I've been in Tampico for one week now and this is a long post, a mixture of what has happened since I've been here and my thoughts on everything. This one is super long and even more random than normal, there's Mexico in general, the war on drugs, and a bit about the family I've been staying with.
---------------------------------------
It's still loud. I haven't been able to get it on video yet, but several times a day there is a guy that rides around on a bike/food stand. He has an amplifier, of course, and it plays some weird music, with rapid Spanish and every so often he makes a weird noise into the microphone that to me sounds like he is trying to imitate a cow moo? It makes the dog next door howl anyway. They compliment each other nicely.
There are VW bugs EVERYWHERE. I have pictures where you can see 3 of them along one street. They are mostly the old herby the love bug kind; some look to have traveled about 3 million miles, others look brand new somehow and modified to be convertibles, and then there are some of the stupid new ones mixed in as well. I made a game the other day, with myself haha, but I was trying to see if there was any 4way stop I could stand at and not see one.. I think I found 2 intersections all day. No joke.
The car situation over here in general is very confusing.. along one block you can pass a couple VW bugs, a truck with 3 wheels and a boulder holding it up, some regular nice sedans, and a brand new Mercedes. No real segregation as far as cars go. Driving is NUTS. How many lanes is a given street? Well that depends, how determined are the drivers feeling and how many cars can fit side by side? Swerving across 4 'lanes' and darting in between buses to a fanfare of car horns is par for making most exits. Speed limits.. I saw signs here and there, and in places I hear they enforce it, but basically its down to drive as fast as you feel is ok. Pass people whenever they are in your way, small city street or major 'highway' it doesn't matter. Evidentially the traffic enforcement is a separate police department than the regular police, I haven't seen them anywhere yet but did talk to someone that received a speeding ticket.. so they do exist. Basically though, whenever you want someone to slow down in your neighborhood, you install insane car shattering speed bumps. People will slow down. Don't have the materials to put in a proper speed bump? Grab some thick-ass rope.
The buildings are something else. Everything is that weird concrete type material. Tecate and Corona signs or entire buildings painted with their colors and trademarks are as common as Volkswagons here. I'm not sure if ALL of them are actually bars, it seems like the ratio of people to bars would be 10:1, and I've never actually seen anyone going in or out of these places.. but it makes for an interesting looking place. The downtown area is my favorite so far, if not a bit overwhelming. Its similar to a mall, most shops are opened to the street and they pull down a gate when closed. The almost everything building is painted up as an advertisement for the shop on the ground floor or other things around the city and it just looks like nothing I've come across in America. Tons of people shopping everywhere, for everything. There was one stretch with a bunch of little food shops, selling things like hotdogs, bananas, corn, etc, but in front they had employees too, trying to flag people down. I didn't realize this at first and thought that one guy wanted me to come over to him for some reason, so I started walking that way before the dad told me we were going to eat later. My confusion must have been apparent on my face because he started laughing and explained that guy just wanted to sell me corndogs or whatever it was. I went to the touristico zone later.. it was just like any city in America, with the exception of crazy ass roads- Burger King, Blockbuster, Pizza Hut, Hilton, Marriott, and the like. Everything was priced similar to America, usually MORE.. I guess they figure if the gringos are going to insist on American everywhere they go, they might as well capitalize on it. There is one sign I wish I had gotten a picture of, the signs hanging over the highway pointing toward different cities, one had Ciudad Victoria, Veracruz, and APPLEBEES! Complete with their little apple graphic.
Speaking of food, its amazing. I've had beans and tortillas each atleast once per day in some form. And I'm not getting tired of them at all. They just happen to have a lot of dishes that incorporate them, in different ways. The mother here is seemingly always cooking something, I ate breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper, and dessert one day I think. The food prepared on the little street carts is insanely cheap, and much much better than all the American chains anyway (I haven't actually ate at one down here, just scoped out prices, I'm sure it McD's Mexico isn't much tastier than the American version). Tap water is not drinking friendly, and I actually made the mistake of drinking two glasses before someone caught what I was doing and stopped me. They have giant bottles of water that are delivered by bicycle, and the empties taken away. I had one small case of the Mexican mud butt but I'm fine now haha. It turned out to be an embarrassing ordeal, they did not have a plunger in the bathroom and I needed one.. so I had to stop people from going to the bathroom while at the same time trying to think of relevant Spanish words and trying to charade that I needed a plunger.. when they figured it out they all laughed and laughed and imitated my charading.. Anyway, the food is top notch. Nice juxtaposition.
-----------------------------------------------------------
You don't have to look far to see signs of the drug war. Morning television, newspapers, or army troops- its very 'felt'. I've already heard of several drug busts, gun seizures, and murders. Most of this is among the cartels and whatever branch is trying to stop them, but there are civilians that get caught up in it. Everyone can tell you about it here too, read up on the Los Zetas or any of the other cartels or wiki articles for some crazy info on it. People can tell you the back story on the different cartels, which are feuding, where they are based etc. Drug use is far far less here than I thought it would be too, I've barely met anyone that drinks, no drug use whatsoever. The corruption is rampant and I've been told to keep 50-100 pesos in a separate pocket with my ID-- if I am stopped for anything I've been told to explain thats the last of my money, they will take it, and I'm free to go. This is with street cops. I had a discussion talking about the cartels and it seems everyones opinion is that the war on drugs, with all the money coming from America, is making things far worse. Typically the money and guns coming from America end up with corrupt officials or military personnel and the cartels. They have rocket launchers. Assault rifles- not the old AK47s, but the newest shit, like what our troops use. And helicopters. Woah. These are the bad guys, in real life, not some movie. Between what I've read and heard here I see why Texas and Arizona called for National Guard support, in case the Mexican government collapses and they are keeping the cartel armies from running across the border.
Seems like the opinions are pretty polar on legalizing drugs, I brought up the idea that if just marijuana and cocaine- which seems to be the main traffic- was legalized and regulated, cartels wouldn't have the income to continue doing what they are doing. That would in turn cut back the kidnappings, the bribing and corruption, and everything else. Some people agreed, some didn't, but everyone said it was America's fault. Between their retarded efforts of throwing more money, equipment and training at it hoping the military here will stop them (which really just seems to beef up the cartels more) and the American people for using all the drugs. At least according to the people I've met so far, most civilians don't use drugs here and all this is because of all the demand in America. Even when America DOES manage to grab one of the kingpins, it just stirs up so much shit that its much more dangerous than before. So they capture one of the main guys from a cartel, that just means that now you possibly have 5 guys all fighting for the new vacancy. You can read online and see the huge increase in violence along with the capture of key cartel men, new groups fight to replace him and retaliate against the government. The Mexican Navy had a huge shootout and got one of the top dogs (nicknamed the boss of bosses) here recently, only thing that happened was that a mafia SQUAD went to one of the police officers homes and killed his wife, daughters, mother, anyone related to the officer. OK I've went on long enough with that, but its so damn stupid. Anyone north of the border finding it any more difficult to find drugs?
There is a lot of fear, from the cartel as well as the army. Two houses down from where I'm staying was raided by the miltary, they had the assault rifles, 8-10 soldiers, and two vehicles with the monster machine guns mounted on them. I tried to take a picture and again everyone was quickly said no no no. I noticed that all the soldiers but one did have a face mask on, makes it harder for the cartels to go and wipe out their family like the guy recently. But I am still determined to chat a soldier up atleast if not get a good picture. I did manage to walk past and slyly slip my camera out of my pocket to get a shitty pic, another from the roof of the house where you can see a guy manning the mounted gun. Everyone here is very against my hitch hiking, somewhat against my travel to specific parts of Mexico in general. However, they haven't even seen most of the places I want to see. In that respect it's kind of similar to America, I remember getting picked up hitching to Chicago, and they asked me why on earth I would want to go there and I must be crazy its so dangerous.. when I asked, they had never actually BEEN to Chicago. It's a shame that the cartels and all that are going on down here because there is some amazing stuff I've already seen, and I'm psyched as hell thinking about the places I'm going to see, and there are people that live with this stuff in their backyard here and they might never go out and see it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The family that I'm staying with has been awesome. 3 daughters, 1 son, and the 2 parents. Everyone has picked up a noticable amount of English since I've been here. The father speaks it fairly well but everyday he'll ask me several words and their meaning- he'll then write them down on a list he's keeping to learn the new words. The oldest daughter can understand english pretty well when I talk to her but she doesn't speak it so much- when she does she has almost no accent, pretty impressive. The mother doesn't really know very much english at all but she tries the most and is the sweetest woman. She's retired now, she did something downtown with the local government. They explained it kind of like a secretary but I saw her picture on a billboard downtown so I don't know. Anyway, she gave me a little bracelet today with all the Mexican Saints on it, like a souvenir she said and to stay safe :) The dad here wears the pants pretty hardcore, the middle daughter (she's 17 I think) had snuck out one night to see her boyfriend and she sneaks out to the clubs etc, but the mother asked me not to tell the father, which I didn't.
The father is pretty cool though, he likes learning English as often as possible and I downloaded a copy of Rosetta Stone for them. I was traveling with a bottle of jaegarmiester and I broke it out one evening telling him it was German liquor. He kept calling it German wine though and drank it from a wine glass with some ice? He ended up getting pretty drunk that evening which was funny. I've had maybe 3 or 4 shots since I've been here, but with New Years Eve coming up and a couple things I have planned I'll be seeing the party side of Mexico.
damn theres more to write but this is longgg and I'm tired. I need to keep a proper journal then I can look everything over and write down the interesting parts in a shorter and more coherent blog.
No comments :
Post a Comment