Baby Jesus, wrapped in plastic
A year ago, I visited a remote coastal area in Oaxaca state
in Mexico. While there, I met a tall
Spaniard who told me, among other things, about the first in what ended up
being dozens of journeys around the globe – his pilgrimage at age 16 to Santiago de Compostela. I remembered learning about this tradition
from the summer I’d spent on the NW coast of Spain, where I lived with the
family of yet another Spaniard -- much shorter -- whose family politely looked
the other way from his exuberant gayness and welcomed me as his girlfriend without asking too
many questions about the nature of what was our totally platonic friendship.
This year, I had occasion to mingle with an equally worldly audience at The Financial Times’ Summit on the Business of Luxury in Mexico City – people with Hungarian fathers, Argentine mothers, childhoods spent in Mexico City while attending German school – and then college in Paris. . . this type of ‘global citizen’ gathered to discuss emerging markets, the growing middle class in Mexico and their taste for luxury goods, art, fashion and empire building. Although I spent a full day wishing for an early death in a fancy hotel room, the parts of the conference I experienced were all quite fascinating – and stood in stark contrast to my much more modest (though still delightful) bus ride to Guanajuato at the summit’s end. Like any pilgrim, I had to travel long distances and endure bodily misery to better understand the turns my journey needed to take.
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| Mexico City |
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Mexico City
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Mexico City
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Mexico City
A group of wealthy youngsters from Mexico City descended
upon my friend Hugo’s stone-hewn bed and breakfast in the hills above the
historic center of Guanajuato shortly after my arrival to witness their
friends’ marriage in the neighboring hacienda. . . while resolutely insubordinate
to the house’s minimal rules (showing up for reservations, paying the bill,
etc). Among the guests was a fellow
bedecked in indigenous beadwork and crystals, his wild mane leashed by a
headband. Standing apart from the
other guests, he confessed that he wished he could hang out with Hugo and me in the
printmaking studio. We learned from
those more pop-culturally literate than ourselves that this man was a
Mexican soap opera star and model. To me, he just seemed like a man
with a resonant voice and a firm handshake, so I asked what he did. He explained he was a former opera singer –
now pursuing acting and producing, and maintaining homes in a handful of
locations. He left out the part about modeling,
which I thought was in good taste.
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Alma del Sol, Guanajuato
We spent the last few days in Patzcuaro, in the beautiful
and troubled state of Michoacán. Hugo
and his friend Janet and I escaped a rainstorm by ducking into
the town Basilica. We marveled at the electronic prayer candles, the offerings to the Virgin (which included a full human hair braid pinned to the Virgin's dress), and at how successful the Catholics were in inspiring
devotion from the very people they colonized and sought to dominate – not
unlike the way Republicans manage to win support from parts of the
population most disenfranchised by their policies. The Stockholm Syndrome came to mind in my amateur psychological analysis. A similar conversation came up yesterday when driving
past a very unsubtle HQ of one of the cartels, while enroute to visit friends in a
neighboring village. Like all organized
criminals throughout history, the cartels use money, the illusion of protection, and religion
to gain loyalty -- or at least obedience.
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| Janet and Hugo |
Our drive through this questionable territory led us to the home of yet another Spaniard – a 92
year-old gay man, Picasso doppelganger and bon vivant. We spent the afternoon sipping wine, talking,
and hearing stories about his days as a ballet dancer in Paris in the ‘40s (he
later became a two-language translator at the UN for the first 20 years of its
existence). In Paris, he’d fallen in love with a German soldier – ultimately
collecting information to help the resistance effort. As if his life wasn't already colorful enough, he had also starred in both Broadway and film versions of "West Side Story." Born in Franco's Spain, escaped to the U.S., returned to Spain, studied in Paris, spent more years in the U.S., and eventually landed in Mexico -- where he seemed content to spend his final years in a quiet mountain town, where the shadow of the ruling cartel sent people heading toward their homes at sunset.
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