Ten Pesos and a Wink
 Clint Rainey - World Magazine
| | A rough trip through Mexico and some rethinking on immigration |
Drift through a dozen dingy, fluorescent, look-alike Mexican bus stations, and you tend to lump them all together as one indiscrete, inseparable entity, like Pangaea. But the Querétaro station I distinctly remember.
Here, determined to make the two of us see eye-to-eye on illegal immigration before the overdue Flecha Amarilla bus showed, a spindly 63-year-old hung his hat on this Mexican proverb: It is not the fault of the mouse but of the one who offers him the cheese. I gave him points for creativity but said this was bona fide buck passing.
Several days later, after having an expensive camera stolen out from under my nose, contracting severe traveler's diarrhea, and operating under the perpetual assumption that I was with la migra—Mexicans' word for the Border Patrol, but also used nebulously to describe anyone who "colludes" to keep out illegals—I was on the brink of conceding that the proverbialist had a point.
I'd traveled for almost a week. Beginning at Mexico City's Terminal Norte, I went wherever the northbound bus lines went, so long as they eventually converged on Nuevo Laredo, where I would reenter the United States. Some of these buses had plush reclining seats, refreshments, bathrooms, and B-list American movies like Ultraviolet, whose subtitles replaced every profane epithet with the one-size-fits-all moniker idiota. These buses had the magic word ejecutivo printed on their tickets.
Other buses seemed apt training for bull riding. As these old metal monsters pitched and rocked and rolled along precarious switchbacks, sliding to random, maniacal stops to pick up ranchers invisible to the naked eye, I gripped the hard vinyl seatbacks. These buses had the treacherous word económico printed on their tickets—if, in fact, tickets were required at all. Sometimes 10 pesos and a wink were sufficient.
In Matehuala, on my way to meet a man in a nearby town, I hopped onto an económico. Later, when the driver abruptly pulled off and killed the engine, I wondered if it might not have been to my advantage to upgrade slightly. The bus driver's explanation was unintelligible, to me at least, but a lady nearby relayed it: The bus, apparently, was recalentado. I envied her; she seemed at peace with the situation. Although I wasn't entirely sure what recalentado meant, it seemed to incorporate calentar, which means "to heat." I made myself be at peace with the translation "overheated."
Regardless, we sat for 45 minutes, as the driver tried various unsuccessful remedies on the engine. By the time we reached the town, my contact had left. Unable to reach him by phone, I returned to Matehuala—on a newer, sleeker bus. As I boarded, I reconsidered the proverb: It is not the fault of the mouse but of the one who offers him the cheese. |
Vallarta Weddings
Vallarta Living | April 2007 
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