Chapter One from Mexico: La Revolucion

Living in a state that borders Mexico, and a neighborhood where my children attend schools with a large Hispanic population, means experiencing the Mexican culture on a daily basis. Carly and Eliot have been to birthday parties and baptisms with Spanish-speaking classmates and babysitters, which has given them a sense of Mexican tradition, an ear for the Spanish language, and a taste for arroz con pollo. When they were little, we spent a week with our babysitter in Colima. And when Carly was ten, she and I spent two weeks studying Spanish in San Miguel de Allende, before Blue, Eliot, and most of my family joined us for Christmas.

I was worried about the family with whom Carly and I would be placed. What if they were mean or the house were dark and cavernous? But the Olveras couldn’t have been more delightful. Senora Olvera was an incredible cook, and she spent many hours in conversation with us, gently correcting my Spanish. The Olveras’ house was a few blocks from the Jardin, or center of town, and the rooms of the house surrounded a courtyard lush with citrus trees. Their house was also right next door to Carly’s school. Que conveniente!

San Miguel de Allende sits in high desert at 6500 feet. Visitors in winter should bring fleece, kleenex, slippers, and chapstick. I bought a pair of wool gloves for reading in bed! Los Mexicanos don´t always heat their homes, as gas and electricity are very expensive, even though Mexico is the world´s fourth largest producer of petrol and electricity in the world.

San Miguel is a Spanish colonial city with old fortress-like buildings and narrow streets and sidewalks. One has to press up against buildings to avoid being squashed by a passing bus. Cars are loud and emit massive quantities of exhaust. There are many expatriates who contribute to a tolerant atmosphere; one need not feel bad about looking like a tourist because so many people are. People are generally well educated. In early December at six-thirty in the morning when school began, the streets were full of students in school uniform. That would change as December progressed and celebrations of la Virgen de Guadelupe began.

There were internet cafes everywhere in San Miguel, but Carly’s and my favorite was one not far from the Jardin that was actually the owner´s livingroom. In addition to internet access lo mas barato en San Miguel, he had an espresso bar and an extensive collection of homemade cd´s, featuring anything from classical to hip hop in Spanish. His wife cooked meals in the kitchen on the other side of a curtain, and would make meals for customers. The owner was often holding his baby as he made cappucinos, changed cd's, or helped cutomers with the computers.

One morning Carly and I were awakened by church bells at six-thirty, followed by explosions that echoed off the hillsides. These explosions continued for half an hour while Carly and I huddled in my bed. I thought it was la nueva revoluccion.

When they ended promptly at seven o´clock, I put on my running clothes and poked my head out the front door. Carly was convinced I was entering a war zone and would leave her an orphan, but I assured her no revoluccion began and ended promptly on the half hour, and I showed her the children dressed in uniform walking to school. Senora Olvera told us at breakfast that it was the first of many celebrations para la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Most mornings I ran up into the Atascadero neighborhood, where twenty-four Tatums would be renting two palacios para la Navidad. It was a steady mile uphill from the Olveras´ house, after which it leveled off. It felt surprisingly good, perhaps because I was rooming with a ten-year-old who every night at seven turned into Godzilla. We had been able to negotiate our way out of conflict, however, and she was an excellent traveling companion.

Carly made pinatas at school, which she filled with Mexican candies and saved to break open with her cousins on Christmas. She hung them on her bedposts and told me they were dream-catchers. One Sunday we watched a league basketball game in the park, played on an ancient teeter-totter, and played multiple games of chess in the Olveras’ courtyard. Another day we visited some local hot springs, and ate lunch at a roadside restaurant where they roasted a pig in the front yard.

My school was a fifteen-minute walk from the Olveras’ house. The first day I arrived late after getting Carly settled, and was ushered into a room to converse with profesora Socorro. While she figured out where to place me, a man in dark glasses stood in the corner like a Mexican Severus Snape.

Profesor Snape turned out to be my teacher. Socorro had placed me in an intermediate class, which was good. I needed the grammar. Leave la literatura to the young revolutionaries.

The first days of celebrations para la Virgen, the fireworks went until midnight and resumed early the next morning, when the local schools were closed. As I set off on my run, I heard singing in the Jardin. Beautiful singing, Christmas carols, echoing up into the hills. "My hours are all wrong," I thought. "When I am sleeping, los Mexicanos are partying. When I am running some ludicrous course a mile uphill on cobblestone, they are singing in the streets." Loca Norte Americana. By the time I walked to school, the Jardin had emptied out and everyone had gone home to sleep.

One night Carly and I joined the Posada in the Jardin. There was a massive Christmas tree decorated with ornaments made by the children of San Miguel, and a crowd was gathered around the plaza, standing a safe distance from where the fireworks were set up. The people of Mexico were very polite; they didn´t push or shove, and that night in the Jardin, people waited in the bitter cold for something to happen. The wind was blowing the pinatas and decorations, and every once in a while a colorful strip of paper tore loose and floated above us.

The smart people were wearing bufandas, wool scarves wrapped around their faces. I envied the babies wrapped in those thick, brightly colored blankets. Eliot had one Maria from Colima had given him when he was a baby, and at eight years old he still came out it in the morning, naked and wrapped in it like an Indian man.

A choir group sang Christmas songs, but there seemed an interminable wait between songs. The microphones barely amplified their voices. Carly and I moved close to hear, finding a spot easily since no one crowded. In anticipation of my family's arrival, I closed my eyes and sang along to our favorite, “Gloooooooooooooooria, In Excelsus Deo!”

Then the choir was finished, and boom, on came the lights of the Christmas tree, the lights on the church and the cross at the top. The crowd whistled loudly. They had waited and now was the official time to let loose. Boom! The fireworks on the plaza exploded into the air. The crowd whistled loudly again. Boom! The most formidable fireworks I have ever heard exploded in the sky above the church. I would be lying if I said it was a religious experience; it was just unimaginably exciting.

And then it was over. Carly and I walked back to the house and went to bed. At five the next morning the loudest fireworks yet went off. Why at five in the morning I could not imagine, but Senor Snape said it worked for Mexicanos who didn´t use alarm clocks.