MEXICO CITY AND POINTS SOUTH
——— ON LEARNING BY DOING ———
In early 1984, I repacked the little car I had driven from Chicago two years earlier and cruised one last time through downtown El Paso. I left the United States when I crossed the bridge to Ciudad Juárez, which used to be called Paso del Norte. For centuries, this place was the gateway—the pass—for travelers heading north. For me, El Paso would be the gateway south to Mexico City and beyond. I had no idea then, but I was headed toward a serendipitous encounter on a busy street in one of the world’s largest cities, a chance meeting that would change me in ways I could not imagine.
A few miles inside Mexico’s border, I pulled over at a checkpoint to register my car with Mexican customs. To protect the local auto industry, American cars could not be sold in Mexico, so the government kept close tabs on imported cars like mine to prevent them from being sold illegally.
Several days later, I arrived at my new apartment near the capital’s touristy Zona Rosa. I parked in the underground garage and carried my few belongings through a pleasant, walled courtyard filled with plants. The building was concrete—the walls, floors, and stairs. The entire complex could have been poured into a single mold. There would come a day when that solid construction would be a blessing. I unpacked and went in search of groceries and supplies.
The neighborhood market was as big as a hangar, with long rows of stalls organized by product. There were sections for beef or chicken, for example, and a section for vegetables. I didn’t recognize half of the fruits, with their knobby shapes and husky covers. The noise was an overwhelming mix of voices, fans, and blowers, cleavers chopping, and blenders whirring. “Hey shoppers,” the vendors cried out, “try these strawberries. Very fresh! What can I do for you today?” People spoke Spanish with a different accent than I was used to, with a singsong lilt, and very fast.
I was self-conscious, sensing—accurately as it turned out—that I was the only gringo in the entire market. I felt people looking at me and wondering what I was doing, whether I was lost or confused or a little slow in the head. I walked stiffly, hoping no one would see me or that I would not somehow offend with an imperious stride.
After forty-five minutes and a half-dozen stalls, I had filled two woven plastic shopping bags with groceries. Some of the transactions were difficult because I wasn’t sure of the quantities—how big was a liter or a kilo? I also needed to convert the prices into dollars, which was cumbersome for a non-math major. The prices in pesos were meaningless, but when I calculated the dollars, I knew the hours I needed to work to make the purchase.
The final item on my list was eggs. Many vendors carried eggs, but I didn’t see a simple carton with a dozen. Instead, the loose eggs were stacked in pyramids or arrayed in neat rows. Some eggs were snow white, others were brown. I was less concerned with the color than with finding ones that were not covered with the pain of birth: flecks of blood and bits of feather. I observed other people order, and the vendor carefully placed the eggs into a clear plastic bag, tying the top into a knot. I bought a bag and nestled the eggs among the other groceries.
Passing the final fruit vendor, I noticed bright yellow bananas. Now the confident market shopper, I asked the lady how much. I pointed to the bunch I wanted, and she reached down from her perch to place the bananas into the shopping bag.
“Not in there,” I told her, politely but firmly. “I’ve got my eggs—mis huevos—in there.”
She looked at me and burst out laughing. In a loud voice, she announced to everyone within twenty-five stalls, “This young man’s got his ‘eggs’ in the basket!” She was guffawing now, and sending ripples of laughter across the market. “Oh yeah! Got his eggs in the basket!”
Right away I realized my mistake—I should have said the eggs instead of my eggs—but it was too late, and I was too slow in Spanish to come up with a clever retort. The laughter continued, so loudly that startled birds flew off the rafters, and I tried to shrink myself enough to sneak away with the eggs—or as I had said, “my balls”—in a bright orange shopping basket.
Safely back in my apartment, I got to work. The company had offered me an office downtown or $100 toward my monthly rent if I worked from my apartment. The decision was easy, and I set up the headquarters of the Latin America bureau on the dining room table. I had a Radio Shack computer, a rotary-dial phone, and a television with a handful of Mexican channels. I filed stories from my computer using a cable that connected to the telephone with two black rubber cups attached to the mouthpiece and earpiece of the handset. Then my computer connected over the phone line with a computer in Washington to transmit my stories.
My daily routine began with a visit to the corner vendor for at least five newspapers: one liberal, one conservative, one representing the ruling party, and others for variety. Once a week I bought the news magazine Proceso. The trick to reading the papers was getting to know who was writing what, and why. Some of the stories were deliberate leaks by one faction against another or by the ruling party against a dissident wing. Other stories were part of ongoing feuds. A few stories were simply dictated by the people who paid for them, just like taking out an advertisement but more expensive.
I watched TV news every day, especially the 24 Horas program at 2 p.m., mostly to avoid missing something big. The television news was well presented by smart, good-looking people, but the underlying and unquestioned assumptions were that the ruling party was synonymous with the government, the government existed to protect the citizens, the police were interested only in catching criminals, and the army, well, the army was not mentioned at all except when soldiers marched in parades. Mexico’s foreign policy was noble and respectful of others, resistant to the charms and pressures of the United States. The business sector produced the highest quality goods, the national soccer team was unbeatable, Mexican women were both sexy and chaste, and the Virgin of Guadalupe watched over everything with a subtle but pleased Mona Lisa smile.
My efforts to understand Mexico better were interrupted by a call from Washington. Things are heating up in El Salvador, my new editor said, so you should go.
El Salvador, I repeated, staring down at my computer and the Mexican newspapers spread across the table. I was just getting used to my comfy new apartment. El Salvador was the scary place. Every day, students, farmers, even journalists, were “disappeared,” as they said of people who vanished, horribly, without a trace. I had never been to a war zone or witnessed mass violence. Mexico felt warm and fuzzy in comparison.
“I guess I could go next week,” I offered. “I’m still unpacking my stuff.”
“We need you to go today,” the editor said.
I didn’t argue. I knew El Salvador was part of the territory, although I wasn’t expecting to go so soon. Maybe it was better to get it over with. I went to the airline office and bought a ticket. I packed a small bag of clothes and a briefcase with my computer and fresh notebooks. I asked the porter who lived in the building to keep an eye on the apartment and my car. I hadn’t made any friends yet, so I didn’t have anybody else to tell.
I deliberately did not tell the person who cared most where I was: my mom. She worried enough that I was living so far away in Mexico City, so when I called Chicago to check in, I did not mention I was going to Central America.
My stomach was tight during the taxi ride to the airport, and I stretched my shoulders to relax the burning knot in my neck. I was anxious about the trip not only because of the danger but also because it was my first assignment for Washington. I had learned the basics of reporting during two years at City News and had done some good stories during two years in El Paso, but Washington was in another league. Dan and the editors there didn’t know my work, and I felt I had to prove myself from the start.
Even though I originally was supposed to report to editors in Denver, El Paso, and Washington, Dan had used his considerable clout in the company to make himself my main boss, and he let me know it. El Salvador was getting a l
ot of attention in Washington, so Dan would be reading my stories closely.
No one ever told me what to write, or which side I should take, the angle, or the spin. Just write good stories. My bosses all seemed to take seriously the Scripps Howard motto: “Give light and the people will find their own way.” I was starting to believe it, too.
After I checked in for my flight, I joined a long line that ended at a single desk where a man in uniform reviewed the documents of departing travelers. I glanced at my watch every few minutes, starting to get concerned. I had left my apartment immediately, but the line, everything in Mexico City, was moving underwater. I switched my briefcase from my right hand to my left. I checked again to be sure my passport was in my jacket pocket, along with the ticket and boarding pass. At last it was my turn at the desk, the final hurdle before the gate.
“Ticket,” said the man in uniform, not looking up. I handed him my ticket. “Documents.” I handed him my blue US passport. “Travel documents,” he said. I gave him copies of the forms I had filled out at the border when I drove across from El Paso. He paged through the papers, looked again at my passport and then up at my face. “Where is your car?”
I was confused for a second. I’m taking an airplane, I thought, what do you mean, where’s my car? Fearing this was a trick question, I looked at him trying to determine the correct answer. “Uh, at my apartment?”
“You can’t leave the country without your car,” he said.
Now I really was confused. There was no way I could take my car, even as checked baggage. “But I live here,” I said. “I left my car at my apartment, and I will be back in two weeks.”
He folded up the papers, stuffed them into my passport and handed it back to me. “You must bring your car to the customs lot here at the airport, where it will be impounded. You can pick it up when you return from your travels. Have a nice day.”
My stomach dropped, and I felt a prickling current of anxiety. I looked ahead and saw the gate. I looked behind me and saw the line growing longer. People were pushing forward into me. I was holding up the other departing passengers.
“I’m a journalist,” I said. “I’m going to El Salvador to write a story.”
The official started to look behind me at the next person in line.
“Surely there’s something we can do,” I offered.
He looked back at me. This was the moment he would decide whether to press an alarm under the desk and armed men would burst out and arrest me for trying to bribe a federal official. I would spend years in the dark pit of a Mexican prison. I would be disgraced and lose my job.
“It would be very expensive,” he said.
“How much?”
“One hundred American.”
“How about fifty?”
“Sixty,” he said.
I peeled off $60 and handed the money to him with my documents. He made no effort to be discreet or hide the money. He opened my passport and slapped it with a clunky metal stamp. “Have a nice trip.” He looked behind me at the line and said, “Next.”
I took my seat on a perfectly nice jet operated by the Salvadoran carrier TACA. Whenever I flew, I made a mental note of the make and model of the aircraft and the view outside the window. I glanced at the passengers next to me so that they would be familiar if I had to get their names and ages.
The reason for this preflight ritual was that if we crashed, I wanted to be prepared with a few paragraphs of background color for my story. I noted the exit doors and imagined how quickly I could get out of the wreckage and find a phone to file. In these daydreams, the passengers, me included, always survived. I did this on every flight, not just when flying TACA, which I soon would learn the other reporters called “Take-A-Chance Airlines.”
We did not crash, and a few hours later, I stepped off the plane into the heat and noisy disorder of the airport in San Salvador: extended families pressed closely together and jostling to get a better view of the arriving passengers, kids running up to carry my bags, taxi drivers soliciting riders, men pushing carts of stacked luggage.
Unlike Mexico City, where the air was dry even when the sun was hot, this place was moist as a jungle, low and close, thick and humid. The smell was warm bananas, corn, and diesel fuel. The people were shorter and darker than in Mexico City. They spoke Spanish quickly and swallowed the final letters of some words, forcing me to pay close attention. It was like hearing Jamaican English for the first time.
I changed some money and allowed myself to be herded into a taxi. The driver tossed my bag into the rusty trunk and we sped off toward the city. The scenery reminded me of rural Mexico: worn concrete houses with tin roofs and faded paint, small restaurants with wobbly plastic tables, mountains of truck tires piled outside repair shops, and the occasional wandering cow or donkey, untethered and feeding on grass along the highway.
I had reserved a room at the Hotel Camino Real, a gathering place of the international press corps, where permanent residents from the big newspapers, the wires, and television networks had offices. Visitors like me filled the upper floors overlooking the pool and the green countryside.
From my room, I looked out the window at this new country and wondered how I was going to understand it enough to write a decent story. I had followed El Salvador over the years, but writing a story was much harder than reading one. Writing required knowledge, of course, but also the self-confidence to feel mastery of the subject. I feared I didn’t really know anything. I wanted to be able to hold the entire country cupped in my hand, turning it this way and that, to learn its secrets.
The next morning I woke up early, not sure what to do. How do I cover an entire country? Who do I talk to? Where do I go? I didn’t have much guidance from the office, other than “things were heating up,” so I guessed they were interested in the war. I had a vague idea of the issues based on stories I had clipped from the US and Mexican papers. There were guerrillas on one side versus the military and politicians supported by the United States. All I had to do was find the right people on both sides and convince them to talk to me, without getting blown up, shot, or kidnapped.
First, breakfast. I went to the dining room and saw it was packed. The buffet was piled with fresh fruit, bread, and steaming trays of eggs and sausage. Some tables were filled with Salvadorans: men in white guayaberas or suits and women in fitted skirts and dresses, stockings, and heels. They were eating, smoking, and laughing.
At other tables were foreigners. There was no international tourism because of the violence, but the war had attracted aid workers, activists, opportunists, spies, and journalists. Most of the foreigners were Americans dressed in casual shirts and jeans. Some of them wore khaki Domke vests with many pockets, bulging with notebooks, film canisters, and camera equipment. The floor was piled with TV cameras and folded tripods. The Americans were eating and talking quietly, huddled together, and no one looked up when I approached.
I grabbed a plate of fruit and took a seat by myself. The waiter brought me coffee, which I sipped slowly, hoping I would come up with a great story idea or some veteran reporter would invite me along. What the heck was I going to write? Even before I started to write, where was I going to go? This wasn’t like being in El Paso, where I could run across to Mexico and come back with a story in time for lunch. I was all the way inside now. How would I find people to interview? What would I ask them? How would I get there? Taxi? Rent a car? Walk? I had no idea.
From my seat, I tried to overhear the conversations at other tables. My worst fear was missing something big that everybody else was covering. I figured if they all were eating breakfast and smoking cigarettes, things must be quiet. I recognized a few of the nicer looking reporters from television. The preppy men and women were probably reporters for the East Coast papers. The scruffier, bigger guys must have been cameramen. There were a few Salvadorans with them, most likely local reporters or fixers, the invaluable men and women who arranged interviews, travel, and logistics, and kept us safe.
I couldn’t drink any more coffee, so I signed the bill and went to my room. I turned on the television, hoping for inspiration. I was pleasantly distracted by a flexible woman doing aerobics. I flipped through more channels looking for local news. What if something was happening a few blocks away and I didn’t even know? Maybe the dining room had emptied and everybody was covering a big story that would be in all the papers tomorrow, except mine. I couldn’t find any news on TV. Maybe that was good because nothing was happening. More importantly, I wasn’t missing anything.
I looked again through the pile of clippings I had brought, trying to see themes or story ideas. The war was big, but so were the political situation and the economy. I took out three new notebooks and labeled them: war, politics, economy. I would take notes on each topic only in the designated notebook and hope a story emerged. I clipped two pens in my shirt pocket, checked that I had enough cash, and walked out of the hotel and into El Salvador.
The doorman asked if I wanted a taxi, and I settled into the spongy back seat. I knew from Mexico that I could negotiate an hourly rate, but I wasn’t sure how much to pay. We came to an agreement—less than I paid in Mexico but probably more than the rate in El Salvador—and I told the driver to show me the city. I asked questions, and he was full of opinions about his country, my country, the war, the future, soccer (which I didn’t care about), and the local cuisine, which was more interesting.
Like many rookie correspondents, I got my introduction to a new place through the eyes of a taxi driver, the first source of last resort for reporters without a clue. After a few hours, I had moved up to the passenger seat, and I enjoyed seeing the city like a curious tourist. It was manageable compared with Mexico City, and life seemed normal. It did not feel like a war zone. Soon it was time for lunch, which I agreed to buy if the driver would pick an authentic local place.
First he returned me to the hotel because I had to check in with the office. Every day at 12:30 p.m., the Scripps Howard editors in Washington transmitted a budget of coming stories—the “sked”—to our papers and the hundreds of client papers around the world that paid to print our stories. I needed to tell the desk by noon if I was going to file that day, with a two-sentence description of the story, the length in words (usually five hundred to eight hundred), and the “slug,” or the story’s one-word identifier. After I filed the skedline, I had up to five hours to finish the story.
Finding the News Page 8