to hide the real causes of the uprising and to deflect attention from alleged human rights abuses by the Mexican army in its attempts to put down the rebellion."
	
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The insurgent guerrillas chose a clever brand name for their loose association of battle-hardened guerrilla veterans and hapless indigenous campesinos, meaning land-less peasants: Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, EZLN, or the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Emiliano Zapata was a campesino leader from the southern state of Morelos, who became the legendary chieftain of the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1917. Zapata was assassinated on the orders of a treacherous general in 1919.
	Why did the campesinos of the south-west state of Chiapas join the professional guerrillas in rising against outgoing Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and declared open warfare against the federal government of Mexico? Was this merely an exercise in reverse public relations? A blow to NAFTA? A powder keg blowing up? A sinister plot by foreign interests? The deadly machinations of the Mexican drug cartel?
	Several reasons for this uprising have been cited repeatedly by thoughtful writers. The reasons are exploitation of the have-nots--the mestizo and/or native campesinos--by the haves in Mexico, the haciendados and latifundistas of earlier years who are following modern multinational trends and have turned their profit-oriented minds to disseminate misery, hunger and destitution to their slave-laboring peons.

"Not Much National Security"

The most respected conservative and independent newspaper in Mexico, El Universal, asked pointedly a few days into the New Year after the extent of the insurrection became known: "What kind of national security does our country have?" Not much, it concluded. The federal government knew last summer that a revolt was brewing in Chiapas, but it did nothing about it. And when the first volleys were fired, President Salinas and his government was apparently caught by surprise. The insurgency had been launched in total secrecy while the president was vacationing at Huatulco, the latest fancy Pacific resort.
	An editorial cartoon in El Universal showed several gravestones, one of which bore the small "t" of TLC at the headstone, and the RIP inscription of Chiapas while a grim-faced Salinas was looking on. No doubt an editorial over-reaction but a warning signal nevertheless to the purveyors of NAFTA in Mexico, Canada, and the most obvious beneficiary of this treaty, the United States of America.
	Will the rag-tag Mexican insurgents manage to scare away the badly needed and desperately expected foreign (American, Canadian, Japanese in the forefront) investments which, everyone was hoping, would elevate Mexico from a Third-World country to a modern, industrialized, pacific, and prosperous nation of contended NAFTA partners? 
	This is the central question asked these days in Mexico.
	Not to be too subtle about it, the answer is: not bloody likely.

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The Mayan Indians are being excluded from negotiations to end the insurgence of the Zapatista rebels in their behalf. This is the considered opinion of the leader of the (Canadian)  Assembly of First Nations, Ovide Mercredi, in the second half of January of 1994.
	Mercredi visited Chiapas for four days. He quoted indigenous leaders in Chiapas as being furious about being excluded from these talks which are held--would you believe this?--between the government's spokesman Manuel Camacho Solis and the bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz Garcia. Neither is a native Mayan.
	Mercredi was correct in stating that "Canada has learned in the past...that governments cannot decide what is best for Indian people, and that paternalism and condescending attitudes have limits in addressing our needs." He concluded that "Indians (everywhere) need the right to speak for themselves and to set their own priorities."
	
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The Zapatista Army's weaponry ranges--if we are to believe the Mexican government--from extremely well armed to machetes, sticks and elderly .22 single-shot rifles. Are there really such professional guerrillas among the Zapatistas? What is the alleged source of the money for these alleged sophisticated weapons? Was the Zapatistas' opening salvo against the TLC in effect rendered ineffective when the government PR machine cranked out accusations?
	After a confusing first few days in early January, and after the ejercito mexicano, the Mexican Army, started to bombard the rebels in the hills and woods of Chiapas, word was put out that the rebellion was finished. But military experts saw right away that Chiapas resembles the terrain which ultimately defeated the U.S. troops in Vietnam. The rebels, after initially facing down the soldiers, simply retreated into the hills and disappeared, awaiting the negotiations going on without them.
	Many people in Mexico who could not believe that an armed insurrection was threatening their middle-class lifestyle, wanted to believe that the whole thing was over. They read that the Mexican stock market had recovered after a sharp dip. They could breathe normally again.

Outgunned, Outmanned, Outmanoeuvred

Officially, more than one hundred died in the hills and woods of Chiapas, rebels and soldiers alike. What the real number of victims is, so far has not been determined by independent sources. The Zapatista Army was outgunned, outmanned and outmanoeuvred by the regular army, and so the unilaterally declared--by the Mexican government--cease-fire on Jan. 12, 1994 brought the two parties to the point where the "dialogue" urged by Salinas would be forthcoming.
	Much of this rebellion by the exploited against the exploiters took place in an atmosphere of smoke and mirrors. Smoke, yes. There was a serious brushfire of lingering discontent and fanned by the rage against a NAFTA which would benefit Mexico's old political-economic nemesis, the U.S.A.	The smoke from it made many eyes in boardrooms smart--for a while.
	Mirrors, also. No matter where the observers looked, they saw different realities from those offered up by mealy-mouthed government functionaries. Who and what was real? Comandante Marcos? The alleged well-armed terrorists who had been, by implication, stirring up trouble among the campesinos? What was a mirror image? What an illusion?
	Another leading newspaper in Mexico, La Jornada, wrote that "the magnitude of the military operation of the Zapatista National Liberation Army has no precedent in the history of modern Mexican guerrillas."
	"Much confusion exists," one could read in the superb analytical column of El Universal, called pulso political, Political Pulse. "The federal government knew since last summer that the indigenous people were planning an uprising, but nothing was done to countermand it."
	Meanwhile the guessing game continued apace. Who was behind that insurgence? Rumours suggested that the guerrilla forces from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador were aiding in the declared against Salinas.
	The official government version alleged that the "radical group" constituting the EZLN has two different "components," according to El Universal: "a) a professional leadership, expert in conducting violent acts and terrorism, (who are) well educated, of national and foreign origin, with high-powered weapons and sophisticated communication equipment, and b) indigenous people (i.e. Mayan Indians) and campesinos, many of whom are no older than 14 or 15 years, with poor education and training, armed with machetes and inferior weapons of smaller calibre."
	This alleged rebel mixture gets curiouser and curiouser. One name at the top of the government's list of subversives is "el comandante Marcos," who was described by government edict as "a blond man with green eyes, who speaks four languages and who is very well armed." Now we have a green-eyed terrorist monster? El comandante Marcos will, no doubt, figure prominently in a future Hollywood epic, acted by our beloved folk hero, the defender of all that is holy to us (power, money, profits) Arnie Schwarzenegger, the all-American hero who speaks with an Austrian accent.
	El Universal asks a pertinent question: "How was it that none of the (Mexican) intelligence services, nor the military, not the civilian authorities, knew of the existence of armed groups?" No answer was supplied.
	When the U.S. State Department suggested that they send some "observers" to Chiapas, El Universal protested that such intervention in internal Mexican affairs was unwanted and unwarranted. People with good memories remember that the Vietnam War started after the U.S. sent "observers" to straighten out North Vietnam.
	While I was in Mexico during the early days of the insurrection, people who knew that I am a Canadian asked me eagerly: "Will Canada send its peace-keeping force to Chiapas?" 
	There is no indication that such requests have been, or will be, made.
	
The Frente Urbano

At the beginning the rebellion was contained to Chiapas. How many were participating is still unknown, and the number of victims is equally uncertified, reaching from 100 dead to more. But in the first week a new name was added to the guerrilla forces, the Frente Urbano en la Ciudad de Mexico del EZLN, or the Urban Front in Mexico City of the EZLN.
	The Frente Urbano left a proclamation for the media to retrieve. In it was this (partial) message:
	"Who are the guilty, the indigenous people, the workers, or the conditions of poverty and hunger which result in the death of thousands of Mexicans?"
	The Frente provided the answer: "The guilty are the injustice imposed by the (federal) government, the corruption, and the anti-democracy.
	"The Mexican Army, the same that cannot overcome the trauma of 1968 (when hundreds of demonstrators were killed in suburban Tlatelolco), has been taking prisoners and executing them with a shot in the back of the neck."
	The Frente Urbano appealed to the soldiers not to kill innocent people.
	Harvard-educated President Salinas is well aware that the rebellion in Chiapas is not only bad news but extremely damaging to his image as the economic saviour of Mexico who managed to pay off the national debt and push down inflation to 6 per cent, all in five years of his reign. He is openly concerned about the blatant human rights violations in Chiapas, and kept calling for a dialogue with the rebels.
	Dave Todd of Southam News says about this: "Salinas's strategy is that he has sought to appease international concerns about Mexico's human rights record." Exactly.

Enter Liberation Theology

Two people were put forward for these negotiations, at this writing, the Chiapas-based Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia and Nobel-Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala. (Since then, Ms Menchu is no longer mentioned, but Bishop Ruiz is taking part in the negotiations as this magazine is being launchd into cyberspace, ed.) This is the same Bishop Ruiz who visited Vancouver several years ago and talked, very guardedly, about Liberation Theology, without ever mentioning these two incendiary words.
	(Liberation Theology is the political activist doctrine that proposes drastic measures--not excluding violence--to aid and liberate the downtrodden in Latin America and make their lives less destitute. Predictably, the Vatican is diametrically opposed to such heresy.)
	It's no secret that the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico is not on good terms with the federal government. It surprised no one when Bishop Ruiz was accused of having fomented the uprising in Chiapas. In reality, according to a report by the Christian Task Force on Central America's Urgent Action, "The bishops of Tapachula, Tuxtla Gutierrez, and San Cristobal de las Casas, all in Chiapas, have called for a peaceful dialogue between rebel leaders and the Mexican government.
	"During Pope John Paul II's May, 1989, visit to Chiapas, Bishop Ruiz's critics published an ad(vertisement) in national newspapers calling the bishop a communist," writes Laureen McMahon in the B.C. Catholic. "Bishop Ruiz has been champion of Indians and Guatemalan refugees for many years. Among his opponents are major landowners and politicians in the state of Chiapas."
	"A Jan. 1 statement from the Chiapas state government said that 'some liberation theology Catholic priests and their deacons have joined these (rebel) groups and are aiding them through the San Cristobal diocesan radio-communications system,'" writes Mike Tangeman from Mexico City for CNS, the Catholic news service bureau.
	In fact, he continues, "the guerrillas had actually captured, and were broadcasting via, the state-owned XEOCH radio station in Ocosingo, not the diocesan station." A priest was quoted as saying that the rumours were part of a campaign designed to discredit the diocese. Right.
	Televisa, the Mexican television network, reported that a Dominican priest was serving as one of the commanders of the guerrilla movement. The Catholic News Service located the same priest in Mexico City. Televisa had spread the false news either deliberately, or its reporter had been fed a propaganda lie. 
	When Bishop Ruiz Garcia visited Holy Rosary Cathedral in Vancouver in 1992, he said, "Indians in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Mexico are no longer afraid of the authorities because they have almost nothing left to lose. They have concluded that a life without dignity is no life at all." He warned that the struggle for land reform by the impoverished Indians who make up 80 per cent of the population in Chiapas was "reaching critical proportions." That was two years ago. Astonishing how accurate his predictions were.
	But Bishop Ruiz is under fire from two sides, the Mexican government and the Vatican. Mr. Tangeman quotes a priest in Chiapas that "the implication of diocesan involvement with the Zapatistas 'will not benefit' Bishop Ruiz." And Mr. Tangeman concludes that the bishop "in October received criticism from the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops for alleged pastoral and theological deviations in his defence of the rights of poor Indians in his diocese."
	And in a telling side comment, Vatican nuncio Archbishop Girolamo Prigione told CNS Nov. 12 that the Vatican investigation was launched "not because of his (Ruiz's) defence of poor people. It is because he uses a Marxist analysis that reduces Christ's work."

Predictions Proved Correct

Other predictions of impending disaster were more recent. In the Jan. 9, 1994, issue of Mexico Insight, Andrew Paxman writes, just before the fateful shots were fired in Chiapas, "The foot soldiers of the 1910 Revolution, Mexico's campesinos have been ignored by the current neo-liberal revolution (of Salinas de Gortari, ed.). The state has promised direct support, and private investment is starting to flow--but as barriers to cheap imports start to lower January 1, can millions of small farmers be saved from yet greater poverty?"
	They were not saved, of course, and so took action.
	And so it goes. Prolonged and entrenched poverty. Unkept promises by professional politicians whose priorities exclude campesinos. One day the campesinos have had enough and declare war on their own government. Now some talks have been scheduled, meaning that the campesinos will continue to wait for a miracle that refuses to materialize. 
	Two well-to-do American expatriates who live in Morelia and are playing the Mexican stock market with excellent results, see the effects of NAFTA/TLC as absolutely and unconditionally beneficial. Both men are single and retired; they acknowledge that as NAFTA will become effective, the poor, as always, will suffer first. They don't seem overly concerned about the campesinos' fate.	In fact, the suffering of the poor at the hands of NAFTA does not diminish the enthusiasm of both expatriates. One of them says that "by the end of this year (when Salinas steps down, presumably to hand over power to his hand-picked successor Luis Donaldo Colosio), the inflation rate will be down to 5 per cent.
	"The price (of an artificially reduced inflation rate)," he says, "is (going to be) high. Mexican businesses will have to learn to compete on equal terms with the international market place. Until now, they got away with not having to compete at all. Quality control in Mexico is sloppy. These are areas in which the Mexicans will have to learn new ways (of operating)."
	Different priorities, as always. People with stocks and bonds worry about the market; people without food, land, and wealth worry about their survival.

An Old Challenge

"The Zapatista rebellion has renewed an old challenge for the Mexican people and their government: their struggle for land rights and cultural identity by indigenous people." wrote guest coilumnist Paul Pasternak in The Vancouver Sun after a visit to Chiapas before the rebellion began. His view is dead-centre correct. He finished by reminding readers about Canada. "Three years ago the showdown in Oka, Que., rekindled a similar challenge in Canada."
	The old rallying cry by the assassinated (1919) Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata remains unheard and unfulfilled: "Tierra y Libertad!" Land and liberty for the campesinos is as much of a dream as it was 70 years ago. Why?
	As everywhere else, when the hard-eyed and profit-hungry capitalists decide that anything is better (for example, drilling for oil in Chiapas, or developments to accommodate tourists) than cheap land for the poor, common sense becomes the victim of these business interests.

Human Rights were Violated in Chiapas, Canadian Observers Determine

(And a Short Note on B. Traven, the Late Expatriate Revolutionist)

Serious human rights violations were suspected in Chiapas when the campesinos rebelled against their exploitation early in January. After a group of Canadian human rights monitors visited Chiapas--following an invitation by rights activist Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia--starting January 10.
	There had been reports that the Mexican army had been randomly bombing small villages. This first Canadian delegation was comprised of representatives from the Quebec Civil Liberties Union, the United Church of Canada, the Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America, and the Canadian Conference of (Roman) Catholic Bishops.
	A second delegation of Canadians followed and was headed by native activist Ovide Mercredi.
	The first report by the first Canadian group documented that human-rights violations had indeed been committed by the Mexican army, killing indigenous men, refusing medical treatment to residents, dumping corpses in mass graves, and intimidating a Roman Catholic priest. Then the army prevented travel outside the villages for eight days.
	When up to 600 guerrillas invaded Ocosingo, the army attacked the town. The guerrillas, the Canadian group documented, maintained peaceful and friendly relations with the residents.
	We said elsewhere that in our opinion the revolt against intolerable conditions in Chiapas was a desperate act based on common sense: If nothing else worked to draw the world's attention to the general plight in Chiapas, an armed rebellion would. It worked, too, at least in the short term.
	Outgoing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, after ordering a unilateral cease-fire Jan. 12, followed up this action by announcing the government would begin a program to help the impoverished state. 
	Will he follow through? Another question destined to be left hanging in cyberspace, it seems.
	The violence which erupted in Chiapas could be attributed--and no doubt many Roman Catholics will be happt to oblige here--to the self-help doctrine of Liberation Theology.
	This kind of thinking, which did not exclude violence in the struggle for land and self-determination, was at the core of the popular, but Vatican-condemned, Liberation Theology which emerged first in the Mid-Sixties. If demonstrations and appeals to various governments to alleviate injustice, poverty, human rights violations and a myriad of other denigrating living conditions do not engender positive results, then the oppressed will rebel with force. Then Roman Catholic priests will abandon their traditional stance of peaceful neutrality and commit themselves to aid the poor.
	Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of San Cristobal de las Casas is one of these activist priests, and he is by no means alone in his David-versus-Goliath battle to achieve a better life for the native campesinos.
	This bishop, and others like him, are coming down hard on the side of common sense.

Traven: His Fight Against Injustice Fifty Years Ago

Bishop Ruiz is not the first to help the poor in Chiapas. Fifty years earlier, the now-almost-forgotten novelist and former German revolutionist B. Traven wrote six novels, the so-called jungle novels. One title was The Rebellion of the Hanged. This novel is largely as timely today as it was then. Traven lived in Chiapas for many years and studied the glaring injustices first hand.
	He was widely read. Mexicans know his name as Bruno Traven. Traven was a mysterious man who went to extreme lengths to hide his real identity. This writer went to Mexico in 1976 to research--and to conduct interviews with people who knew Traven who died in 1969--a 90-minute CBC Radio documentary on this fascinating writer's life.
	Traven knew Ocosingo well, he lived there. And after he died, the municipal council decided to rename the town: Ocosingo de Traven. Alas, the new name did not stick. Traven himself, who had a fanatical passion not only for anonymity but for modesty, would have disapproved of such blatant hero worship.
	It is generally believed that B. Traven was a German revolutionist who had been part of the short-lived and ill-fated Soviet Republic in Germany, the so-called Rterepublik. He was the publisher and editor of Der Ziegelbrenner--The Brick Burner--a magazine that sided with the ultra-leftists of postwar Germany.
	After having been arrested in May of 1919, B. Traven--or whatever his alias was then--managed to escape his guards and disappeared. In 1923 he appeared in Mexico, after having written one of the classic novels of world literature, Das Totenschiff, The Death Ship. He then produced a small but intense number of novels and short stories about his adopted Mexico, all of which were first published in Germany.
	Traven has been largely forgotten today by a readership which prefers more elegant stylists with up-to-date vocabulary and imagery. His writing style was rough and ready, not polished at all. But even today his posthumous influence is being felt by cinema aficionados who have seen the 1948 film by John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, based on the novel of the same name.
	Traven, under his alias of Hal Crowe, was invited to act as special adviser to John Huston, the director. When I arrived to interview Huston in Puerto Vallarta--where he lived with his secretary-companion in the house formerly owned by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor--he was just finishing fleecing a Canadian playboy who had come on his yacht by taking all his money in a vicious game of backgammon.
	Huston was sitting in his stifling hot-and-humid living room, clad only in Bermuda short which threatened to descend all the way to the floor at any moment, smoking his traditional foot-long cigar and sipping Scotch by the tumbler.
	After the Canadian playboy left, muttering that he had to wire home for more cash, Huston told me an anecdote which has, to my knowledge, never been published.
	It seemed that Hal Crowe, who alleged that he was the famous B. Traven's literary agent to which Huston reacted with a broad and knowing wink, was targetted by the film crew for a cruel practical joke. Crowe/Traven must have been well into his sixties by then and, Huston told me, was rather dignified, upright and humourless.
	The crew seized him during a lull in the shooting, pulled down his pants and painted Traven/Crowe's genitals with mercurochrome, a bright blue. Traven was mortally offended and left the project forthwith.
	Huston admitted that this practical joke had gone out of hand, but he couldn't help laughing as he remembered the incident.
	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is also one of cinema's classics. It reflects accurately the intent of the book, to show human greed at its most vulnerable.
	Traven was a good friend of the Indians of Chiapas when he lived there, and his six jungle novels are documents of their struggle to survive.
	Traven moved to Mexico City. He had married Rosa Elena Lujan de Traven. When I visited the widow in her home in Rio Mississippi, a modest neighbourhood near the famous shopping district called the Zona Rosa, I felt an uncanny sense of dja vu as I entered the vestibule.
	The so-called Herrenzimmer to which the maid led me seemed an exact replica of the Herrenzimmer in my own father's house. A Herrenzimmer is a formal reception room whose walls are usually lined with books--as they were in Traven's house--and smelling faintly of cigar smoke,dust and mothballs.
	Any doubts still in my mind that Traven was in reality a former German revolutionist vanished as I sat in this room and studied the hundreds of books, many titled in German.
	The widow Lujan de Traven was charming and evasive. Even seven years after his death, she never admitted to anything about Traven's real identity. I left her in peace.
	One story which Traven's old Mexican cinematographer friend, Gabriel Figueroa,  told me sticks in my mind. Just before Traven died, he was in great pain. When Figueroa visited him a few days before his death, Traven lay in bed writhing in pain. The dying novelist beckoned his friend closer and held out his hand. "Here, take this," he whispered.
	It was a folded piece of paper on which Traven had written, in a shaky hand, "Get me poison!"
	"Did you?" I asked Gabriel Figueroa.
	"No, of course not," he said.
	But who knows; who knows.
	The most mysterious man in world literature; the most elusive revolutionist who ever lived; the man who some alleged was the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II; the man whom others identified as a Polish bricklayer; Otto Feige, the man who had left Germany as a political fugitive under the name of Ret Marut, and who lived as an expatriate refugee in Mexico for 46 years, more than half his life; the man who kept fighting injustice in his adopted Mexico--B. Traven left a legacy of which beloved his Mayan Indian friends in Chiapas are no longer aware.
	This tells us two things.
	First, literary fame is temporary at best unless the author has been acknowledged as one of the world's great writers.
	Second, standing up for the rights of the oppressed is a losing battle.
	Does that mean that common sense dictates we should turn our minds to pursue our personal goals and to hell with our neighbours?
	Of course not. Common sense, in this magazine's view, is based on humanitarian principles, first and foremost. Fighting injustice is eminently sensible, even if the results are short-lived.

Questions About Recent Events in Chiapas

[A message posted by Carlos Chabert in Tijuana, via Affinity Castle BBS:]

	"The so-called campesinos of the 'Frente Zapatista' have modern weapons, portable radios, etc. They are well trained. Their strategies and military tactics are very professional and have kept the Mexican army in check.
	"The following questions arise:
	"Who are these 'campesinos?'
	"Who trained them?
	"From where did the weapons come and with what did they but them?
	"Who leads them?
	"Who gives them money?
	"Does this revolt have anything to do with the presidential succession?
	"Who gains from this revolt?
	"Is there a certain politician behind all this?
	"Are Guatemalan and Salvadorean mercenaries with guerrilla experience leading the 'Zapatistas?'
	"Could this have any connection with the goal of whitewashing the image of the performance of the army in Tlatelolco?
	"Why don't the North American news media mention anything of these questions and concentrate only on mentioning that the 'campesinos' are protesting against the TLC?
	"If we leave aside for the moment the legitimate protests of the people of Chiapas, it is important to think that these revolts don't come spontaneously out of nowhere. There are always those who promote them, organize and finance them for their own political ends."
	There seemed to definitive answer to his questions by the time this magazine was finalized.
	Perhaps it is time to turn away from Chiapas and look at the other Mexico, the country that many Canadians have visited, the country that enchants us with its sunny weather, with its people, with its ambience, with its ancient culture, with its folk dances and its rich tradition dating back several thousand years.
	Next is the story of a refugee from Guatemala via Mexico.

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Petrona, a Refugee

This is an interview I conducted with Petrona Garcia de Domingo, a Guatemalan refugee since 1982, first in Mexico until 1986, now living in temporary exile in Canada; she is of pure Mayan Indian origin. A mother of five, she is living with her husband and all five children in East Vancouver. She speaks passable English and has been trained as a nurses' aide; she has a job in a nursing home for elderly people. The children go to school and are preparing for their careers. All of them speak the Mayan language, Spanish, and now English.
	I was born in a small village called Michicoy. I grew up in San Pedro Vecta. In Michicoy we had some land with coffee trees; my father used to work there. He planted corn, vegetables, beans. He was owner of that land, some fifty cuerdas; a cuerda has twenty-five square metres. I went to school for one year. My father worked in the fields, and every weekend he came home. My mother would make tortillas for him, for one week. We were very happy.
	We were ten, six boys and four girls. My ethnic origin is pure Mayan Indian. We speak maya, called mam, it's a dialect. My husband and children are pure Indian too. I had three years of elementary school, and after that my father could not support us going to school anymore. He gave a little bit of education to every child. In school I learned to speak Spanish. My father was a good man. My sister had four years of school, and I only three, so I asked him why Manuela had four. I love studying. My sister said I was right, that she wasn't going back to school. After I got married I went back to school for another year.
	We have a house in the town. My mother was pregnant with me, eight months. My mother doesn't know how to count by calendar, she counted by the moon. One day my father went back to town to get some chickens; he stayed two days. I was born in June, 1947. That day she stayed with my three brothers. She was making tortillas and her contractions began. She was grinding corn on the petate. She was worried because she was only eight months pregnant. When I wanted to come out, she put another petate (a straw mat) on the floor, and a blanket, and she delivered me by herself; it was the first time. Usually she had a midwife to help her. My parents wanted a girl because they already had three boys. My brothers were playing outside. My mother couldn't cut the umbilical cord; she didn't know how. Then she sent the boys to call my aunt to help her with the umbilical cord. That day she taught my mother how to do that.
	Our culture is that we have a special bathroom, a little house (like a sauna) with stones and firewood, and she had to take a bath her to warm her body. When my father came back he was surprised that I was a girl. My mother taught my father how to cut an umbilical cord. My father would sit behind the door and wait, and when the baby came, he would come and help. My mother would kneel to deliver her babies. She had thirteen babies; three died.
	After I had been to school I spoke Spanish and was able to interpret at the Catholic mission working with the nuns. I was there five-and-half years. And then I met my husband. His name is Francisco Domingo. At the mission they paid me three quetzales a month; it was very little money, about one dollar fifty. I met my husband when he was fourteen, we had  known each other when we went to school. We liked each other, and he sent me a letter, a love letter. We got married at the age of nineteen; he is ten months older.
	After I was married I went back to work with the nuns at the mission, and then they paid me five quetzales. I gave the money to my father. I converted to Catholicism at the age of eight. Once in a while I go to church here; we have many things to think about. We were so happy those days even though we were poor. He went to college and after one year of marriage he became a bilingual teacher, teaching in Mayan and Spanish in elementary school, and he went to teach in many villages in the mountains. Our first baby died from meningitis. I used to carry her on my back into the mountains. I became a midwife, too, learned it all myself. I took a course from doctors, for two weeks. They gave us a diploma. I was seventeen by then.
	We lived in a village for five years, and the people built us a house, a little rancho. We were happy. The village was called Chichimes. Then my husband started talking to the Indian people who used to work in fincas owned by rich people with lots of land, coffee trees and cotton plants. The rich people paid the villages one quetzal a day. A my husband talked to them to make them aware that they were underpaid. He told them they helped the rich people become more rich with their labour. My husband was doing that because it hurt us to see that the people were being exploited.
	The rich finca owners had so much through our effort. My husband held meetings and talked about that with people, why they were in that situation.  My brother, who was also a teacher, did the same. The people understood and started to ask for three quetzales a day. Little by little the government started killing the people. The army. The finca owners were angry. They asked who was telling the workers all that. Many people were killed, because the rich people got along so well with the government. All army soldiers were Indian, they are forced to serve in the army and are forced to kill the people. If they don't kill the people, they were killed. They had to do that. They were forced by the colonel. Maybe they took drugs, marijuana, we don't know what. That's why the soldiers got so mad.
	Our trouble started in 1982; I don't remember the exact date. We turned on the radio in the morning and heard about people being killed, massacred. One day the soldiers came to our village, San Pedro Vecta. It was our turn. The soldiers arrived. My husband had built a small house, and my children went to school there. We were scared. I went to town to buy something, and I saw the soldiers going up the hill. I asked myself, "Where are they going?" I went into my cousin's house, and we were watching from the window. It was about three in the afternoon. My brother was teaching in a village called Nima. When he got home he said the soldiers went to Nima and killed Gaspar. It's not far from San Pedro Vecta, forty-five minutes by walking. The soldiers thought Gaspar was a guerrilla. Maybe he talked about our situation, what the rich people were doing to us. Gaspar had given permission to a man and his family, who didn't have land, to build a house on his (Gaspar's) land. They ran away when the soldiers came but were watching what happened to Gaspar.
	The soldiers started to ransack Gaspar's house, so he went to talk to them and ask them why they were trashing his house. He offered them money. "Don't burn my house, I give you money." The soldiers took all his money. After that they tied his hands behind his back with a lasso, and his legs, and put him in his house. They took firewood and put it around him. The soldiers poured gasoline over Gaspar, who was still alive then, struck a match and set fire to the pile of wood, and the house burned to the ground. All that was found of him were charred bones. His head had separated and rolled out of the house. All the people were scared.
	One of my friends, my best friend, she was wanted by the army in her village, and she went to see what they wanted from her. She was a nurse; her name was Natividad Ruiz. She said that it was our turn. After a month, the soldiers killed her too. She was the same age as I, we went to school together. We worked together with the nuns. When I got married, she stayed single. We were scared. Many things happened that day. It was the thirteenth of November, 1982, that she was killed, one week after Gaspar was killed.
	And then my two brothers were kidnapped, the older was Jacinto Garcia, and the other was Alfonso Garcia, with a friend, Oscar Avila. By the soldiers. They were working as teachers. That was the day after Natividad was killed. They were thrown in the river; their bodies were found after three days. One of my other brothers saw the body of Jacinto in the river. We wanted to bury him, but the soldiers didn't let us. Jacinto was found but without his head, his hands tied behind his back. The soldiers put him at the edge of the river and my brothers covered him with a plastic sheet. My husband's cousin, he was also called Francisco Domingo, was disappeared after that. He had six children. He never came back.
	On November 20, 1982, my husband left home by himself; he went to Guatemala City so the army couldn't find him. They were looking for him. A friend came to our house and told us to follow him to Guatemala City. I had five children, the smallest was six. I have a brother in Guatemala City. It was an awful day, an awful time. After a week we wanted to go back to our village, but a priest who knew us told us not to go back. Francisco would be kidnapped; he said we should go to Mexico. I went back to our town to get all our papers, our birth certificates; I wasn't really afraid, I was too angry. Francisco's mother went to live in our house. My father died three years ago.
	We left Guatemala. We went to the office to get permission to leave Guatemala, on a vacation. My husband told the official we wanted two weeks vacation; we had to buy suitcases. That two weeks vacation hasn't finished yet. When left Guatemala we didn't know where to go. We were depressed. When we got on the bus we cried, and we were watching Guatemala disappear behind us.
	When we got to Tapachula in Mexico we asked a taxi driver whether he could find a hotel for us where we stayed one night. We crossed the border by bus; we had permission to go on holiday. They asked us where. We said Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas. We were standing on the street in Huixtla when somebody called, "Francisco!" It was one of his cousins who was working there. We told him what happened. We stayed one night with them. We had a little money with us, one hundred quetzales. When my husband went to find the bus station to go to San Cristobal de las Casas, he got a surprise. He saw a lady sitting there, it was my sister-in-law. We are comadres (the name by which the mother of a child and its godmother call each other, ed). She was the wife of my oldest brother Juan. Then we went to San Cristobal. We didn't know anyone there. I got sick in the bus. I had an operation seven months earlier. I had to change my clothes, I had to dress so I could not be recognized. But I couldn't stand that dress on me.
	When we arrived, we went to a park with my five children and didn't know where to go. The priest had told us to go see the bishop in San Cristobal, Samuel Ruiz Garcia. We went to his house and asked whether he could help us. He knew all about refugees. He asked us inside and we told him about us. (Bishop Ruiz Garcia is a widely respected friend of thousands of Guatemalan refugees who arrived in Mexico and still, today, live in poor conditions in refugee camps in the province of Chiapas; in 1991 he visited Vancouver.) He found a place for us to stay; we stayed three, four days. Then we lived with the nuns for two months, and then they found a little house where we stayed for four years. We were happy there. We made hand crafts. My husband became a tailor, and he was taught how to drive. Three of my brothers are in San Cristobal now.
	One day the Mexican immigration knocked at our door, they were looking for my husband. They asked him whether we were Guatemalan people. If we were Mexican, we could show our papers. But my husband said we were Guatemalan. They wanted to send us back to Guatemala, but we said we couldn't go back because they were still looking for us. They asked him whether he knew other Guatemalans here. But my husband pretended he didn't know anyone. That day we were scared again.
	A friend from our village was living in Canada. We thought about him, My husband went to Mexico City to the Canadian embassy. We would have preferred to stay in Mexico, but now it wasn't possible. They gave him papers which we showed to the Mexican immigration, so we could stay for six months before we could leave for Canada. After three months we went to Mexico City and stayed there three months and then came to Canada in September, 1986.
	The Canadian government paid for the air fare. We are still paying back the money. All my Mexican friends didn't want us to leave. Mexico is similar to Guatemala.
	We stayed one month with friends in Vancouver, then we moved to this house here (a subsidized housing co-op, ed.). It was difficult, we didn't speak any English at first. I wanted to wash our clothes, we used to wash them by hand. My friend taught me how to operate the washing machine. When I saw the clothes, they were still dirty, because the machine doesn't wash as clean as by hand.
	Then we went to school to learn English. After finishing school, he found work. I call him Chico. He calls me Nila, my Spanish name is Petrona. Now he is working in the Pan Pacific Hotel as a steward. He continued to go to school. His first work was in a plastic factory but he got a headache so he quit. He found this work. He worked nights and went to school during the day.
	I took a course as a nurses aide in a nursing home for old people. I am not so happy. I cannot get used to life here; what is missing is my country. I live in exilio. If I could go back to Guatemala, I would leave right away. One hundred per cent. My husband too. About my children I am not so sure. (Daughter Juana, 20, said she would go with her parents, ed.)  We couldn't force them to go back with us.
	I went to visit Guatemala after eight years, in 1990. Right after becoming a Canadian citizen I applied for my Canadian passport. I went alone. I was not afraid. I was too angry with the government, with the soldiers there. I had my passport. I came to the border with Guatemala on the bus after staying with Juan in San Cristobal de las Casas. My mother was there, too, visiting. She cried, she looked very old. Because of all the hard life.
	I didn't tell you about my sister, she was disappeared many years ago. Eleven years ago. She was a high school student. She wanted to be a teacher, too. Many of the Ladino teachers were thinking like us, and they were also killed.
	I went back to San Pedro Vecta. My mother said she would go with me, and so did my brother. At the border I had a friend who works there, but I don't want to say anymore, because he is still there. I showed my Canadian passport. He put in my passport a permit for three months. Now I was a tourist in my own country. I was so nervous, seeing the river into which my brothers had been thrown. Many people recognized me. I was a little nervous, not scared, but feeling that maybe they would reject me. They were still afraid, they didn't talk to me. I think they felt a little strange because I had been away for eight years, and that maybe I had changed my mind, that I changed my feelings for the people. But then, slowly, they started to approach me and talked to me.
	It's calmer now in Guatemala. But I couldn't go back to live there, yet. It's not safe yet. I wish I could go back. I consider myself a Guatemalan. We have a Mayan group here, we talk a lot about Guatemala, and how to help the people there. Letting the people know here what's happening to Indian people in Guatemala.
	For us it's hard to accept the Canadian culture. We are afraid to accept that, for example, in this society girls can sleep with their boyfriends. We're not used to that. We tell our children that we are Canadians only by paper. It's not good for us. We don't agree with premarital sex. The children have sex with anyone, and then they don't have a good life. For that reason many children don't have a father.
	I have lots of Canadian friends, Mexican friends, Mayan friends. But if we can go back, we want to return to Guatemala. We don't mind to be poor.
	My father had a piece of land. Now we don't have that land anymore. My father borrowed some money from rich people. They made a paper that after two years they were going to take over the land. The interest rate was too high. They made my father sign the paper. He didn't read the paper; he couldn't read very well. They took the land from us and told him to leave it.

[This interview goes back to 1991.]

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The Why, the Where, and the How of Mexico

The Why:

Before you travel anywhere, you ask yourself why you picked this particular country. So here I am, my first full day in Mexico after an absence of 11 months. Why did I come this time? The climate is one reason. I left a cold, windy, and rainy Vancouver in mid-December to arrive in balmy daytime weather  in Mexico City. Miraculously, there was about the same smog level as I had left behind: the air was breathable, if not exactly pristine.
	The second Why: Because it's there; because for anyone NOT to visit Mexico--and I don't mean two weeks in Puerto Vallarta as a gringo tourist--is sheer folly. Non-visitors to Mexico miss out on the kind of life we all long for and so rarely find. Mexico is a jewel among nations, and now we have a North American Free Trade Agreement with our pushy neighbours to the south, the United States of America, and with the economically disadvantaged Republic of Mexico.
	The third Why: Why not find out from vox populi how NAFTA will affect Mexico? Our taxi driver was well informed, and he was all gung-ho: NAFTA will mean more visitors to Mexico, he said, and therefore more business. The old taxis in Mexico City have been weeded out: No taxi older than 1989 vintage. Most of them are Nissan Tzurus, the Nissan Sentra Classic built in Mexico. But there is a new book by a Mexican writer who lashes out at NAFTA and what dire consequences it bodes for Mexico. Whom to believe? That is part of the reason for this special edition on Mexico.

The Where:

Where to hang your retirement hat in Mexico? Follow the gringo expatriates, both American and Canadian, and congregate in affluent ghettos on the shores of Lake Chapala near Guadalajara; in the upper-level disposable income area of Cuernavaca just south of Mexico City, or in San Miguel de Allende where those with an artistic bent tend to go?
	But even if you are far from retirement, you might just pick any one of dozens of locations in Mexico where you will be welcome to stay and participate in Mexican community life. More about that later.

The How:

There is little choice if you are pressed for time. If you feel you must visit Mexico's tourist areas--Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Ixtapa, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Huatulco, and Taxco, for example--then you must fly there because you will want to cram as much heady experience into two weeks as you can.
	But if you can afford to take your time, then by all means choose your car, the bus, or the railway. True travellers never fly unless they have no other choice.
	To drive to Mexico is safe as long as you avoid driving at night. I have driven several times into Mexico and in Mexico, and have never had a bad experience. That in itself is no guarantee that you will escape unscathed. These days, you might just as easily get shot at in Florida, or in Los Angeles; so there. Life itself isn't safe, as you well know. It always ends in death sooner or later. It pays to adopt a fatalistic attitude, the same you adopt when dreading Montezuma's Revenge. I have found that those who fear getting ill, will. I never do, but I carry Imodium just in case.
	Taking a bus is much more relaxing. In Mexico there are several luxury bus lines, for example ETN, which charge more but let you ride in utter comfort in a Mercedes Benz diesel bus with half of the seats, 24, of a normal Greyhound bus. Fares are still low; from Mexico City to Morelia is a distance of 300-plus kilometres, much of them on winding roads, yet travel time is four hours only.
	Trains are the best. You can take a connecting bus from Vancouver to Seattle, board the AMTRAK to San Diego for US$179 return fare (less if you are a senior), and take a Greyhound to Calexico in California. Walk across the border to Mexicali, stay overnight in a motel opposite the train station, and then travel in first class--alas, as of this writing there were no sleeping cars--to Guadalajara.
	Getting around in Mexico is easy and cheap, provided you can bury your paranoia and your fear of those dark swarthy Mexican men with their sombreros who look like muggers but likely are good family fathers. You take local taxis or buses or colectivos, clapped-out Volkswagen mini-buses, all for a fraction of the kind of holdup fares you face in Canada and the U.S.
	So these are the bare bones of your planned visit to NAFTA Mexico.

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Travelling to  Mexico: 
Your Choices

Long-distance buses; slow trains; airplanes and private cars. These are the choices when one has to enter Mexico and go to any given destination.
	Long-distance buses used to be absolute bargains. I remember paying 9,000 old pesos (about $4 then) from Mexico City to Morelia, a distance of more than 300 km on a first-class bus. Now I have to pay N$62,500 for the same trip (about $21) on the new standard first-class buses such as ETN five years later. But as anyone knows who has taken a Greyhound for longer than 12 hours, bus travel is no fun at all. The same goes for the new luxury buses which provide a snack, coffee, bottled coke, and two or more video movies at full volume.
	 Trains in Mexico are much more fun, and they get you there with much less stress than do buses. Unfortunately, prices have gone up as well. The trip from Mexicali to Guadalajara, for instance, will set you back US$100, although the distance covered is considerable at that. A major problem with Mexican trains is the inability to make reservations by telephone. An American company offers such a reservation service but it wants to be paid by cheque or money order; credit cards are not accepted. I would advise anyone to be exceedingly cautious in trusting such an arrangement. You can try to apply for a ticket when finally the ticket office opens, but you may be out of luck.
	Most people will want to fly directly from a major Canadian or American airport to Mexico City and take connecting flights from there. Be forewarned, though. The round-trip ticket from Vancouver to Mexico City, valid now for two months with seven-day reservation, will cost you just short of Can$600 with all taxes added. Domestic air travel in Mexico is usuriously expensive. Think twice about that and take a bus or a train instead, if you have time.
	The cheapest way to travel to Mexico, especially if there are two or more persons, is your private cars. Certainly the generally poor roads and highways will take their toll on your undercarriage and your shock absorbers. Wear and tear on any vehicle in Mexico is known to be higher than farther north.
	There are certain precautions to follow when you go by private car. Travel only by day; use only heavily travelled highways and freeways (autopistas) to avoid running out of gasoline and more unpleasant encounters with people who think you are richer than they are.
	At the same time I want to emphasize that I have travelled from the U.S. border to the central highlands of Mexico (between Mexico City and Guadalajara) four times by car and van between 1972 and 1989: not once have I come to grief, although I rather foolishly drove at night until midnight.
	However, I do admit to having been nervous a couple of times, such as the hot May day in 1989 when I chose the route south from El Paso/Ciudad Juarez to Chihuahua with final destination of Morelia. Just out of Juarez we noticed another van following us. I slowed down; so did the other van. I speeded up, so did that driver.
	Finally I pulled over--the highway was completely deserted for five or more minutes at a time--and waited for the other van to declare itself. It stopped behind me a way. I kept my van in gear, ready to take off, make a dashing U-turn, and hightail it back to safety in Juarez.
	I saw a Mexican descend and walk hesitantly toward me. I saw his licence plate: Ohio. Mine, if course, was a B.C. plate. The young father of three girls (by now we could see them peering at us anxiously) and husband of a Mexican woman told me he was hoping we could travel in tandem, "for safety."
	I nodded and took my van out of gear. He led the way to Chihuahua where we shook hands. He had arrived; we continued on alone. Nothing else happened. And so it was with all the other trips I took into Mexico. All the horror stories one hears did not come true for me.
	Of course that proves nothing at all. You might be equally secure, or you might become the target for bandits.
	Should you carry insurance? Yes, yes, yes. But your Canadian/American insurance will not cover you, so you must buy Mexican insurance at the border; the agents will find you. You could, of course, trust your luck, but as the Napoleonic Code pertains to Mexico, in any accident you will be detained and questioned. Offers to pay for the damage may not work too well. If there is personal injury, the Mexican police will clap you in jail and try to sort out matters.
	Inability to speak Spanish will not enhance your chances of getting free. Being insured, you will still be questioned and perhaps detained for a while, but your insurance will help tremendously toward a settlement.
	Make sure you don't get involved in an accident. Chances are that the other driver, if he/she is Mexican, will not be insured at all. So forget about any claims you may have against him/her. Just carry on.
	Someone has suggested that when you are involved in an accident involving personal injury, your safest method of avoiding jail and heavy fines is to hightail it out of there and head toward the nearest border. I find this solution questionable, to say the least.
	On balance, then, should you drive to Mexico?
	If you are a careful driver who is not prone to accidents; if you are more than two per car/vehicle; if you have bought Mexican insurance (the insurance slip must be stamped when you leave Mexico so you can claim exemption for your time in Mexico from your home insurance office); if you carry sufficient cash/traveller's cheques or credit cards to pay your way out of an accident; if at least one in your vehicle speaks rudimentary Spanish, then you ought to go by road.
	The reason is simple. Once in Mexico, you will want to have your vehicle to explore specific areas of your interest. You can carry tortas--sandwiches--and your own preferred tipple along and have picknicks. Just make sure that by nightfall you have a place to put down your heads and to take your car off the road as well. Sleeping in the car, or camping in open country is not at all recommended.
	When you drive, be prepared for several unpleasant surprises. You may be passed on a blind curve by a truck just slightly faster than you, with predictable results unless you slow down. You may encounter live or dead animals on the road which are sometimes hard to avoid.
	Much more hazardous are the topes which spring up at unexpected places on highways--mostly in villages or small towns. Topes are speed bumps and come in three vicious types: 1) the vibradores will slow you down and rattle the undercarriage but rarely do much damage if you don't see them in time unless you are doing more than 60 km/h. 2) The concrete speed bumps, some of whom are so high that, unless you come to a dead stop and crawl forward while angling your vehicle across, your oil pan will suffer a serious indignity. Both vibradores and concrete topes are usually unmarked and hard to see. 3) The worst are those highly polished steel balls set in the asphalt. They are guaranteed to cause major damage should you forget to come to a stop and crawl forward.
	You can, of course, leave your car at home, take a plane, and rent a car when arrived. Car rentals are at least double of what you have to pay at home.
	When repairs are necessary, you face dishonest repair shops, just as you do back home. But at home you have had an opportunity to weed out the bandits among the repair shops; in Mexico you take your chances, whether you go to the hole-in-the-wall taller mecanico (taller means workshop) or to the agency of your preferred brand X. Agencies tend to discover more wrong than you suspect, and they use only new parts.
	Once I drove into Mexico in a second-hand VW lemon, the 211 with a rear pancake engine. First trouble came in Tucson: cost $360, as I recall. Next problem occurred in San Miguel de Allende where the VW agency actually charged less than I expected. On the way home the car went on strike in El Paso, another $380. Farther on in Flagstaff, Arizona, I got some gasoline when the attendant pointed to the front of my VW station wagon and muttered, "You need new McPherson struts." O, yeah? O, yeah!
	This time I was smart and waited until the VW agency opened Monday morning. Anything wrong with my front end? I asked the service manager. Nothing. And so it goes. The Americans had taken me for a financial ride, the Mexican shop had been honest. Goes to show.

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Mexican Vignettes

Children as Adults

As soon as you enter Mexico, you realize that children are very much part of the economy. Little girls look after their smaller siblings. Little boys offer you chewing gum for sale, or want to clean your car's windshield at a major intersection. At downtown street corners you see boys doing handstands, their faces painted brightly; teenage boys take a sip from a bottle with gasoline and spurt flames from their mouths. Children sit on sidewalks and practise the art of begging, next to their immobile mothers who often nurse a babe-in-arms under her rebozos.
	What is going on here? Don't these children have a chance to go to kindergarten or school? Will they remain uneducated for ever?
	The inescapable fact of these working children--children acting as adults--is that they belong to what we euphemistically call the socially disadvantaged class. They work because they have to help support the family. Mexicans take this social phenomenon in stride, but visitors from more affluent economies cringe when they see working children dressed in rags.
	Should we visitors feel sorry for these ragamuffins? Should we give generously until our travel funds are exhausted? Should we rant and rave against Mexico's government allowing children to remain uneducated? There is no answer to these questions except that Mexican reality differs substantially from our own reality. All we can do is observe the situation.
	Common sense tells us that interference is unwanted, unwarranted, and unwelcome.
	Yet on these same streets where the urchins hang out we see Mexican middle-class mothers driving their children to public or private schools, just as mothers do back home. These children as neatly dressed in school uniforms. The boys' hair is combed, the girls' hair is pleated; all kids look scrubbed, if anything cleaner and better dressed than North American children.
	When you go shopping in large food stores such as Gigante, Aurrera, or Comerical Mexicana, you will find hordes of boys neatly dressed on uniforms waiting to bag your purchases. You tip them according to local customs.
	I was curious. Do these children go to school? I was assured they do. Mexican schools give children a choice of going to class mornings or afternoons, so before or after school these boys and girls at the checkout counters go to work.

Salutations

When you are first formally introduced, you just shake hands; even with women, even when they don't first stick out their hands. When it comes to shaking hands, Mexicans know no gender restrictions.
	Once you get to know Mexicans and you have been away for a while, greeting them again becomes are ritual.The men shake hands, then let go and embrace once another, heads go to the left, far enough away so the cheeks don't touch. Then each man slaps the other twice--not once, not three times--on the back with the right hand. You let go and shake hands again.
	Women greeting men offer their hands and their cheeks to be kissed lightly, even women whom you don't know very well. Women greeting one another embrace and kiss each other on the cheek.
	When you see girls or women walking and holding hands, they are not practising lesbians but just friends or siblings. You may occasionally see young men walking arm in arm, and again chances are they are not an item but just friends.
	Handshaking, of course, is something done every time people meet, except for family members who live together. Among family members it is customary that sons and daughters kiss their parents, uncles and aunts every day, when leaving, when coming home again.
	Such massive kissing demonstrates the inescapable fact that Mexican families are generally very close. Family clans are powerful magnetic fields, and everyone gets involved when crises occur, as they do, of course.

Courting and Premarital Sex

Social customs in Mexico are traditional, although among the middle class they tend to be observed less rigidly than they once were. Still, in a healthy portion of Mexican families the old customs prevail. No premarital sex is allowed, and dating is strictly supervised. The time-worn tradition of providing chaperones for the first few dates--until the dating man is seen to be trustworthy--is still alive.
	Once a friendship between a man and a woman turns into love and develops into a solid courtship, things change. As soon as the man has determined that he wants to marry the woman, and once she has accepted, he is expected to declare his intentions to the woman's father. It is of no account whether the woman has passed the age of consent. 	In most cases, a marriage in Mexico is not valid until it has been solemnized by the Roman Catholic church in an elaborate wedding to which both family clans, as well as close friends, are invited. This can sometimes lead to major expenses.

Uh, Oh! Those Hard Looks!

	I was walking along the Calzada Fray Antonio de San Miguel, minding my own business, when I saw two men giving me hard looks. Now I must hasten to explain that hard looks are an anomaly in Mexico, even for a Canadian. But first let me tell you about the Calzada de Fray Antonio de San Miguel. It is the loveliest street in all Morelia, the capital of Michoacan; it is shaded by deciduous trees which never shed their leaves. The street surface consists of huge cobblestones hewn by hand from the peculiar pink stone that is ubiquitous in all of Michocan. All buildings in Morelia, all churches, have been built from this stone, called cantera, and now I even found a street paved with these blocks.
	The street is short, some 200 metres at best, and is flanked by buildings, most of which are hidden behind tall walls built from, what else, cantera stone. Behind these walls you can find former monasteries and private villas, most of them now converted to private schools. Also on the Calzada is Morelia's formidable Centre Mexicano Internacional, a school where Mexicans can learn English and gringo visitors can learn Spanish. The school's international director, Victor Padelford, is a former American anthropologist; he has an arrangement with a number of American colleges who send students and two or three professors to Morelia each quarter where they can continue their studies while also learning Spanish and pursue their individual field studies.
	[I will return to those hard looks presently.]
	On the Calzada also is located the La Libreria, a well-stocked bookstore with cafeteria where students can meet and sip cappuccino which is prepared by Agustin. A few doors down is the entrance to the lovely San Diego restaurant  where one can dine right next to a swimming pool.
	So this Calzada is a place of tranquil contemplation, largely unmolested by traffic. Only one narrow lane of four--the other three are blocked to vehicles--allows cars.
	Now back to those hard looks. As I was walking along, minding my own business, I saw two men in starched white shirts and in black trousers giving me some tough stares. On their belts they carried walkie-talkies, and from the roof of their late-model American car sprouted a professional-looking antenna. Their eyes followed me as I walked past, and I sort of half turned toward them as I drew even. But then the penny dropped and I quickly pretended that a street vendor's rolling boutique just past them had caught my interest. I made a show of indecision--should I buy a coke or not?--and then shrugged and walked on.
	Why did I do that? Why did those hard looks make me uncomfortable? Well, lucky are those who have never encountered, or been questioned by, those judiciales, member of the plainclothes police. The stories one hears of their behaviour toward the people who have received the attention of judiciales are not for the faint of heart.
	It reminded me of the day when I was driving my Chevy van south toward Mazatlan when the highway was blocked up ahead. As I crawled forward, I was flagged down by a youth in nondescript clothing, wearing a baseball cap. He motioned me out of my van.
	Outside, he drew himself to his full five-and-a-half height versus my six, gave me a super-tough look and snarled:
	"Marijuana?"
	He obviously expected my knees to turn to jelly and expected me to confess that, yes, I was carrying a van full of chemical joy north to the U.S. and maximal profits. Instead, I returned his hard stare, and I am no slouch in that department, having hard a stern-eyed Prussian for a father, and spoke as follows:
	"Hey, man, you gotta be kidding. Me carry marijuana? A senior citizen? Come on!"
	It wasn't really bravado that made me act like this, but sheer annoyance at the road block. At any rate, he blinked once and asked another devastating question designed to made me confess:
	"Cocaina?"
	I just looked at him and didn't bother to reply. He practised some more of his patented looks on me, realized they failed to impress me, then waved me on without bothering to check my cargo. 

Will that Be Millions or Thousands?

	Since Mexico decreed on Jan. 01, 1993, that henceforth three zeros be dropped from its currency which, because of hectic inflation since 1981, had become unmanageable. So, from this date on, M$1,000 (old pesos) would become N$1 (new pesos), the equivalent of 33 cents in U.S. currency. Make that three new pesos (nuevo pesos) to the U.S. dollar.
	The problem that unfolded was two-pronged.
	First off, when I tried to get the new currency on Jan. 02, 1993, I was told it hadn't arrived, that the central bank needed time to print all those new pesos. By the time I left for Canada two weeks later, all I had seen was a 1 peso coin, or better, N$1 (the $ sign is the same as our dollar sign, except that the S has one instead of two vertical strokes).
	I was back in Mexico on Dec. 13, 1993--this time for an extended working holiday to produce this special edition of Common Sense Digital Magazine--and right away I realized that Mexico now has two currencies--old pesos versus new pesos. That was problem number one.
	The new-peso bills look exactly as the old-peso bills, except that the denominations now lack the extraneous three heroes: M$20,000 became N$20. Wonderful news, and it wasn't all that difficult to distinguish between old and new pesos.
	The trouble lay with the coins. Now there are a multitude, and they conflict with one another. The old 5,000-peso coin is heavy and made from bronze. The new 5-peso coin is two-coloured, a silver-coloured perimeter with a bronze-coloured centre.
	However, Mexicans appear to have little trouble telling them apart--only visitors new to Mexico.
	Now comes problem number two: All prices are now quoted in new pesos; but people still use the old-peso denomination. In the market, for instances, a vendor will tell you that a plastic bag of chopped nopal (the young leaves of the prickly pear cactus which have supposedly anti-carcinegonic properties) will cost you M$1,500.
	The problem intensifies when it comes to house or apartment prices. A solidly built two-bedroom apartment in Morelia, several years old, will fetch between N$90,000 to N$150,000. To figure the value in dollars is easy, just divide by three. So US$30,000 to US$50,000 sound pretty decent.
	But often vendors or owners will quote you the price in old pesos, for instance M$90 million to M$150 million. So first you have to deduct three heroes from the total, then divide by three.
	Why can the Mexicans not get used to the new valuta? Because the old and the new currencies coexist until the federal Mexican government will issue sufficient paper and coin money to replace the old stuff. When will that be? Here you had best employ ye olde quien sabe. Who knows?
	So what? Life in Mexico continues apace, and no one seems to suffer from the overabundance of currencies.
	Another vignette to append to this money vignette.
	When you go shopping in Mexico, you must carry enough small bills and small coins to pay for small items (paper, milk, taxis, etc.), or you will be told that, momentito, por favor, the cashier needs to go change your large bill. So you wait, and the people behind you in the lineup send hate messages into your skull.

Two Economies Exist Side by Side

	The moment you set foot on Mexican soil you realize that there must be two economies existing simultaneously.
	Step into Sanborn's--the hugely successful upscale chain of restaurants-cum-luxury store-cum-konditorei and what have you--and you will see Mexicans dressed to the teeth, buying luxury goods at will. A few paces away you find the other economy, weekly markets where everything is sold at rock-bottom prices, flea markets just as we have them in Canada, and restaurants where you can eat a full meal for two dollars.
	But the demarcation line between the rich or the well-off on one hand and the getting-by and the poor on the other is more deeply drawn than in Canada. The upscale upper-middle and middle classes have something called palanca (literally lever, hence leverage), a network of people whom they know who can get things done without following the prescribed and proscribed paths the rest of the Mexican must tread.
	The socially disadvantaged, of course, have no palanca. They exist on laughable diets compared with what Canadians call a subsistence diet, and yet few people starve to death in Mexico, if my information is correct (and I do not claim to possess access to Mexican statistics which, as do our statistics, do not always convey an accurate picture).
Recent events in Chiapas may prove me a liar, however.
	I remember during one of my frequent visits to Mexico, it was in the early eighties, staying overnight in Guerrero Negro, an ugly mining town halfway down the Baja peninsula. The next day four of us set out to admire the dunes, and in the middle of literally nowhere we encountered a couple of wooden shacks, right in the middle of the Baja desert. The town of Guerrero Negro (which translates as Black Warrior) was some 10 kilometres away.
	As we approached the shacks, which despite their obvious ambience of poverty looked intriguing, an old man appeared to greet us. My friend, a naturalized American born in Guatemala, spoke to the old man. Soon we saw an old woman as we rounded a corner. Both people looked to be in their eighties, and although poor they exuded contentment. That may sound facetious, but as we got to know them a little, we knew they indeed lived here in the desert without major problems.
	"You see," the old man told us quite openly, "we do not receive a pension. There is no water here, and no electricity, and we have no money." But it became obvious to us that they did not beg for our contribution to help alleviate their meagre existence. "But that does not worry us too much. Every two or three days some people come and bring us food and water."
	What kind of people? Family?
	"We have no family," he said. "We are alone; but we are not alone, because our friends in Guerrero Negro come. They never let us starve."
	Just regular people? Yes, regular people, different ones every time.
	It was then that I began to understand why even piss-poor people in Mexico can survive. The basic diet of tortillas, frijoles and rice, with the occasional fruit or eggs or chicken to augment the meals, is sufficient to stay nourished. And the climate in much of Mexico is such that freezing the death is not an option.
	So the rich and powerful and upwardly mobile people in Mexico follow their own agenda of luxury and affluence, while the poor of Mexico survive from one crisis to another. For it would be irresponsible of me to suggest that the Mexican poor have a good life. They deserve better, but while they have experienced the global shortage of job opportunities decades before we in the First World did, poverty and being unemployed and feeling worthless has never been acceptable.
	Will NAFTA change all that? The critics say no, that only the manufacturers, and the multinational corporations, and the movers and shakers everywhere in the United States will benefit from this treaty. Those who see NAFTA as the answer to the EEC and foretell a great future for all three trading partners--Canada, Mexico and the United States--are perhaps glossing over some of the realities that will affect the two weaker partners negatively once NAFTA is a fact of life.
	The underdogs in Mexico, I presume, do not expect much of NAFTA.

The Acuitzio Adventure

	Land is as much in demand in Mexico as it is elsewhere. So when I heard from a Mexican brother-in-law that a German-born sheep-and-goat rancher who lives outside the village of Acuitzio some 35 kilometres west of Morelia was interested in parcelling off a chunk of his rolling hills he owns, we decided to pay him a visit. Since he has no telephone yet--rural telephone service is terminally slow--we just decided to appear at his doorstep.
	The rancher welcomed us enthusiastically. He lives in a Bavarian-style house which he and his son built with local help. His wife is Mexican, in fact, she was the teacher who taught me Spanish conversation a couple of years earlier.
	It seemed that the rancher wanted to have some good neighbours, so he offered us a piece of land which could be subdivided into four or six parcels with enough space for a ranch house, fruit trees, and a garden each. Our eyes shone; the price he asked was extremely modest, in fact, compared with Lower Mainland prices in B.C. the price was ridiculous.
	But none of us visitors had the ready cash to make an immediate deal. We were sufficiently intrigued to draw up plans. Chacho was the best dreamer among us five men, and the best draftsman. Soon we had it all worked out--divide the land into six equal parcels, dedicate one for the common area with water tower and perhaps a cottage for the vigilante (a guardian who would live with his family on the property to see that no paracaidistas, squatters, would snatch the land). Each of us opted for a favourite lot.
	Three times we all visited the site, some 500 metres from the rancher's house. We measured the land with a tape measure, noted it all down so we could apply to the land office for registration, and went home delirious with plans of rural peace and serene existence.
	But our shortage of disposable income, as well as my forced return to Canada to finish a book contract, put the project on hold and, as I feared correctly, on permanent hold. None of us would never be able to afford building in the countryside. None of us would ever wish to commute the 35 km to and from Morelia. Our collective dream was a one-week adventure.
	But hey, it was so much fun walking the earth, measuring, apportioning sites, deciding where the hydro pole would be put, how easy it would be to get water across 500 metres of terrain to our site from the rancher's well.

The Paracaidistas Come
and Never Leave Again

	Mexico is always regarded as a country in which authority reigns supreme; in which corruption and suppression of human rights is commonplace. Certainly mordida--bribing--is a fine-honed art here. But look farther north and you see the same thing on a different scale and in a different dimension, i.e. hidden and often swept under the rug.
	The offences against human rights may be true, as alleged; I cannot judge that. What I can judge is what my acquired Mexican family tells me. For instance the dreaded paracaidistas, literally parachutists, figuratively squatters. Here's a common scenario.
	Let us assume a certain land owner has a tract of land in the Michoacan countryside that lies fallow, unused and ideally suitable for immediate possession by  means legal or illegal.
	One day a well-organized political group of squatters discovers the land and makes plans to adopt it for their own purposes. They have organized into a political group for the simple reason that in Michoacan politics is a sensitive affair. After all, not too long ago the governor--similar to a premier of a Canadian province or a governor of an American state--of Michoacan was the son of Mexico's most famous president, Lazaro Cardenas, he whose most visible political act was to nationalize all oil companies in 1938, thus earning himself the undying hatred of the oil cartels.
	Cuahtemoc Cardenas was once a member of the ruling Mexican party, the Partido Revolucionario Institutional, the institutionalized revolutionary party which has governed Mexico for many decades. The PRI's moniker is similarly oxomoronic as is the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party.
	Cardenas of the PRI ran for governor of Mexico's largest state, Michoacan, in 1980, and won. For six years he ruled as a PRI member. Then ambition felled him when he wanted to be nominated--and thus quasi assured of being elected--the federal presidency. He was passed by and, profoundly miffed, changed party allegiance in 1986 when his term expired. That same year he ran as the PRD candidate, the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (the Party of the Democratic Revolution), the equivalent of the Canadian New Democratic Party, the NDP.
	He pulled in substantial votes, but not enough to defeat the PRI choice, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
	The organized paracaidistas are still benefitting from the political realities left behind by Cardenas junior.
	When a group of squatters moves onto a new target area, it must strike swiftly. Overnight some 100 squatters or so occupy the fallow tract of land and erect what is commonly known in Latin America as a barrio, a loose assembly of cardboard-and-corrugated-metal shacks, which are later replaced by wooden structures and eventually by concrete-and-brick houses.
	The land owner is outraged about this invasion of his property. He wants the squatters off his land, and pronto. But how? Just calling on a judge, obtaining an injunction against the paracaidistas, then inviting the police to remove the squatters sounds much more simple than it is. In most cases it won't work. The squatters, by virtue of being an organized political group, carry sufficient political clout to forestall any attempt to remove them.Not only are they intent on staying put, they even add insult to injury when they apply post haste to the state government for sewer services, water, and hydro.
	Political sensibility being what it is in Michoacan, the government responds by providing these services, albeit under protest and dragging its feet. The land owner receives no compensation. Soon, on the land he owns, the squatters have erected an instant community with all the services provided by an intimidated government. Whether they will be able to remain on this appropriated land indefinitely is a moot point. That depends on the political situation in the future. So far, few have been evicted.
	In one celebrated case, the land owner was successful in his efforts to evict the squatters. He must have had considerable political clout to persuade the judge to go against the grain and issue an injunction against the squatters. By then, after nine years of illegal occupation of the land, the squatters had replaced their erstwhile shacks with houses built of concrete and brick.
	The bulldozers moved in and flattened the concrete houses after due warning to the illegal owner/tenants. For once the paracaidistas had lost out. But I am assured that this case constitutes the exception to the rule that squatting is a growth business in Michoacan.
	Just about the only way for a land owner to assure that his land won't be sequestered by paracaidistas is for him to construct a simple ranch house--even made of adobe (mud and straw) bricks and install a permanent watchman, preferably with family, dogs, cats, a burro or two, chickens, and a vegetable garden. In such built-on and guarded land, the squatters have no hope in succeeding.

Bargains in the Housing Market Abound

	Tired of fighting inflated housing costs in North America? Come to sunny Mexico and spend a fraction of what you face at home. Does this sound as if it were hyperbole presented by a real estate agent? It may do so, but it's real enough.
	Take, for instance, two recent townhouse developments in Morelia. One is on the main road, Madero, just outside the centre in what could be called a light-industrial neighbourhood. More than 500 condominiums are being built there, some 140 of them two-bedroom townhouses, while the rest are one-level condos with one bedroom.
	We are not talking big space here, only some 52 square metres per floor. But the prices alleviate the lack of space. For a one-level condo you pay N$64,000, or 31.500 in U.S. dollars. The townhouses go for N$99,950, or less than $34,000. On the other end of Morelia is another townhouse development with hundreds of units being built, all of them two-story affairs. What is much more appealing here is the pristine neighbourhood, just behind the huge commercial centre of Gigante and opposite the ritzy suburb of Las Americas where the upscale American expatriates and well-to-do Mexicans live. Here the prices are slightly higher, N$110,000, or $33,500. The lot sizes are similar in either subdivision--about 4x16 metres, or 64 sq/m. The floor space in the townhouses are 70 sq/m, not opulent but adequate for a family of four with one car--parking space on the lot itself.
	The mortgage system is similar to what we use. In the first development, they offer down payment as low as N$5,500, or about 5 per cent, and you can even pay finance the down payment. After paying 5 per cent down, your monthly payments will come to N$1,410, or $470, plus life insurance premium. The mortgage will run over 15 years. When you pay 10 per cent down, monthly payments are N$1,290; with 15 per cent down, N$1,176, and with 20 per cent, less than US$7,000, they come to a measly N$1,066.50, or US$355.33.
	The more swishy subdivision offers similar terms: N$12,000 down, or $4,000, with monthly payments of N$955 or $318,33. (Canadians add 25 per cent.)
	The agents don't like to mention the unconscionable interest rate of 24 per cent--which they mention to you as being ONLY 2 per cent a month.
	However, the agents are tuned in on NAFTA, here called TLC, Tratado de Libro Commercio. NAFTA, they assure buyers, will have an almost immediate salutary effect on the interest rate; how and why will the rates come down so drastically? Here they start to mumble and speculate.
	The conveyance costs run to N$3,290 commission for opening the bank credit; an additional N$437.80 for something called an evaluation, and a N$200 fee for something called social-economic investigation. The actual legal costs are pending. (Remember: to arrive at U.S. dollar costs, just divide nuevo pesos by three, at the time of this writing, January of 1994, the exchange rate was approximately three to one.)
	Other housing prices vary. You can get a newly built detached house for about N$180,000 and up, or $60,000. For that you get ample space for a two-child family--which, for upscale Mexican middle-class families, is about the norm, just as it is in Canada.
	Of course these prices sound only good to us visitors. The Mexicans still suffer from a severe dip in their collective income following the disastrous economic policies instigated by Jose Lopez Portillo, the president in 1980-81. The Mexican economy, and with it real wages and salaries, has yet to recover from this exercise in monstrously bad planning.
	Many Mexicans believe that NAFTA will elevate the suppressed wage and salary levels, but others predict that the only real winner of NAFTA will be the United States. That seems to represent the common sense attitude savvy Mexicans harbour: They argue that, historically, the United States has never been munificent in its trade policies, and why should this economic behemoth now be any different from past times?
	But as far as housing goes, a Canadian or American expatriate will do very well here in Mexico.

La Casita Ecologica

	Not surprisingly, this translates into Little Ecological House; it stands in the middle of the sizable zoo in Morelia and  was built as an example of how environmentally friendly houses can be. The ecological house in Morelia serves more as a reminder than as a prototype, but the principles on which it was built a few years ago are sound--well, sort of.
	The house was built with "available material (from the environment), which lowers the cost," the large hand-lettered sign proclaims. The material, of course, is native to Meso and South America, the ubiquitous adobe. By the way, if you ever come to visit Patzcuaro (accent on the first syllable, please), you will find most houses there constructed from adobe, which has withstood the torrential rains of the summer and the searing heat of spring for centuries.
	The adobe used for constructing the ecological house was made from soil mixed with dung from resident zoo animals such as elephants, zebras, dromedaries, and others. Point 14 of the list detailing the reasons for having built this experimental house states: "And best of all, this house makes for less consumerism and less dependency on others, and it does not contaminate (the environment)."
	The very last point is somewhat debatable. In the rustic kitchen we find the Poyo de Lorena, a wood-fired stove-cum-oven made from, of course, adobe as well (unless the architects designed an earthen stove with a core of fire bricks). On the stove top are five round openings of different sized to accommodate pots and pans. The explanation given is that this stove "produces a maximum of heat with a minimum of firewood."
	The  bathroom is disappointing for environmentally concerned critics; it contains a regulation sink and faucet and a standard toilet. The shower is also standard. The only innovation here is the use of rainwater, which is collected during the rainy summer months. To this end, the architects designed a simple system of rain gutters which collect the rain from the red-tile roof along a long drain pipe which empties into a cistern. The water is then filtered before it reaches the faucets. Rainwater also serves to water the modest fruit-and-vegetable garden.
	The ecological house does not come equipped with solar heat panels, I presume it was a matter of cost. Instead, the architect designed un cuarto caliente, literally a hot room in which clothes are hung to dry rapidly. It also serves to dehydrate fruit and plants, and as a germinating environment for sprouting seeds; last of all, it is a passive heating system for the house. A six-inch hole at the bottom of the outside wall draws in cold air, which then rises as it is warmed by the sun. An identical hole on the top of an inside wall dispenses a warm air current throughout the house.
	I had no way to check this out; when I visited the house around 11 a.m., the day was warming up to the usual winter day temperature of 20-plus degrees Celsius, and inside the house was cool.
	The wooden furniture provided was all rustic Mexican style, produced  in nearby villages.
	All in all, I had expected a revolutionary concept in this ecological house, but all the innovations shown were already old hat during the international Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976 where radical departures from standard housing were seen; among them Buckminster Fuller's ingenious geodesic domes that, so far, have only attracted post-hippie generation hippies as worthwhile habitations. The rest of us have always, it seems preferred to live in houses and apartment buildings where the only improvement over housing 50 years ago is the high-R insulation in roofs and walls and thermal window panes.
	Is the ecological house in Morelia's zoo a common-sense solution to our living habits? In principle yes; practically speaking, we still prefer have services come to life at the flick of a switch. Perhaps this house belongs to the kind of future that Star Trek: The New Generation envisions.

Being Sick in Mexico?
Hey, It's No Sweat

	Gringos travelling behind the Tortilla Curtain are often terrified of being ill without their family doctor within easy reach. Canadians with health insurance protection cannot count on getting anything refunded should they consult a doctor in Mexico. But that is only one aspect. What about, "Can we trust Mexican doctors/dentists?"
	Absolutely. The state of Mexican medicine and dentistry is in good shape. The training medical professionals receive is equivalent to the training provided in North America; there are exceptions, of course, but then you tend to run into some pretty incompetent doctors at home. So, on the whole, you will be well looked after in Mexico should you visit a doctor. Dentists are well known for their much lower rates, and the work they do is of comparable quality.
	There is one troubling aspect of the health business in Mexico. Prescription drugs are freely available without prescription in any pharmacy. That has led many medically ignorant Mexicans to try to cure themselves with antibiotics, for example. There are no statistics I can quote as to the incidence of accidental death from prescription drug overdoses.
 	Most North American drugs are available in Mexico under similar generic or brand names, but don't expect the same level of competence from some pharmacists. I went in search of a drug whose only name I remembered was generic. When I visited five pharmacies they just shook their heads. Then I consulted the drug bible in one place; there was no listing of this generic drug. Finally I came across a pharmacist who nodded; he knew about the generic name. But it may take time until you are successful, so if you are worried about not finding your favourite drug--and I don't mean recreational--bring along all the information and the formula--because that's how pharmacists here can track the drug down. It's sort of like scratching your left ear by putting your right arm across the top of your head.
	Hospitals in Mexico come in two categories. There are the hospitals operated by the Seguro Social (the IMSS), where treatment is free to those Mexicans who are employed--or on a pension--and have contributed to the health plan operated by the Seguro Social. Here excellent health care is provided. Most medical doctors and specialists spend some of their consulting time by working in these public hospitals, so you can get top medical attention here. But for tourists the Seguro Social is not available.
	But then there is the Crux Roja, the Mexican Red Cross, which is an entirely different organization from the Canadian version. The Cryz Roja operates a 24-hour free clinic staffed with doctors and nurses. I went there one day because I suspected my blood pressure was too high. The doctor who came was lighting up a cigarette; then he referred me to a nurse who took my pressure and pronounced it as being too high. She squirted some Adalat on my tongue from a soft ampoule, then nodded, satisfied. The pressure had dropped significantly.
	I went to see a cardiologist who treated me as competently as any cardiologist in Vancouver, and I did not have to wait four weeks for an appointment either. Sure I had to pay; three years ago it was $30 for the consultation and $30 for the electro-cardiogram. Then he prescribed me precisely the right drug, a beta blocker, Tenormin, here called Tenormina.
	But a stay in hospital will cost you; there are no fixed rates. The Fatima hospital in Morelia is said to be the most expensive, and also the best. But the daily charges are nowhere near those of American hospitals.
	If you can afford it, buy yourself some additional Canadian health insurance (or in the U.S.) so you will be fully covered. The downside of that is that this travel health insurance does not cover existing conditions.
	I have also heard that you may buy Mexican health insurance at much lower cost than the extended benefits available in Canada. That reflects the generally lower health care costs in Mexico.
		Common sense would dictate, in my opinion, that you do not inside Mexico in fear and trembling of getting sick. Instead of anticipating medical emergencies, take along sufficient mad health money to cover them.

La Turista, or Montezuma's Revenge

	Above all, do not fear diarrhea or dysentery when you enter Mexico. Should you become dehydrated--you can die in 48 hours from amoebic dysentery--remember that every Mexican hospital knows how to treat dysentery and dehydration; they are experts. Trust them.
	Most of the cure lies in the prevention. You can get diarrhea or food poisoning from contaminated food, especially food vendors located on the sidewalk of any Mexican city. They have no hygienic facilities and often prepare food with unwashed hands. Take you chances when you tuck into a street taco, but do not blame this magazine when you sit on the toilet and think your world is going down the drain.
	Almost all restaurants in Mexico now serve sterilized bottled water at the table; and the ice is also made from bottled water. Just ask them, if you are worried. Just say, "Purificado?" and point to the water/ice. Mind you, Mexicans generally don't like to say no to you, so you might get an enthusiastic nod which means little. This is just to keep you on your toes. Drink minseral water instead, and forget the ice cubes.
	Lettuce and raw vegetables are usually served after being soaked in tap water sterilized by a special solution--available in any pharmacy for about $1.50--that is added to the rinse. So eat your raw veggies and your salad.
	Despite all precautions, some visitors always contract Montezuma's Revenge. Here I respectfully submit that fear of getting diarrhea, or worse, amoebic dysentery, contributes largely to coming down with la turista. The less you are prepared to contract diarrhea or dysentery, the less likely you will be a victim. Combine confidence with caution, and you cannot lose.
	I have visited Mexico since 1958 many times and at length, and I have only contracted a mild case of diarrhea twice in all these years. Now I carry Imodium as a precaution, but I have yet to use it. It will stop diarrhea cold, usually with two tablets, followed by another one, and it won't leave you with constipation afterwards. Imodium is available in any Mexican pharmacy.
	In cases of amoebic dysentery your only choice is to check into a hospital pronto, point to your abdomen and grimace. They will get the message and save your life from the parasite that dehydrates you at high speed.

A Mexican Institution

	Anyone who's ever been to Mexico and hasn't set foot in Sanborn's has not discovered a haven for all gringos.
	Sanborn's is as Mexican an institution as is the tortilla, despite the Anglo name. It is a chain of, yes, of what? Sanborn's is primarily a restaurant with a pretty fabulous menu, and pretty fabulous prices, at that. It serves primarily upscale Mexicans. 
	But Sanborn's is much more: it has a pharmacy; it sells electronics; it has a sophisticated bookstore with books and magazines in English--from the latest bestsellers to PC/Computing; it offers elegant knickknacks such as cameras, watches, custom jewellery, dolls, toys and, and, and...
	The waitresses are dressed in white blouses and long colourful skirts. The menu is as large as any in North America, but Mexican dishes dominate. Among them, one of my favourites is chilaquiles; it's a huge platter filled with fried tortillas, fried eggs (if you wish), spicy tomato sauce with chiles, heavy cream and crumbly cheese, and frijoles fritos. That will set you up nicely for the next six or more hours.
	Recently, Sanborn's restaurant has bowed to current standards and introduced a smoke-free section. But then, more and more Mexican professionals have turned against smoking which remains--as in North America--largely the destructive passion of the downscale socio-economic classes which can least afford it.
	Sanborn's is a favourite shopping centre for Mexican well-to-do families who want to give gifts Made in the USA, and if not made there, then they are at least sporting English-only labels (Made in China is common these days). It's the new snob value in Mexico. The Hecho-en-Mexico label is rarely encountered.
	The staff at Sanborn's are all trained to be exceedingly polite to their customers. The women sales persons appear to have been picked for qualities of anorexia nervosa combined with sleek good looks. Feminism doesn't seem to have made inroads yet at Sanborn's. (See following article.)
	If you yearn for a touch of old-home atmosphere tinged with Mexican elan and elegance, go to Sanborn's; you will find one in most Mexican cities.

Men Are Still the Masters
Or Are They?

	In the famous Basilica of Patzcuaro, the priest in his homily on Boxing Day 1993 admonished its audience that "women must obey their husbands, but they should not be stupid about it." He went on to explain what to be stupid means.
	It's an interesting speculation to pursue: How many years will it be until the practical results of NAFTA will do serious battle with the conservative dogma as disseminated by the--still dominant--Roman Catholic church in Mexico?
	Basically, the advance of feminism in Mexico is directly related to the size of the city. In Mexico City, in Guadalajara, and in Monterrey, you will find large pockets of solid feminists, predominantly in the universities. The message is spreading, and many Mexican women embrace and adopt it eagerly.
	The farther you wander away from these large metropolises the less feminist acceptance you will encounter.
	Liberal attitudes do battle with conservative values, often within one family or clan. The incidence of single mothers is still small compared with North America, but single mothers are becoming more common. And no longer are they despised by the general public as they were only two or three decades ago.
	In liberal Mexican families there is much less tension apparent in the relationship between men and women. Novio and novia may live together to see whether they are compatible. But at least at present it is still the declared intention of man and woman to get legally married. Of course there are gold diggers chasing an anticipated inheritance.
	In case of separation or divorce--still much more rare than in North America, but increasing in frequency--the law favours the men. That can lead to some severe economic constraints for the divorced woman/mother, unless her family step in and helps out. When there are children involved in a divorce, basically similar laws apply as in North America, and the father must support them.
	It is difficult to come to a conclusive statement when it comes to the relations between the sexes in Mexico. Nor can we assume general consensus in assessing what Mexico really is, and what it will become. For here the classes are deeply divided among economic, cultural, philosophical, educational and social lines. The poor in this country are much poorer than we can imagine in Canada where everyone is entitled to basic welfare which, as the case may be, is too much to starve on but too little to live on decently, as an old German equation goes.
	Not so in Mexico, where economic realities are far harsher. Still, as I wrote elsewhere, poor Mexicans get by. The point I really want to make is this: In a country where the classes are too far apart, one cannot draw definitive conclusions.
	One fact to remember is what we call PC--political correctness. PC is a phenomenon that applies only to Anglo North America. In Mexico it simply does not exist.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will NAFTA Bring Peace and Prosperity?

	It seems that all roads will eventually lead to NAFTA. Treaties in the past have all suffered from predictions of anticipated affluence, peace and a future without worries. In fact, even the most optimistic economic treaties and five-year plans have been unable to attain their stated goals because human nature has always managed to interfere and common sense took a beating.
	If we accept that every future we expect is the immediate result of our past we must deduce that the present remains unreconnoitred territory based on erroneous assumptions and wrong analyses.
	I just came from a lunch with a Mexican family. Talk turned to the current social democratic candidate for Mexican president, Cuahtemoc Cardenas. I suggested that, whereas this family may not believe Cuahtemoc Cardenas is a candidate worth voting for, as it indeed does, that at least they might recognize that his father, Lazaro Cardenas, the president who nationalized all foreign petroleum companies in 1938, was one of the best Mexican presidents. I based my opinion of Webber's Heroic Mexico.
	By no means, disagreed the family's patriarch. The best president had been Porfirio Diaz, who had been dictator of Mexico until the Revolution which began in 1910 and drove him from office. In light of such fundamental disagreements between myself, the visiting outsider, and him, the resident insider, we politely agreed to disagree and left it at that.
	But such disagreements exist everywhere in Mexico among poor and rich, educated and uneducated, influential or powerless. Is it a wonder that Mexican politics--as they seem to be everywhere else these days--are in such disarray?
	We in the present could not even agree on what had happened in the past: Had the peons under Porfirio Diaz been oppressed by the hacendados and the latifundistas (my view is based on three histories on Mexico I have read), and had they not then rebelled with cause? Or had they been contended workers, looked after by generous landowners, free of worries, as put forward by my host, the octogenarian patriarch?
	What is at stake here is a common-sense consensus that might lead to a future liberated from, and uninfluenced by, the mistakes of the past. As we know, the mistakes of previous generations come visiting us, sometimes centuries later, to wit the former Yugoslavia.
	Let me try anyway.
	At present the sexes in Mexico appear to be, at least, at a tenuous, peace; I say tenuous because I suspect that this peace will not, cannot, last. NAFTA will, if it opens the borders as we all expect, accelerate the process of discontent not only between the sexes but a far more fundamental discontent as Mexican society will stagger from its current status of semi-Third-World socio-economy to that of a post-industrial trading nation which may, or may not, attain relative economic independence from the overpowering neighbour to the North under the umbrella of NAFTA.
	Mexico's anticipated transformation as a trading nation will not be without considerable growing pains. Many Mexican will become the pawns of a game played out between the seats of power in Washington, Mexico City, Ottawa, and the thousands of lobbyists at whose mercy we all seem to be to an increasing degree.
	For my part, as a thirty-year admirer of Mexico, I hope this country will be able to retain its innocence and individuality. I fervently wish that America's fierce levelling influence in all areas--industrial production, standards of living, trading practices, cultural domination, massive crime so venerated and disseminated by Hollywood, redneck protectionism, and other alleged gifts from the world's most hypocritical power--will be tempered by an increasing co-operation and counter force created by the two unequal trading partners in NAFTA, Mexico and Canada.
	Fat chance, though.

Rejuvenating the Downtown Core

	Perhaps it would be a good idea if the city managers of various Canadian and American cities made their way south to Morelia, the capital of Mexico's largest state, Michoacan. For in this venerable colonial city an experiment is about to unfold that might be worth importing north. Not that the idea is new; not at all. But Morelia has decided to barge ahead into the future with a clean downtown core.
	Starting this year, all city-core overhead wiring--as in North America a eyesore of unlimited ugliness--will be buried. That alone is a one-year project, albeit reserved for the precious colonial downtown area along Avenida Madero. Then will start phase two--the banning from this core of all vehicular traffic.
	That bold move will transform downtown Morelia--three long blocks square--from the current gridlock situation several times a day into a gigantic pedestrian mall.(Contributing to the gridlock are the constant strikes: see the following story.) 	The dangers that this rejuvenation scheme will be hampered by special interest groups such as merchants and those hombres who have what's called palanca here, influence, is all to real. If Morelia is prepared to settle for partial access of vehicles to the core, or if privileged vehicles (there's that famous palanca again) are given the right to drive into downtown, then the entire rejuvenation is a partial measure that creates more problems than existed before.
	However, I am assured by a high government official that since the United Nations, including UNESCO, have a financial and ideological hand in this project, its success is virtually guaranteed. This Morelia project is a first of its kind in Mexico, according to my informant, sponsored under the aegis of Patrimonio de la Humanidad, which translates as Heritage of Humanity.
	Take, for instance, Vancouver's north-south streets that effectively divides the city into east and west--Granville Street. In the seventies it was decided to create a pedestrian mall from the waterfront to where Vancouver's downtown ends, the Granville Street Bridge. Canadians who had seen the beneficial effects of pedestrian zones of European cities applauded.
	In Munich, for example, the major shopping district extends from the Karlsplatz (better known as the Stachus) down to where the tourists gawp every noon hour to observe the striking of the mechanical clock on top of the Ratshaus, as well as several blocks to the Odeonsplatz. Here in Munich local deliveries to businesses, restaurants and offices are only allowed mornings until 11. Then the trucks disappear and the pedestrians take over.
	And what a magical experience this large, clean, urban zone is indeed! You can walk along the Kaufingerstrasse without smelling passing vehicles, and groups of people can actually speak to one another in normal voices. I forget which city in Europe first developed traffic-free pedestrian zones, but almost all central European cities have followed this common-sense example.
	Now Morelia is going to emulate the European models, albeit 20 years afterward.
	And where are the North American pedestrian malls in the downtown areas? They do not exist. In Vancouver, the mall project along Granville Street was watered down by all kinds of internal wrangling. Not only are trolley buses allowed to wend their way the undulating street, but taxis, police vehicles, delivery vehicles, and service trucks. It's not a pedestrian mall at all, and it never was. But after two decades the Granville Mall is suffering from a permanent infestation of yahoos, druggies, aggressive panhandlers, and bored teenagers who hang out in groups.
	As a result, the shopping area of Granville has deteriorated into a mall with cinemas, fast-food outlets, X-rated movie houses, porno stores for voyeurs and stores which are fighting a losing battle of survival.
	The real pedestrian mall has gone underground in Vancouver, as it has in many North American cities which suffer from too much inclement weather. Down below the surface you can wander around in a carefully controlled temperature year round. If that is your idea of a downtown mall, so be it.
	For my money, I prefer walking around buildings above the surface where there is more to see and enjoy than the endless suffocating presence of chain stores which offer their wares aggressively. Have you notices how so-called sidewalk sales in those underground malls are encroaching more and more on the walking space?
	If Morelia follows its agenda to the letter and creates a downtown walking zone where churches, stores, offices, government buildings, hotels, sidewalk vendors alternate as you walk along Avenida Madero without being able to avoid inhaling the stench of leaded gasoline and diesel fumes from the exhausts of old cars and badly maintained public buses, then it is time to applaud loudly and enthusiastically.
	Then Morelia will be have restored its downtown area to its original colonial splendour. The plan is to ban all advertising signs; all of them, leaving only the colonial facades of this magnificent colonial city.

Of Strikes and Demonstrations

	If you should ever drive into Morelia's core along Avenida Madero--at any rate before the pedestrian zone target date of the end of 1995 (see previous story)--chances are good to excellent that you will find yourself stuck, but good, in a traffic jam that moves at snail's pace.
	You see, what you didn't know before you read this here, there are almost daily strikes or demonstrations that bedevil the downtown where the Legislature sits and the government governs. Where else are the malcontents to show their disgust with--take your pick of issues, and you'll find them all, just as in Canada--policies, wages and fringe benefits.
	In fact, my same provincial bureaucrat informant tells me, there are about 300 strikes or demonstrations at any given year in Morelia's core. Three hundred out of 365; a rather handsome percentage.
	In general, the municipal police have a pretty relaxed attitude toward the striking forces whose intent it is, what else, to block all traffic and drive home--no pun intended--the urgency of their protest, here called a manifestacion.
	In most cases the police set up road blocks themselves and direct the oozing traffic around the strikers. In other cases it comes to shuffles and fisticuffs. Alcohol plays a role in these protest demonstrations, so that Avenida Madero has been unofficially renamed avenida la borrachita--drunken avenue.
	Now the government, its politicians and bureaucrats weary of dodging protesters, are debating plans of moving the seat of government to a distant area where all government offices can be housed. My informant is knowledgeable about this plan because of his work. When I asked him over a delicious lunch of pionero (a stir-fried dish of shaved beef and ham, bacon, cheese and onions rolled in three handmade tortillas for the indecently low price of N$10--when I asked him whether this super government complex could be sealed off to keep protesters distant, he only smiled wistfully.
	The project will be called el corredor administrativo, indicating that it will be offices built in a row, hence corridor.
	I have seen many of these protest demonstrations, and it is easy to smile at these people when you are a visitor secure in his dollars. Most protesters are shabbily dressed. Many wear campesino clothes topped by sombreros. Others like teacher are better dressed. But all seem to have legitimate complaints of suffering from overwork and underpayment and the absence of fringe benefits.

Things to Like...and to Dislike

	Mexico is wonderful; and frustrating, but if you are prepared to overlook the shortcomings of living and travelling in a country where efficiency is written in exceedingly small letters, you will fall in love with the country and, above all, its people.
	Let us not even mention the weather which gives most of Mexico close to 365 days of sun. The weather is taken for granted, even those cold nights in winter in the central highlands where the daylight temperature drops from 25 degrees Celsius to about 5 or less.
	The food is nonpareil if you don't subscribe to a yuppie palate. The basic fare is ample and tasty and affordable.
	Mexican social customs are rather different from ours, so tread a careful path or you might offend. But once you have been introduced and accepted as a friend of the family, they go out of their way to please you.
	The landscape is often sparse, often lush and stunning. Mexico's great advantage is that it offers you such a variety of landscapes that you will never grow tired of the passing scene, whether it be abundant vegetation or black lava rock resembling a moonscape, subtropical plantations, more birds that you will ever be able to identify, wild and domestic animals wherever you go and drive.
	Treat Mexicans with the attitude you expect in return, and you will not be disappointed--in the vast majority of cases. Of course there is the usual complement of surliness, but that's a fact of life.
	When you speak Spanish with Mexicans, their hearts open to you. If you cannot speak their language, you will still be treated with respect and patience.
	Mexicans have this wonderfully disconcerting habit of paying attention to you when you tell them a story or make a point, and you almost never get the feeling they can't wait until you finish until they can jump in with their counterpoint. Now I must confess that I speak Spanish reasonably well, albeit with frequent mistakes, but they always take my ungrammatical eloquence with good humour. Try to speak with a North American in ungrammatical English, and you might get another treatment.
	Things come to pass in Mexico, even though they might occur a little later than you thought they should. I rather like this way of seeing things done.
	What I am leading into here is the notorious habit of Mexicans being late for social occasions and sometimes other appointments as well. As long as you accept this as a given, you will not fume and rant and rave when dinner guests don't arrive until up to two hours late.
	You might as well accept also that breakfast is late, lunch is eaten between 2:30 and 4, and dinner after 8. Try not to force your North American eating habits on them, i.e. breakfast at 8, lunch at 12 noon, and dinner at 6. It won't work, and it won't be appreciated. You are in their sphere of social customs so obey them.

Time, As In Being On...

	"See you at two" in Mexico means several things. Only one thing it does not mean is being on time at two.
	Well, let me modify this. In Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, where business practices more and more resemble those in North America, you had better be on time for a business appointment.
	But for any other occasion, anything goes.
	So, "see you at two" means at 2:30 (that is being bang on time) or at three (an allowable digression from two o'clock) or 3:30 (where you show them that you are somebody, especially somebody with more influence than the people you told you'd be there at two).
	It's all rather confusing.
	You might try saying, "Come to lunch at 1:30," meaning really 2:30. What's wrong with this scenario is its patent transparency. Mexicans bloody well know that no sane person would have lunch at 1:30, so they figure you really meant 2:30, and to follow custom, they arrive at 3:30. Simple.
	There are more refinements to this general Mexican time theme, but you will have a lot of opportunity to discover them for yourself.

Rude and Pushy 

	In any given crowd in Mexico, people will be rude and push you out of the way without so much as a by-your-leave (this is an ancient British expression out of my golly-gee-whiz quaint drawer). It takes all kinds of forms, this being rude and pushy, and there's not much you can do except being rude and pushy right back.
	I have tried to use tried-and-true four-letter insults, in English, of course, but they either don't hear you or choose to ignore you, and then your anger just floats around you without an outlet.
	These, of course, are strangers who are being rude and pushy to you as you amble along, minding your own business. The same people, should you be introduced to them by happenstance (British quaint expression), they will bend over backwards to be polite; they will then also defer to you up to embarrassing levels.
	The other day I was sitting in a Mexican house for afternoon coffee when I thought I heard there were peanut cookies being offered. Peanuts are called cacahuates. So when the hostess's daughter came around with a tray I asked, casually, "Cacahuates?"
	Wordlessly she shook her head, put the tray down, went to get her purse, left the house, returned five minutes later with two packages of--you guessed it--peanuts. Had I asked, "Galletas de cacahuate?" she would likely have left by car to hunt down peanut butter cookies.	So watch it.

Presents and Gifts

	Here I was, five years ago, no, six now, having landed a coup of a sort, an interview with the wife of a cabinet minister about her social work. I was picked up at my hotel by a chauffeur, delivered to the usual mansion surrounded by a 2.5 metre high brick wall with razor-sharp spiral wire on top.
	In the house were the wife, her two daughters, a cousin, and an aunt, all reasonably proficient in English. In those days my Spanish was of the stuttering tourist kind. The interview went well, except that they all wanted to know what I thought of Mexico and Morelia in particular.
	What can one use but adjectives dripping with honey? So I did. I had arrived with my tape recorder and nothing in the way of flowers or gifts. I still don't know, interviews not being among my preferred method of gathering information these days, whether I was expected to deliver flowers.
	When I left with a useless interview (did I really expect the wife of a cabinet minister to divulge useful information on which we writers prefer to feed?), I was handed three packages to remind me of Morelia, I was told. They contained a number of stunningly delicious sweets which I passed on, back home, to younger and sweeter mouths than my own.
	When you receive a visit from Mexican family members in Canada, they always carry gifts and presents of various denominations. So when we visit our family in Mexico, we carry the usual complement of gifts as well. This sturdy practice can, of course, lead to outrageous expense when you count all the members of the family--father, mother, aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandfather, grandmothers and what not--who you believe expect little souvenirs from Canada
	You can go to the tourist centre back home and pick up Canadians flags and trinkets, or plastic Mounties, but how can you in good conscience hand over these made-in-Taiwan souvenirs without blushing in embarrassment?
	Nemmind, as Pogo says, it's the thought that counts: now there's an original idea.

In the New Year:
Bullets and Death

	It is a time-honoured tradition all over Mexico to show your machismo on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It is also foolish and costs lives. Mexican men go into their backyards or into the street and fire their various handguns into the air--and because they are machos they fire real bullets, for only sissies and wimps would bang off dummy charges.
	Bullets that fly around the troposphere--or wherever they are destined to travel--have a tendency to follow Newton's law of gravity and eventually descend to land with a soft thud, a sharp crack, or a sickening crunch, depending on whether they hit loose earth, concrete, metal, car roof tops or, yes, human heads.
	Last year in Morelia alone, two people were drilled neatly through the head from returning projectiles in the sky and fell, not unnaturally, dead.
	Is anything done about this?
	Of course not. I am reliably informed that the police are afraid to interfere in such practices. The man they collar might turn out to have a lot of palanca, or pull, and make sure the cop will in future patrol the garbage dump.
	My advice to you is twofold: rely on the law of averages and go about your way unconcerned; or stay indoors from 6 p.m. New Year's Eve to 6 p.m. New Year's Day, just to be safe.

The List of 7,000

	Starting on January 1, 1994, Mexican businesses and consumers alike were eagerly perusing the List of 7,000, all those items that would be exempt henceforth from the crippling import tax. That list is, of course, the result of the implementation of NAFTA. High on the list are electronic items, especially computers and peripherals, television and stereo sets, and other such darling consumer merchandise.
	That brings NAFTA, the Tratado de Libre Comercio, right into the home of Mexicans, and as well into the tens of thousands of small shoestring businesses. No one seems to know what NAFTA--the TLC--will bring. Many fear its negative effects, predicting that multinationals will open untold more assembly plants, here known as maquiladoras, which will create instant slums, offer the workers minimum wages, and help pollute Mexico even more than it is already.
	But for people with money who want to acquire some of these 7,000 import items the times are going to be rosy.
	NAFTA-TLC remains are rather large and unwieldy question mark in the minds of those Mexicans who will not obviously benefit from it.

Need to Learn Spanish In a Hurry?

	There is nothing better than to learn a language in situ, especially if you parachute into an all-Spanish environment. Forced to speak Spanish day after day, going to classes to learn grammar and syntax and pronunciation, you will return after six to eight weeks with a good working knowledge of Spanish unless you are a linguistic nincompoop who, political correctness be damned, do exist.
	Especially in the light of NAFTA/TLC, you may wish to speak at least some Spanish when you go to Mexico on business; it will give you a decided edge during negotiations, and Spanish-speaking gringos/Canadians are always respected by Mexicans.
	So how to go about it?
	Take one of many language schools that abound in Mexico, especially in Cuernavaca south of Mexico City, and in many larger cities as well.

Letters to Common Sense 
Digital Magazine

[Nota Bene: When I decided to publish Common Sense Digital Magazine as a public domain e-text back in October, 1993, I fully expected this new publication to wither on the vine. Instead, there has been some reaction by readers, among them the following assessment of Common Sense Digital Magazine in the January issue of BBS Magazine of New Jersey.]

	In an article describing Deep Cove BBS of White Rock, B.C., BBS Magazine writes:
	"When you're between file downloads, matchmaking and messaging, you can also pick up the latest news from around the world on Deep Cove. Subscribers can select from USA Today, BoardWatch Online, NewsBytes or an interesting new online publication, Common Sense Digital Magazine. The latter is provided by Deep Cove member Jurgen Hesse, who also edits the magazine. Common Sense Digital Magazine covers literally any topic with a liberal dose of humour and always with a grain of common sense that makes it both charming and enlightening while it entertains. It's truly unique and it's a Deep Cove original!"

[Aw, shucks, but thanks, ed].

From:  Andy Manninger
To:    Jurgen Hesse
Subj:  Common Sense

	AM>Having read only the first issue, it strikes me that your Common Sense Digital Magazine is a highly valuable addition to the offerings of this BBS. It offers fine insights, food for thought and material for discussion. With this in mind, I'd like to add my two-cents worth. Since I'm by nature a critic, I'll concentrate on those thoughts I take issue with. Those I agree with or am ambivalent about I'll let pass unless I'm struck by its exceptional brilliance. Here goes.
	I agree with the critics. Anybody with a ladder and a paint roller could duplicate it. Paying $3M for it is more reprehensible than paying that amount for a painting produced by a chimpanzee. The latter was at least ambiguous and thus debatable. The former isn't.
	Since the $3M came out of your pocket and mine (I think), you shouldn't be so blase about it. On the other hand, if some philanthropist donated the cash, I'd be less concerned.
	Re the Impartial Witness
	Aren't our judges supposed to be such impartial witnesses? In the U.S. they are even elected.
	JH>Bring on those impartial witnesses (as described in Robert Heinlein's novel, Stranger In a Strange Land, ed.), I say. Could you agree with this concept?
	AM>Sure I could. In theory our justice system is supposed to be based on this concept. The problem is that what men can make they can also screw up, and usually do. We don't need to belabour all the shortcomings of our judicial system.
	Such a social machinery for conflict resolution requires, in addition to our willingness to submit to it, 1) men of true wisdom and 2) a method of choosing them for their positions. While the first exist, the second doesn't--which is the basic conundrum of democracy.
	The concept of the World Court at The Hague is based on the same idea. Do you think the Bosnian combatants would consider submitting to its judgment? Ha.
	JH>Conundrum. What do you do when you want to do something that is outside the accepted limits of social ethics?
	AM>Do it covertly.
	JH>What overriding factors could persuade you to do what you should not do but really would like to do unless, of course, the risks are too great? Use common sense? How in hell do you know what that is?
	AM>Watching a person screaming in agony inside a burning care with no hope of rescue would compel me to put a bullet through his brain pronto, and to hell with the consequences. My own sense of what is right or wrong would be my guiding light regardless of whether it coincided with "common sense."

From:  Jay Siegel
To:    Jurgen Hesse
Subj:  Common Sense

	JS>I read your on-line magazine Common Sense with great interest. I found much of it edifying. The article by Ernest Hekkanen on the structure of modern society with the World Trade Centre at its core as a hive within hives provokes serious thought and paints a pessimistic and probably correct portrait on the future of future life on earht. It's the model of the metropolis and the hinterlands again, but this time ties with the metropolis within the metropolis.
	I found inconsistency in your feelings about (the) Mark Rothko painting purchased by the National Art Centre (Gallery, actually, ed.) which seem to demonstrate an elitist viewpoint. Non-representational art is to be found in most societies but few make such a fuss about it as in a society so rich that it can afford to squander such riches on acquiring it. In less money-oriented societies non-representational art is fold art done by people for themselves or for those they know well. More it is a mechanism for gambling on the future reserved for the rich but encouraged by one of our national institutions.
	JH>I had misgivings about this piece (on Rothko), having taken the, as you point out correctly, elitist road...but I was getting rather riled by the vox populi which seemed to say that anyone can paint like Mark Rothko. This pedestrian and parochial attitude offends me, so I overreacted in the other direction
	JS>Don't give it another thought. 
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