On the Road in 1980, Part 3
Madonna, Mexico City (1980) by Graciela Uterbide
I stayed two days in Guadalajara. On the train ride to the city, I met Rafael, warm and talkative, coming from Los Mochis up the coast to find work. We ended up looking for a place together, Rafael leading us into a neighborhood I might’ve steered clear of on my own, between the train station and Plaza de los Mariachis, where we found a cheap room with two beds at the Hotel Cinco de Mayo. My first night, waiting for an order of tacos from a street vendor, I was approached by a girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, ripped sweatshirt and blue jeans, dark hungry eyes, tongue slowly licking her lips, indicating that her boombox needed batteries. She spoke in a rush; I didn’t understand half of what she said but knew what she meant. Facing a force capable of pulling me out of myself and into a state of thrilling danger, I replied, “No, gracias.” I was not averse to risk, but I could see how badly it might all end, both for me and her.
I did get my Mexico travel visa replaced in Guadalajara, but the American consulate could provide no help with my “lost” passport. The second night, Rafael went on a bender, staggering into our room two or three times, a bottle of mescal in hand, inviting me to join him. He never made it back that night. I awoke the next morning to the warbling of the hotel’s lovebirds. When I left, I was stuck with the whole bill.
It felt good to get back to hitchhiking – swinging my rucksack up on my back, sticking out my thumb, waiting for something to happen. I let my rides dictate my meandering easterly route across the Mexican Altiplano, through Jalisco and into Guanajuato – Tepatitlán de Morelos, San Juan de los Lagos, Lagos de Moreno. My last ride of the day took me to the eastern edge of León. I hiked across fields of corn and green onions and into the foothills of a mountain range, camping among saguaro and nopales. settling in for one of those “Long Nights” of tranquilidad.
As I was reviewing my dreams in the first streaks of dawn, a campesino passed by and began a monologue I understood little of. A half hour later, I chatted with three men and a gaggle of kids. Then one Rosalio Rocha stopped to invite me to his home for a breakfast of un café and sopa de frijoles con chorizo. I was welcomed into Rosalio’s adobe home, his wife cooking over an open fire on the dirt floor, two shy niños hiding behind her skirts. It was a beautiful moment – I was amazed and humbled by their heartfelt generosity.
A young mining engineer named Ángel gave me a ride from León to Guanajuato. He and his younger brother Ramon invited me to stay in a spare room in their apartment, and I did so for two days. I hung out quite a bit with Ramon, an amiable and mellow law student. Ángel was willing to share more than his apartment; after he brought home a woman from the disco and they had engaged in some rather boisterous sex, he knocked on my door, offering her to me. I respectfully declined, explaining I was tired from wandering the city all day. I had other reasons for refusing a gift that wasn’t his to give. But I truly had been wandering that colonial city, enchanted. My journal contains the following appreciation: [1]
There is a city I know. A subterranean street runs its length, passing beneath the public buildings that withstand like monuments. The road and its walls, its arches and ceiling, are constructed of large blocks of stone the people had discovered in the mountains above the city.
The city nestles in canyons under the shadow of these mountains, arms of houses stretching to the left and right of the main thoroughfare. Alleys so narrow that but one person can pass at a time descend the hillsides by means of steps, emptying the various pockets of the city.
The homes are washed in colors of aquamarine and lavender, tangerine and canary. Their shapes exemplify the strictness of the right angle, and considerable use is made of the flat roof space. During the day, this is a delightful place to be – lines of white clothing wave in the sunlight, wives whistle their unique language to each other across the rooftops. Families take their midday meals here, feasting on the panorama, acknowledging the passersby on the highway that hugs the hillsides like a shelf, encircling the city.
This peculiar form of speech I have encountered – how to translate its code of sibilants? An afternoon stroll is punctuated by the casual hissing of greetings. And the sounds of the morning market – an aviary awakened! This idiom adequately serves the city, though it preserves neither the vocabulary of philosophy nor any sense of a future tense.
In the evenings, the people gather to fill the gardens of the many plazas, listening to the final daysongs of the mockingbirds that nest in trees trimmed to form geometric designs. There is no public lighting – the entire populace dresses in white (even the beggars and shoeshine boys) and the city is graced with a perpetual moon that strikes the meeting places luminous.
Above the city is an old palace inhabited by a collection of mummies buried a century ago and maintained by minerals in the soil. From behind glass cases, they reflect gaping-mouth wonder, as if amazed by death, or by the lives they left behind.
When night does fall, it is complete. I walk in utter darkness, the silence broken only by the occasional exclamations of lovers. The cobblestones of each street have become as familiar as the knuckles of my hands, yet I have found no true road leaving this city.
I did leave Guanajuato, though, hitching to San Miguel de Allende, camping outside the city along the sandy banks of a stream. I hiked into San Miguel to check out the Instituto Allende, a well-known visual arts college popular with American and Canadian students. Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and other Beats spent time there in the 1950s, but the scene no longer seemed interesting. I walked out of the city to a dry plateau, camping behind the roofless ruins of a small chapel. Desert twigs for a cookfire, empty open spaces, coyotes yelping at the roar of a plane. Whether in a city around people or hanging out with myself, I learned something either way.
The next morning I hitched a ride to Querétaro, where I stopped for a lunch of café con leche and pan dulce, then leaped the 200 kilometers to Ciudad de México in two quick rides. A woman in the train station in Guadalajara had given me the address of a student hostel, so I decided to check it out. It was near the Bosque de Chapultepec, in the Zona Rosa,[2] only 70 pesos per day for a dormitory bed and a breakfast. But I needed a student card, which cost me an additional 150 pesos, including the ID photo. The cost was not considerable in terms of US dollars ($6.50), but my goal to travel for at least two more months was dependent on my frugality.
View of the Pyamid of the Moon from atop the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacán
I spent four days in Mexico City. One was devoted to visiting the Mesoamerian archaeological site at Teotihuacán, a 50-kilometer bus ride northeast of the city. I climbed the Pyramid of the Sun and surveyed the broad valley stretching far to all sides, imagining what this must’ve looked like at its height some fifteen centuries ago, when according to population estimates, it was the sixth-largest city in the world.
After spending an entire morning cutting through swaths of red tape at the US Embassy, I was finally able to get a new passport, thanks to my voter registration card, of all things. And once I had that new passport, I visited the Guatemalan Embassy and obtained a travel visa for that country.
That glazed look on my face - weariness from battling American consulate bureaucracy.
The multilingual and multinational array of young travelers at the hostel offered its own entertainment. My last night there, a group of us went out on the town, traipsing from bar to club to private party, dancing and drinking cuba libres. We headed back to the hostel long after all public transportation had shut down. Laughing and goofing, our motley and besotted crew skipped down the middle of the normally busy Avenida Paseo de la Reforma, giving each other a boost so we could sneak in through an unlocked window at four a.m.
Footnotes:
[1] The piece was influenced by Italo Calvino’s Imaginary Cities, published in 1972 and translated into English in 1974.
[2] That trendy boho neighborhood was nearing the end of its heyday.