This old man farms seven days a week.
He comes out early in the morning wearing flip flops, shorts, a long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap with a big brim.He has a machete in a sleeve on his belt and when he sees something that needs trimmed he pulls his machete’s long blade out and fixes his problem with decision and precision.
With a stubble of beard because shaving is a nuisance, he walks his property checking his rows of squash, cucumbers, casava, string beans – all produce that he sells in the market. Bamboo posts and fences make shade and structures for climbing plants and keeping trespassers out.. A smoldering fire of green leaves makes smoke that keeps mosquitoes down and there are always mosquitoes this time of year.
This old man’s most pressing problem is keeping kids from crossing his land to get to the closest road to town, trampling new sprouts and breaking his bamboo fences.
He looks happy when I wave at him this morning.
He waves back, squats down, and pokes his fire with his machete.
Someday he will not be able to farm, but, for now, he is a content, lean, productive senior.
He holds to his land like a man overboard clings to a life preserver.
I wouldn’t want to be one of those kids if he catches you.
His grip would squeeze the air right out of you and his machete doesn’t take prisoners.
In days when Britain ruled the seas and ruled the world, colonies were properties on a global monopoly board.
The more real estate you had, the more money flowed into royal coffers.
Real estate, however, requires expensive maintenance and security. Britain lost the U.S., lost India,lost Africa, lost all but a few Caribbean islands who are still attached to the Queens petticoats.
These days, the third world exports raw materials and people to industrialized countries that need cheap, skilled labor. Kids in Mogpog leave for jobs overseas and send money back to support their families. They go as housemaids,nannies, construction workers,nurses, hospitality workers, cooks, engineers, computer programmers, soldiers.
This flyer recruits in Mogpog. For every exploitation story, there is a success story.
Since Colonial days disappeared we have a New Colonialism.
Now, countries send raw materials and people out of their country, but don’t get security or infrastructure in return. Foreigners line up at Western Union offices around the world to pick up their wired cash from family and friends.
The price of Independence is high.
Trumpets are not quiet instruments.
In the Cancun Airport, Terminal Three, a trumpet and guitars serenade travelers arriving and departing from Mexico. The terminal is full of duty free shops, and, if you didn’t pick up gifts before, this is your last tax free shopping opportunity.
Mariachi music belongs to Mexico though Mexican taxi drivers often listen to Willie Nelson and Classic Rock. This knob of Yucatan, Mexico has more in common with the Caribbean than Mexico but this fiery Mariachi group plays their Mexican style music, in tune, with great expression and distinctive costumes.
Being a neighbor to the United States is like sleeping next to an elephant. When it rolls over you become sandwich spread.
I don’t want Mexico to become the United States and I don’t want the United States to just be a continuation of Mexico.
Maintaining your national identity, in an increasingly homogenized world, is a true work of love and an expression of freedom.
This music at the airport seems to capture the extroverted flavor of our southern neighbor in a nutshell and I sing along with the musicians in English, as they croon in Spanish.
There is room on the planet for all of us, and our differences.
Along the Hotel Zone main road in Tulum, Mexico there are diversions.
There are small coffee shops that sell Mexican coffee, flavored with sugar, and delicious pastries for individual palates. Restaurants push seafood, Indian food, Italian, Chinese, Vegan and Mexican cuisine.Bars serve late at night and hotels have Vacancy signs hanging where they can be seen. Boutiques display designer clothes for women who need to look good, always, whether they are on the beach, dancing in a disco, taking kids to soccer practice or listening to pickup lines in the grocery.
Moments before this photo is snapped, a long legged woman in red, positions two mannikins on the street in front of her shop.She carries one out to the street under her arm and stands it next to the other.
With both mannikins positioned she turns and strides back to open her business. It is early in the morning and only a few vehicles are on the road. Light filters through trees and through her loose fitting dress that moves seductively as she walks.
It is not difficult to see who is and who isn’t a mannikin.
Movement shows life.
Tides are capricious.
Some places on this beach you find no nasty presents from high tide. There is white sand, pools of trapped sea water, an occasional shell. Other places you find a narrow strip of seaweed, like Christmas tinsel on a living room floor. In the worst places you find piles of seaweed drying in the sun, an obstacle to beachcombers and an offense to noses.
Early morning, hotels hire men with shovels and rakes to move the unwanted seaweed and beach debris. Sometimes they cart it away in wheelbarrows, dig holes and bury it, cover it up with sand, or,best yet, haul it off in a wagon pulled by a tractor.
Each morning there is a new batch to be disposed of.
Even in paradise there are menial chores that wash up on our beaches. For every happy tourist, in a beach chair, there are two or three locals working behind the scene to make the place postcard perfect.
It doesn’t take more than a whiff to know that shoveling seaweed is a job waiting for Mike Rowe to put on his television show..
This is a job that makes me appreciate roofing, concrete work, painting, digging swimming pools, having to assign student grades and facing an overflowing class of maniac eighth graders.
Today, I’ve met a job worse than most of those I have had to do.
Today, the exchange rate is nineteen pesos to a dollar.
Along the Hotel Zone strip, ATM’s, when they are working, dispense pesos or dollars. If you need money, you walk, bike, or drive to a little pitched roof shack on the main road not far from the Hemingway Eco Cottages.
At the bottom of the front barred window in the shack is a little slot through which the girl behind the window pushes me a small cardboard box just big enough for my dollars. I push the box back through the slot to her and wait. Inside, she has a calculator, a money box, a chair, papers and a pen balanced on her right ear. She counts out pesos, puts them in the cardboard box along with a printed receipt on top of the money, and slides the box back out to me.
The U.S. dollar is strong today so the exchange rate is nineteen to one. The weakest currency is the Canadian dollar. The strongest currencies are the British pound and the Euro. In this money game, the more pesos I get for my dollars, the cheaper vacation I get.
When the girl in the booth sees me, I get a bright smile from her.
I always leave her a tip and she hasn’t made one mistake.
Is handling money all day and not getting to keep any the same as walking in the desert with a canteen and not being able to drink
Tulum has two faces.
There is the Hotel Zone which is a strip of bars, restaurants, hotels,and retail shops along the main road running along the beach all the way south to a biosphere nature preserve called Sian Kian. Then there is the Mexican town of Tulum where locals live. You can find tourists in the town of Tulum and locals in the Hotel Zone, but each is a different slice of Mexican pie.
This restaurant,Matteo’s, is in the Hotel Zone, towards the north end, and features, according to the sign, ” The Best Fish Tacos on Earth. ”
When questioned, these two kids maintain that the tacos are really the best in the Universe, but agree this would be difficult to prove since Mexico doesn’t send up space ships to verify.
In mid day, the restaurant is doing good business and fish tacos are swimming out of the kitchen.The kids give a thumbs up and let their picture be taken. I’ll be back for the best tacos on Earth.
Who would turn down such an opportunity?
Imitation is, a famous wit once explained, the greatest form of flattery.
Elvis Presley was a star and shone bright in Tinseltown for decades. In his Elvis impersonator show, Danny Vernon croons, tells jokes, moves his hips, loves on the audience.
Some of these fans saw Elvis himself in Las Vegas, watched his hips while he turned Rock an Roll into a money making machine. A good impersonator brings back old magic and Danny gives glimpses of the King.
This show is almost two hours and Elvis would approve.
Afterwards, Danny poses for pictures with the ladies, like Elvis did.
The ladies, old enough to be grandmothers, are giggly and reach for his sequins.
Even after death, Elvis casts a big shadow.
Some people grow bigger than life, even after they have vanished.
We have borders.
Our skin is our closest border, a barrier that keeps bacteria and viruses out, gives us our particular shape and size, allows us to be flexible and move with agility.
Our minds have borders that allow us to go as far as we think we can.
Countries also have borders that keep them independent and sovereign.
This border check, on Arizona Highway 19, is between Nogales and Tucson.
Cars going north, further into Arizona and the United States, come to a standstill as border agents stop us and ask – ” Are you American citizens?
German shepherd dogs, on leashes, walk around our vehicle with their specially trained noses looking for drugs and contraband. A uniformed Border Patrol agent peers through the car window at us as we go through his check and answer his questions till he gives us a quick visual once over and waves us through.
Open borders is a compassionate political theory, but, at night, do we leave our front doors open and hang a Welcome sign on our refrigerator?
Why does migration seem to be always going in the same direction, from less economically viable countries to places with more opportunity?
For better and worse, at some point, people always vote against borders with their feet.
It is nine in the morning and I see some walkers, a few bicycles, a golf cart, an older lady buttoned up in her custom get about on the Rincon RV Park streets. The speed limit is 10 miles per hour and a familiar saying is posted everywhere –
” Remember, only you can prevent speed bumps. ”
This village, built on land that was first hunted and fished by the Hohokam Indians, has been here since the fifties.
A dedication to the owner, George Leary, by the front office, calls the park his dream. It is now the realization of his many dreams and locals tell me the old man, in his eighties, still patrols the park in an old Ford pickup with tools and PVC pipe in the truck bed.
In the 1100 available spaces are park model homes, crosses between manufactured homes and RV’s, huge motor coaches, fifth wheels and trailers. About two thirds of the spaces are filled with park models, and in the summer, half of these are vacant.
This village has front gate security and enforced rules.
There are no drag races, loitering panhandlers, people sleeping in their cars with a front seat full of eviction papers. You don’t see or hear teens with pants dropped below their butts showing hearts on their undershorts,tattoos and piercings,vehicles with body damage, headlights missing, oil leaks,midnight parties with speakers full blast, drunks singing in the street, soiled pampers thrown in flower beds, shaved heads, profanity.
For those, over 55, who are here, this place is an oasis.
George Leary’s dream resonates.
In the culture wars, it is good to have a retreat where wagons are circled and your guns and bullets and Bibles are close at hand.
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