Category Archives: retirement in Mexico

Recipe For A Construction Acavamiento

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A high-up colado being mixed on the street, and carried up to the fourth floor.

For our last big colado we planned a sort of manly party. We wanted it to be festive, as it was the last big construction task here at our house, and the colado was an historic one, on top of a fourth-floor room. 
The colado was to have started at 5:30 a.m., but not even the maestros were here then. However we were on the move before 4:30 in the morning.. We had full barrels of water where they were not needed, and zero barrels where they were  needed. 
We dumped buckets of water into barrels on the ground, from under the tejavan on the second floor. It felt rather festive, and personally, I felt slightly hysterical and silly.
About 6:45 a.m. I could hear the first sounds of shoveling in the still-dark street. The  workers seemed to have an air of excited energy, because they all knew there was to be “breakfast” served after the work. Our nephew Luis, a practiced butcher and large-scale cook had offered to make a Caldo De Carpa. This soup has well-known restorative properties, and is often served for la cruda, or hangover.
Luis, the cook
Sara, who didn’t really look quite this “together” on this day, as she had locked herself out of her house, and arrived here by bus the night before, without her overnight things, because – well, I have her spare key.
While Chon stayed to manage the work crew (and play DJ for them) Luis and I went to a nearby town with Sara, our wonderful niece. Luis had set up a fogon, a little rigged up brick fireplace.
CALDO DE CARPA (Carp Soup)
for twenty-some hungry people:
In a 50-liter pot with boiling water, put
2 kilos of tomatoes, halved
1 kilo white onions, halved
2 kilos potatoes, in large chunks
a generous handful of chiles de arbol
2 kilos (a very large head) of cabbage, chopped in big chunks
1 kilo chayote, quartered
1 kilo joconoistle, peeled
1 fist-sized can of chipotle chiles
1 liter of tomato paste
a handful of salt
8 kilos (that’s a lot) of carp, in fourths
when the fish is almost done, throw in two or three handfuls of cilantro
We served 60 large rolls that all disappeared. We had purchased 2 kilos of tortillas that were pretty much ignored. There were also 24 large family-sized beers, and 4 liters of tequila.
I had noticed that Luis was pretty quiet while we were shopping  for provisions; he later confessed that he had never actually made the caldo before. He and Sara and I were stepping pretty lively for a while, chopping vegetables,  because the colado was finished about an hour earlier than we had thought. But the workers seemed satisfied to sit around in circles and I didn’t hear many complaints about the wait.
There were many rough handshakes and heartfelt thank-yous when the workers left around two p.m.

PAJAREROS

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Young, developing milo (sorghum) seed head.
Birds are a major cause of crop yield loss. Enormous flocks of blackbirds pass through central Mexico on their way north this time of year, leaving destruction behind. 
Many farmers who plant milo use plants that yield “bitter” seeds that the birds don’t like. 
But some don’t use this kind of seed, and all the fields are subject to bird damage. Here farmers hire pajareros to protect their fields. The tools of the human scare crows are shotguns with special loads, long whips, and voices. They shout “Aijo, yaijo.” crack their whips while striding around the field, and if they have them, shooting  their shotguns. The sounds start about daylight, and go on all day. This is the time of year for the pajareros to work. They earn good wages, and their voices and sounds of their tools color each  day.

WORMS IN THE MILO

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Well, when we looked for worms in our milo fields, we found some. It just seemed to me that there weren’t that many. But we met up with some other farmers out there, and they looked. They left a message at our house: Worms! Worms! They can destroy the whole crop! Danger!.

Again, some workers found us. (Don Andres and Peña are working somewhere else right now.) Two brothers with farming equipment offered to work for us. We went to visit their machine yard, and drank an obligatory shot of tequila. They offered to bring an enormous tank of water to the fields, and their own experienced selves, to spray a foliar fertilizer and insecticide. We bought the prescribed bottles, and took them to the fields this morning. They showed up with a heavy truck, a very large tank of water in the back, and their spray rigs. They had one with a gas motor, and two that work with hand pumps.

Wondering about their names? Mechin, Monstro, and Chino. I think Mechin (sounds a little like Machine) is the older brother, maybe in his thirties, and then there’s Monstro, who from his nickname you’d think he had some feature, difficult to overlook, that would make him look somehow monstrous. You’d be wrong, though, because he has a baby face and a quick smile. Their cousin Chino was the third team member. (Curly hair is called chino, and if you guessed that he has very curly hair, you’d be right). The three of them filled their tanks and sprayed our two fields in about three hours (not three days like the time it took for dry fertilizer and weed-killer).

The early morning was cold. The workers got very, very wet right away. Their pant-legs were wet. Their shoes were wet. They wore bandannas over their faces.  They mixed the liquids quickly and moved fast down the furrows. We were home right after eleven.

There was rain in the evening. The skies are so beautiful here in Guanajuato.
                                                                  

IT REALLY IS A VERY SMALL TOWN

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Here is an entirely gratutious photo of El Ojo De Agua, about a half-hour walk from here.
This really is a very small town – and you have heard all the jokes about small towns.
The night before last, at the end of a long afternoon, just before twilight, there was An Incident here. 
Our little rancho, El Pedernal, has two streets lined with houses. We live on the main street, the one you go straight down when you turn off the main road, the carretera. A couple of decades ago the streets were paved, so we no longer have a rocky street, but we do have two topes. These are humps that cross the road to slow down traffic.
In the evenings people tend to come out into the street to visit, and on the weekends maybe to buy a taco, tamal, or a snack. (And of course, there are the everpresent nightly borrachos, drinking in front of the store across the street).
I had gone out to the street just to gaze about, and I noticed right away that Something Was Happening; there were many people who had come quietly out to the street from their houses, and they were all looking up toward the carretera. I could see a pickup’s rear lights. Neighbors were murmuring “He backed up all the way down here, very fast, right across the topes! And then he went back up there, very, very fast!” I recognized the black pickup as belonging to a man who lives apart from his family, in the little community on the other side of the carretera. I asked “Is he mad?” The answer came, “He’s loco!!”
Someone had gone for his wife, and she and a grown son walked up to where the truck was parked. It was a rather busy time for local traffic, it seems, and every time a car or delivery truck would try to get around the black pickup, the driver would move it so that no one could pass. 
The streets were lined with more people, as if for a parade., but I noticed that nobody wanted to approach the truck.
Soon his wife reached the truck, and she stood there for a long time. The word filtered back to me “He’s asleep in the truck, with his arms on the steering wheel”. And “Even his strong son can’t get him out.” There were quiet discussions about what should be done – call the police? tell the local delegado?
In the end, not surprisingly,  nothing was done. I never heard the outcome. 

NOW WE ARE PATRONES

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When you are need of workers, you don’t need to do much – they will find you. When we were in our fields struggling to control the Johnson grass, several men came to offer their services.

The first one was Peña. He came on his bicycle, and after the customary catching-up and joking around, he slid into a conversation about the farming. Peña is a very short man. he is not a Little Person, but he is really very short. He demonstrated how he would spray our weeds for us, walking around and miming holding a sprayer in his hand. Chon and Peña were friends long ago, and Peña’s nickname comes from a talented soccer player on the Mexican team years ago.

Soon another guy came on his bike, with his little boy on the handlebars. He was interested in the work, but he mostly walked about hunting for worms (plaga) on our mIlo plants.  It seemed as though he wanted to bring our spirits down, or maybe just to show off his ability to find problems.

A day or so later, another guy came bicycling out to us. He was Don Andres. He looked like the friend-turned-enemy bad guy in an old western. He got right to the point – he wanted work. He needed work, and he was the guy to do the work. Instead of hiring a tractor to spray our weeds (it was absolutely necessary – they were growing faster than the milo), we hired Peña and Don Andres. From our point of view, it was a good move. The tractor would have finished the spraying job in a half-day. It took the two men nearly two weeks. But, we figured, we were investing money in the town, and not in a big-time farmer and his equipment. As the days went by, we were impressed by the work the two men did.

Now we are patrones, and every morning we go to the fields to manage our little crew of misfits. For days and days we filled and hauled barrels of water to the fields for the weed spray, stirred and mixed the spray. The for two more weeks we took 100-pound bags of ammonium sulfate granules and place them strategically in the field so the workers didn’t have to go too far to fill up their bags (called morrales). Being a patron (or a patrona) means you have peones working for you. That’s a word I’m having to learn to be comfortable with. But the peones are comfortable with it, even sort of bragging about their years as peones.

Chon is really good about deciding where each person should work, and about giving authority to some. He has to be very diplomatic. Right now Peña the very short man, is working with Don Andres, the man with a limp. Peña seems to sort of look out for Don Andres, filling his morro for him, and adjusts his own faster, steady pace to Don Andres’. You can see the two of them trudging along together, Don Andres’ head bobbing, and Peña floating along smoothly. There are some benefits in working the fields that just can’t be described in words.

The other two workers are brothers. The older one, Jose Santos, is called El Hombre Lobo because he has a rather hairy face, with a short full beard. I don’t know his brother’s name. They worked together in another part of the field. But then we had to tell the two brothers not to come – the 10 bags of fertilizer we were expecting yesterday did not arrive, and we drove to the business about 8 miles away to see why. Their delivery truck had broken down, and there were several anxious, angry farmers there. Anyway, this morning we took the seven bags we had out to Peña and Don Andres. They are working now.

The fertilizer should arrive shortly for tomorrow, and the brothers may show up to throw some today. They seem to prefer to start work at a later hour anyway.

Here at the house, the two bricklayers are getting ready for a big colado. The tejaban is up, with all its pieces fitted together. Tomorrow they will put a comparatively thin layer of cement on the top. We are hiring twenty-some guys, selected for their various strengths. The ones who are strong enough (they seem to be the most irritating to the rest of the workers) are put to work on the bottom, where the work is the heaviest. Chon hopes the hard work will keep them busy enough not to piss off everybody else. Short little Peña is working too, (he’ll make 50 pesos more than if he were working in the fields) and this morning he said he’s a little nervous about it because he’s so short, and most of the other guys are young (they call them nuevos when they are young) and strong. Don Andres will work with the fertilizer. The guy in charge of the colado says Don Andres just wouldn’t make it through to the end.

For the colado we have to do our part as patrones – we have to fill the water barrels today, before the water goes off at 1:15. There are three barrels to fill, plus the heavy tank we use for our baths. We have to supply beer, lots of it, usually served about half-way through the work. Chon says the workers are coming at 5 o’clock in the morning! That means I have to get the truck with the load of fertilizer out of the parking yard because there will be ladders and other things blocking the driveway.

So in a little while we are going to town. We will try to see the lawyer, who wasn’t there when we went two days ago, and buy a carton of large beers, and get a contract printed, signed and mailed to the property manager of our rental house in California. He had lots of bad news for us. Besides the new paint and carpet, there are major plumbing problems: the bathtub leaks into the living room below. The pan in the shower is weak and wobbly, and the downstairs toilet is cracked and un-useable. When it rains it pours. Hope it rains here in the next few days – there is a saint festival in the little town on the other side of the road, and they say it ALWAYS rains on August 7th, the day of their fiesta.

The Radio

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Not every house has a TV, but it seems like just about everyone has a radio.  
Doña Elena next door has a radio that she turns on around  6:30 a.m.  Because of the design of her kitchen, the sound is amplified and is easily heard on the street, for the morning sweeping ritual. She turns it off at 8 because the progamming changes from the rancheras that she likes, to a different style. In fact, when the programming changes to “banda”, she ruthlessly turns off the radio mid-phrase. Doña Elena has a favorite song, Que Me Lleve El Diablo, and whenever it is played, she sings – very loudly, and tunelessly – in her yard.

The radio stations in Mexico are of different types, just like in the US.  There are stations that play modern pop, some that play banda music (imagine a German tuba band playing music in Spanish), rap and dance music, cumbias and other Latin dance music, mariachi music, talk stations (mostly pro-goverment), etc.  The  style of music that I most like to hear  on the  radio is ranchera.  There are beautiful songs and some very good voices, from the forties and later.  Another wonderful genre is trio music from the forties and fifties.  The songs are very much like what are called standards in the US, with gorgeous extended harmonies. They are composed and performed by male trios with very, very  good guitar playing.

The sixties and seventies in Mexico produced excellent pop music. Much of it originated in the States. Imagine hearing, in Spanish, Twist and Shout, Going To The Chapel,  Tan Shoes With Pink Shoelaces, The Name Game, With Just A Hundred Pounds Of Flesh, I’ll Do My Crying In The Rain, Won’t You Be My Baby!  I recently heard Neal Sedaka sing in Spanish Next Door To An Angel! Many excellent songs were written during these years in Mexico, Spain and other Latin American countries, as well as Italy.

There were many good Mexican actors and actresses, too, from that era, some of whom came to the US to make films.  (Dolores Del Rio, Anthony Quinn, and El Indio Fernandez are some that are known in the US.)

After Doña Elena turns off her radio, we turn ours on, and at about 8:20 every day there is a dramatic serial called Porfirio Cadena – El Ojo De Vidrio, from the fifties.  Imagine the announcer with lots of echo and effect introducing the program.  The story is described as “violent, audacious, etc.” It is an episodic story about a (in)famous (imaginary) bandit.  He is called El Ojo De Vidrio because he has a glass eye.  His entire family was killed by a traitorous acquaintances when he was a child.  He saw the killings, and afterwards the killers tortured him by cutting out his eye with a sharp branch.  Porfirio  lives to take his revenge on his powerful enemies, and accumulates an enormous treasure. The character seems to soften as he ages, but when he is young, and beginning his career as an outlaw, he is cruel and violent, although fair, wreaking his own concept of justice.

At night, at 10:30 p.m. the same station plays another serial adventure called Caliman, El Hombre Increible, the incredible man. The current story is called The Black Widow.

The voices of the actors are quite dramatic, typical of the fifties,  and both serials are very entertaining.  The sound effects and the incidental music are wonderful. After each episode ends we speculate about how Porforio or Caliman will escape from his most recent capture or predicament, and what is happening with the other characters.

There are annoying commercials, just like on the radio stations in the US.  I particularly dislike hearing childrens’ voices say “Wow!” and continue in Spanish. The government touts itself in endless commercials, bragging about “transparency”, “equality” and “fairness”.  There are many ads for drug stores, and for natural health products, which are very popular here.

What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

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Random thoughts and comments about learning Spanish as an adult:
Now I know how to say it doesn’t fit, “No cave,” and it didn’t fit, “No cupo”.

I noticed a connection between the old-timey English word “hoosegow” that my grandpa used to say. “They threw him in the hoosegow”. and the often-used Spanish word “juzgado” (often pronounced – you guessed it –  a lot like “hoosegow.”)

Lots of people say “Si, verdad?” when they are agreeing with you. Only they pronounce it “Si, verda?” The worker we hired to spray weeds and spread fertilizer in our fileds hardly moves his upper lip when he talks, so he says “Si, eda?” And sometimes just “Da?”

You can get through many conversations by using “Si, verdad?” or  “E,” (meaning you agree), or “Asi es”. Nobody wants to hear your opinions much, anyway. And it’s polite to just agree even if you don’t. I find that custom extremely interesting, and rather difficult to perform.

There are quite a few words that many people know here that are not in the dictionary. There is a bird here called “tutubisi’”. It looks a little like a mockingbird, and it lives in the trees around the farmland.  It must be some kind of flycatcher. There is a frightening, quite large black wasp-like creature  that people here call a Juan Sanchez. Their stings can feel worse than scorpion stings, they say.

I knew that maiz was corn. And people talked about “sorgo” or sorghum. But I didn’t know that “maiz nilo” was the same as “sorgo”. Maiz nilo – cornes from Egypt – the Nile. Sorghum. Sorgo. Miaz Nilo. I had a big “aha,” moment about that.
Everyday Spanish uses a verb form that English speakers have mostly dropped.  It is common now to hear people say “If I was going to be here,” “If I was you,” etc., although I’m sure high school and college English teachers struggle to correct and educate their students.

Anyway, in Mexico I hear even children using the subjunctive mood “If I had done this…”. It is used to express doubt, uncertainty, and judgement. “I want,”, I hope”, “it’s probable that”. At least I can hear it now, even though I probably (there’s a subjunctive mood right there!) will not use it correctly myself for some time.

Playing With Johnson Grass

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If you have done any farming in the US, you know what it is. Even if you don’t realize it, you’ve seen it – big clumps of grass with plumy seed heads in the summer. This is healthy young Johnson grass – no seeds yet.

We walk to La Tabla Grande (each field has a name here!) with a borrowed shovel. Maybe it’s a spade – it’s the only shovel around here that isn’t a flat for-shoveling-gravel one. It’s about 6 inches wide, and maybe 20 inches long. The sun is shining and it promises to be hot. But, oh, it’s so beautiful here walking along the tops of the fields. Green and blue and brown and green and blue and brown. Hills and fields with houses in the distance. A bright red bird.
We pass one field that looks like all weeds. It’s been replanted, but it looks awful, although the little plants are visible in their rows. We pass another one that there is much speculation about. The owner is famous for using and over-using chemicals. They say he has spend over 50,000 dollars, not pesos, on his lands. So far. Some fields look “clean” and healthy, some have puny plants.
Chiggers can be a problem, and it’s not fun to think about them. It’s also not fun to think about how many times people have said “You can’t get rid of Johnson grass, but you can try to control it.” 
We start digging the Johnson grass that has invaded the edge of our field. It’s tall and in clumps, and it grows all the way to the bottom end of the field. Here’s how we do it. The person lucky enough to be doing the digging digs close to the clump of grass. Since the blade of the spade is so long, you have to raise your leg pretty high, then really put your weight on the top edge of the spade, and send it as deep as you can into the ground. The person lucky enough not to be doing the digging picks up the big clump – it’s hard and sticky, like a huge, heavy black wad of gum, then bangs it on the ground (not very effective) or the knee or leg (effective, but increasingly painful). Then the grass with a little bit of sticky dirt still on it gets heaved onto the road.
In one spot where the grass is thickest, Chon decides to dig deeper, because he is sure there are more roots down there. He uncovers what he calls a nest of roots. It’s thick and knotted, and it’s about a foot and a half under the surface. He digs down further and finds more roots. They are very thick, about as thick as a child’s finger, and very white with pretty pink streaks. They look frighteningly healthy. He digs some more, and he’s about two and a half feet down now. There are more. We leave them for another day. Later someone tells us the roots can go down two meters. I don’t believe it.

We do this for two hours. We didn’t think to bring water or food. Ni modo. Next time.
We are returning to the house. Chon sits down on a rock to rest, but I keep plodding along, thinking about chiggers in the grass around the rock. Soon I see that he is up, and cutting across the furrows in the field, and he’ll soon be ahead of me if I don’t walk faster. I’m a little ahead and he asks “My Friend, are you tired?”  
“Yes”.
He says he’s tired too, and if he had to run for some reason, he’d have to think hard about it first. He puts the spade across his shoulders and hangs his arms over the handle. He says it feels like he’s carrying his arms on his shoulders. He is.
At the house we eat tamales and zucchini flowers cooked with onion and tomatoes, feeling  happy.

Something to meditate on – they look good enough to eat, don’t they? Cows love ’em.

Continuation – Truck Registration

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For those of you waiting with bated breath to find out the outcome of our legalization of Foxy The Truck, it did finally come to pass. We got a call from the import agent that the truck was ready, and that he would drive it to Hermosillo for us. 
NOTE: Yes, you can get certain years and types of cars “Mexicanized”, which was our goal. It is just not practical to keep renewing 6-month permits unless you are staying very close to the border, as each renewal requires a drive to the border. The paper-work for legalizing our truck cost less than $1000. In FACT, it’s really not practical to bring a car at all unless you plan to leave and take it with you. You can read about this on other blogs.
We took a bus north to Hermosillo. The trip was described by the bus agent as a 24-hour ride from Leon. The bus was nice, with movie screens and comfortable seats. But we ended up right next to the bathroom, and the fumes of chemicals were pretty strong. The trip took about 30 hours, mostly, as far as I could tell, because of the MANY TIMES (I think it was 8 times) that we were stopped by the Federales. One time we were stopped for nearly an hour. I noticed that every time they came into the bus, they questioned the same woman a few seats in front of us. And once they questioned a guy in the back seat of the bus for a half-hour hour or so. It was hot when we were stopped, and the passengers became pretty restless. Once Chon asked an officer why they were bothering everyone so much. The answer was “Por la maldita droga” (damn drugs.) There were many large buckets of some liquid in the luggage space underneath a bus that was stopped next to us, and the agents examined and re-examined them without opening them.
I had never seen the little tiny sleeping place underneath buses where the second driver could sleep – I had no idea they existed.
The only other memorable event during the bus trip north was a wonderful shrimp cocktail we had during a short breakfast stop in Navojoa. The owner of the little spot where we ate was from Guanajuato. The shrimps were medium-sized, and in a flavorful, reddish liquid with chopped onions and cilantro with lemon or lime juices. He urged me to add ketchup. It was delicious and invigorating.
We found our agent and the truck at the bus station in Hermosillo about 5 pm. We paid him and started off for a pretty easy trip back. We worried about crossing state lines, (just because Things Happen), but we were not stopped even once.
We arrived in Navojoa around ten, and stopped at an autohotel called El Peñon (one of those), and got up and left around ten in the morning.
Traveling through Sinaloa was interesting. We usually pass through there in the dark of night. Sinaloa is a produce state, (the car license plates boast tomatoes on them, which gives you an idea) and reminds me a lot of California’s San Joaquin Valley. There had been a hard freeze in January (see earlier blog entry) and many trees and fields were burned and ruined. 
There are miles and miles of fields in Sinaloa, many bearing small signs, identifying the brands of seeds used for the planting. The names on the signs were all familiar to me, and to anyone who has driven through farm country, – I saw Asgrow, Dekalb, Pioneer, and Monsanto, among others.
We arrived in Mazatlan, the famous beach town, at five pm, and had a good caldo on the main street at a family food stand. We stayed at our favorite one of those, Xtasys, and got up early, about 5 am.  That spot charges by the hour if you stay more over your allotted twelve hours.
It took 3 and a half hours to get through Tepic. We fervently hoped to get through Guadalajara without getting confused (again) by the highway signs, but alas, it was not to be. We followed signs to Mexico City, Highway 15, as we had planned, but we ended up on a bit of highway that ended in a dirt road. We got directions, and found ourselves on a hair-raising rocky road, headed up a very steep hill when the gas tank we were using, never absolutely dependable in its indicator, ran low on gas, and began to sputter. I switched tanks as quickly as possible, the engine died. I award myself many, many bravery points for getting Foxy started again while stomping hard on the brake so we didn’t slide backwards down the hill. Of course, Chon helped to keep me calm by telling me how wonderful I was (me keeping up a constant stream of sweating and swearing , and being very encouraging in general.)
Our detour took us to a wonderful artesan town called Tonala. There were beautiful object of glass, copper and wood displayed in the streets.  Our gas tanks continued to lie to us, and Foxy nearly died again as we went up an onramp to the highway. Once again, though, however hair-raising, we maintained our forward movement and headed to Juana’s house on the other side of Arandas, the famous tequila-making town.
Juana seems to have a sort of 6th sense about our arrivals, and she hurried to the door to welcome us. She fed us something really good that I can’t recall – I think it was a guisado, and we left before dark, because there is an unmarked turn we missed on the return from Josefino once.
Now we have a Mexican automobile! Legal! Forever! No trips to the border to renew permits!

FOOTNOTE TO SHOPPING

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The other day when we were at the Materials place to pay a bill for cement, the owner, Jorge asked me as many people here ask, how I like being here. I answer something like,”I like it here a lot. I’m happy, and I don’t feel like returning to California.”
He said that he can find anything here that he needs, and I agreed. Next he mentioned buying meat in Mexico, something I haven’t done yet. My take on meat stores is that there are too many flies around, but the meat looks good.
Jorge mentioned that in the states you buy meat prepackaged, with the price on it, but here you can ask for a quarter kilo of one thing, and a half-kilo of something else, and they cut it for you right there, and the quality is very, very good.
I hadn’t really thought about it, but, yes, I am accustomed to meat being wrapped in plastic, extremely sanitary (which is good), but that was his viewpoint, and I get it. We seldom eat meat because of bdget considerations, but the meat I have had in caldos and barbeques has been very good indeed.