A Wetback in Reverse

by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  Where did it break out? What’s the prognosis on curing everybody before it gets worse? Why did it break out in the first place?, or so I asked myself again and again while pondering what to do with all the free time. I mean, I could not even visit a cinema, or a museum (where I could view more Fulgencio San Roman movies) without being harassed by some resentful police-youth, forced to beat the streets while the fat, older veterans stayed home to celebrate the latest feast day of some obscure Catholic saint.

  Across Mexico’s big cities, citizens reacted with confusion and fatalism, rage, and exasperating horror at the thought that their special town might be a breeding ground for the next viral outbreak. Meanwhile, goodbye for now to rich and juicy roast pork!

  The Chihuahua big-wigs insisted that people should stay in their houses if they were feeling weary and woozy. Billy was assuredly disgusted to learn that they were discouraging people from kissing even their own wives, children, relatives, and/or concubines (in Billy’s case, he had at least 3). Outside the Pancho Villa Clinic in the city’s middle-class Centro district, a tired old doctor leaned against an ambulance and sipped coffee, one fine Monday morning on a break from an unusually busy shift. “The people are shitting in their pants, they are so scared,” I overheard him say to his aids and workers. “A person gets the sniffles, or a child gets a fever and they think it is this people-pig-bird flu and rush to the hospital.”

  Apparently none of the cases thus far at his clinic had turned out to be the dreaded flu, but his patients gave him enough to worry about, especially if facial ugliness turned out to be viral as well.

  I decided to relieve my boredom, and hopped on a city-bus that morning, fooling myself that I would be taking a city tour. But, after a dozen too many stops, I just felt I couldn’t stand to suffer the germs of the locals getting on and off for even one more station. I got off, walked over to the street corner near the park, and decided to buy a news-paper. The old boy at the stall confided to me as he set up his rack for the newspapers on a busy thoroughfare, “We’re really in danger of contagion, hermano. ... I’m worried. But, Jesu-Cristo y la Virgen save you from such a dread.”

  The same virus continued to sicken more and more people, Mexicans and Americans, even though the silly government spokesmen were now announcing that they felt additional vaccine production may not be necessary. In any case, the manufacturers’ spokes-people retorted that they needed special “seed-stock” that was genetically matched to the pig virus to be able to make the touted vaccines. They wouldn’t make any more vaccines than they felt were necessary in any case, particularly since no more deaths were being reported, so that put an end to that matter.

  Good, old-fashioned Tami-flu and Relenza medications seemed effective against the new strain, and I was certainly relying on them en lieu of a vaccine. They were effective against most symptoms, though Billy’s wife insisted they exacerbated her case of the “Aztec-two-step” (diarrhea). Meanwhile, we couldn’t even find bacon for my breakfasts anymore, not that it bothered my hosts since they were practically vegetarians ~ though, in Billy’s case, an avowed philanderer and connoisseur of female genitalia, he was an unrepentant self-described vagi-tarian. Yet, the wicked little virus would put a temporary halt even to his extra-marital “consultations,” or so he referred to his adulteries as such.

  Good, ol’ Jose Angel Cordova (to reiterate, Mexico’s Health Secretary), hungry for more media exposure, went back on television and assured that the country had enough Tami-flu to treat 1 million people, at least in the Mexico City area, but the rest of the country would be screwed. The effective over-the-counter medicine would be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors, so hurray for me that I was able to horde a few bottles before the restrictions were enforced!

  The next day I went to that park again to see if the old man was still selling his news-papers, and he was; I approached, inquired into the state of his health, and he cryptically replied that he was, “waiting to hear” whether his 18-year-old daughter had been infected by the frightful new virus. Apparently, she had been suffering from sneezing, dizzy-spells, coughing and fever for a week without her father ever knowing about it. “If they say that it is the virus, then we’ll all fall together.” He said. “We are Tarahumara, and have no defenses against European illnesses. Until it hits all of us, we don’t want to think about it.”

  Think about it? Who would want to do a silly thing like that!

  Oh Maestro San Roman, where are you to capture history in the Making?

  There’s plenty of celluloid still around to record it all.

  Now what do you think of your Mexico?

  A WETBACK ON THE MOVE

  The days came and went in a hurry. People were beginning to settle down, and the pig-flu virus scare turned out to be more like a practical joke. I certainly had little to worry about, though, I admit, I was scared right down to my under-wear for a spell. Chihuahua didn’t seem so awful to me anymore, and I looked forward to removing myself from the ever-ponderous sloth that had weighed me down throughout the so-called public emergency.

  I packed up again early one morning, bade my adieus to Juana and Billy (who had just arrived, exhausted from the previous night’s sexual deviancy), and called the bus station to reserve my seat on their hauler bound for Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo Leon.

  It was a tender, somewhat morose farewell, for they had been very tolerant hosts, and I was beginning to like the quiet, hippie-like ambiance they’d established around their colonia (neighborhood).

  Hence, Juana, a faithful Catholic like all good Mexicans, genuflected and gesticulated with the sign of the crucifix on me, and then Billy, philosophical as always, typically addressed me with an assurance that, the kingdom of heaven is within you; free your mind, and your ass will follow.

  So, I left with their blessings in tow, free of doubts and negativity, and headed straight for the bus station, my unwilling ass dragging behind me.

  Once boarded, the damned, obsolete vehicle trudged out and made straight for the periferico (highway). The unreliable bus schedule would afford me long hours of reflection on my expectations of this Mexican experience. Monterrey came upon us with a light fog and slight chill; “Sultana of the North,” I found this industrial metropolis to be a most elegant town, and her populace to be most engaging. Her notable landmarks, like Cerro de la Silla, the baroque Episcopal palace, the elegant government palace, made for an afternoon of touristic fun, and the food, hot and spicy, was better than I’d expected given my bad bouts with beans recently. I particularly enjoyed roasted cabrito (kid-goat), the most popular of the traditional dishes in this region, and the tour of the brewery Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, proved to be most jolly. Later I enjoyed a good soccer game at the Estadio Tecnologico; the host team, Rayados de Monterrey, defeating their visitor-rivals from Coahuila. Mostly though, I spent my time just thinking; I couldn’t help but ponder all of my expectations of this country before having crossed the border vis-a-vis all the frustrations that accompanied me the minute I had arrived in Tamaulipas. Already I had imbibed enough of the attitudes, customs, curious idiosyncrasies, vulgar dialects, and downright bad habits of representative natives to make a few frank conclusions of my own regarding the meaning of what it is to be a “Mexican”; frankly, a few more months and, I feared, I just might go ape, or as much as the expression lends to the individual worry. So much of the country’s history was still playing a less than healing role in the evolution of its society. So many of the native prejudices that have shielded the native Indians and their progeny of mixed blood from the humiliations of the Mexican-born European overlords, or Criollos, throughout the centuries, had now left them stagnant in superstition, isolated from making any sort of social, cultural, industrial and scientific progress.

  Therewithal, I came across a book written about Fulgencio San Roman, which contained many of his quotations stretching back to the 1940s. They made as much sense today as they had many decades ago. In essence, he
complained that there was too much cynicism, and parody, and gossiping about the future of Mexico.

  It is to deride, his generation would say about the stagnation of Mexico, in spite of superficial political progress. It should be the reverse; it is to cry, and then to damn, since the most important cultural and historical region of Latin-America, and one of the most intriguing in the world, is being oppressed to death by this faith in a bigotry its people clings to, and cannot separate from its collective soul. At the same time, its people vomit their own values in the hope of achieving some kind of obscure modernity that promises much, but was not likely to deliver on anything.

  His many experiences, unlike my few, in Mexico, working for a government that regulated even the arts and the content of movies, were both risible and lamentable. He certainly laughed and cried on many occasions upon reflecting on the puzzling course his country, as well as his career, was taking. Overall they are, just like my recent tribulations, sad, very sad, when looked at as being simply the unraveling of history’s mysteries. And yet, he laughed at his own tears. I am sure most Mexicans find their traumas to be more than amusing given all the suffering this land has known.

  I had no complaints to make about my Mexican hosts thus far. Everyone (mostly) had treated me with the utmost respect. And yet, pig flu or no pig flu, I sensed there was such an aura of fear cast around me, if only because I did not look weary and oppressed like many do here. According to San Roman, many of his contemporaries appeared afraid out of their wits about what next he might do, so unlike the feeling of sans-gene that people today have regarding freedom of expression. And, it wasn’t that he decried the temper or attitudes of the times, or that he actively opposed an increasingly paternalistic government founded on one-party rule. It was that he might want to do something crazy, or in an anti-socialistic way that romanticized the pre-revolutionary past. They seemed affrighted by innovation, by reality as they really saw it, but were forced to interpret in contradictory terms ... The only two things that he seemed to approve of during that era of change were the reformist administration of President Lazaro Cardenas, and the promotion of tourism by the administration of President Miguel Aleman following World War II. Otherwise, according to his interpretation, everything else just stunk to high Heaven, giving little hope to Mexico and the future she faced.

  When he set out to promote the Mexican Cinema, he insisted that he felt that Mexican moving pictures were the most promising in the world, but not because they were his, or Mexican in particular, or because he thought of himself as a unique genius among film-makers. It was simply because he and his Mexican peers attempted, in Mexico, to give their native cinema a special, inimitable flavor. They sought to educate youngsters as technicians, first of all, then as producers, directors, actors, et cetera. He believed that the wheel of change, as he put it, had constantly to be turning, exposing new ideas, new personalities, and plenty of pretty faces. He argued that neither the Germans (Expressionistic and Nazi-era films), Soviets, nor even Americans could provide all that, and, in the latter’s case, didn’t even try to achieve any of it ~ it goes to show what he really felt about Hollywood!

  Many people warned him about how difficult it would be to crash through the old attitudes and practices of his times, and how difficult it would be to measure up to expectations he’d set for himself. He realized, however, that he had erred in that respect. He went ahead, in any case, encouraging their scrutiny, inviting them to bring on the polemics no matter how scarred they’d leave him, or how scared he’d leave them.

  He ultimately cared not if his defiance would end with a bed full of broken hearts, or a house full of angry resentments. Consoling himself was a talent he learned early on, and he told himself repeatedly that broken hearts make up a great art, and none more so than film-making. It was the broken hearts of myriad idealists who had failed as painters, or writers, or film-makers that have made those particular arts alive and surging, while and when they were!

  Hence, I trudged on to the next destination, thinking not of what was to come, but pondering on the weird coincidence of having met this semi-legendary film-maker who may have broken many hearts besides his own. I trudged on to make sense of the Mexico he tried to describe, and the Mexico I was now trying to understand.

  I tried to make sense of what the hell this pestilence that overtook the county was all about, but all that came to mind was that Mexico was still condemned to struggle against all odds for her own, basic, elemental survival; for her dignity among nations. Mexico was damned to strive against the shameful divisions existing between the social classes; between Europeans and native Indians, and between the iconoclasts and the superstitious. None could have elucidated these anomalies better than San Roman, but instead he chose to exacerbate them by his defiance of society.

  To think, I learned all of this just by watching his nearly-forgotten movies. Perhaps I would have learned all that I wanted to learn about Mexico just by staying home and renting DVDs of his films. But, since I did not know who the hell he was prior to undertaking this quickly degenerating journey, the fact of our paths having crossed must be ascribed to Fate. All this, the extraordinary connection and sympathy I now have for the man, and having met him (sort of) personally on his own turf, took this unique experience of life far beyond the realm of co-incidence.

  And yet, who the hell knows? The bastards, both his contemporary nemeses and my present-day oppressors, could not have planned it that way, and would have and were doing everything in their power to make sure we never met again. If I had known my fascination with him would grow so much since leaving Reynosa, I never would have left the stinking place. But, now to get back, would it be worth it? Could I find him again? Would he still be there?

  CONNECTING WITH

  THE FOLKS BACK HOME

  Well, the bus made good time, it was consistently cold outside, and we swung through Monterrey without a hitch. I decided to contact a long-lost cousin of mine since we had been simpatico with each other ever since we had first met back in the 1970s.

  Her name is Angelina, or Cousin Nena to the rest of us. She was in the habit of writing exceedingly long letters, then, with the Internet revolution, annoyingly long emails. She was always thanking everyone for their support during every significant event in her life.

  For the time being, I would be in need of her persuasive skills should I need somebody as a reference now that my two-week tourist visa had expired, and from thence I would be regarded as a roving Wetback! She would be pestering everyone, not to mention my long-suffering lap-top computer, however, and for the time being, about the swine flu epidemic. She wrote something personal about her brush with the illness, and things about her former husband who had actually been afflicted with the virus. So, she informed us, the bastard, revenging himself against what he saw as a personal slight to his ego, tried purposely to spread the contagion wherever he went.

  Speaking of this fellow, Jose’ Pepe Martin, when Angelina was a high-school senior years ago she went to Canada for a hasty vacation, met this guy at a beer-tavern, who turned out to be a fellow Mexican, hastily spread-eagle for him, then married him. Eventually, however, things didn’t work out, and she returned to Mexico. She never filed for divorce, however, and neither did this “bozo” (her term of endearment). All this was in the past, and, as far as she was concerned, the boisterous and ponderous opera that was her marriage with him was over.

  Now, back towards the future ... 15 years later, she had recently returned to Canada to file for divorce. Yet, upon reuniting for the first time in a long time, they mutually started hinting about the possibility of getting back together for no other reason than to renew their matrimonial vows ~ due to the fact being that they are still legally married, through the church and the state, and the whole she-bang. I don’t know whether she was seriously considering going back to him, but she certainly made it clear to the rest of us that “the possibility was certainly plausible.” More than anything else, I think she
just wanted to get a feel for what everyone else thought regarding the pathetic possibility. Who knows, maybe she was seriously considering getting back with “bozo”? Anyhow, her emails have been a little graphic (and have afforded me some very needed amusement during this uncertain time of transit).

  There was sex involved, which resulted in their being exposed by the hotel clerks who’d discovered them in flagrante delicto (Oh My God!), and there was a couple of “peace pipe” incidents (and that’s all I know about the latter, no other details to report), which led to the involvement of the police. Consequently, they spent a couple of nights in a Canadian jail. Some of the other cousins, upon hearing the gory anecdotes from a couple of Nena’s less than loyal siblings, began to email derogatory comments regarding all of this, but as these impertinent remonstrances were flying back and forth, and the bastards did forget to include me in the email discussions, I got a sense of Cousin Nena’s justifiable contempt for the very cousins who had hitherto forgotten all about her. They’d contributed not a single moiety to her happiness, but were now heaping invectives on her situation, and making it seem far more pejorative than it actually was. Perhaps it was just as well that they blew things out of proportion, for then I could get a better perspective on the facts.

  I learned about Cousin Nena’s latest personal drama with the self-righteous and vindictive cousins by way of Cousin Rosa who had been always popular with the rumor-mongers. She did complain that she too had been “left out of the loop,” as it were, thus she loudly complained that, “all this shit was being tossed back and forth without my having a clue as to what was going on, so I had to squeeze a few balls to let them know just how I felt about the fuck-heads for leaving me out of all the fun!”