Bus Rides #2

For my work here I must take one or even two rides (to the school and back) on a bus every day, and so my vision of Cuernavaca is essentially framed from a bus, full of jerks and stops, of fumes and noise. The buses are called “rutas” and numbered; the word “Ruta” and a number is painted on every white bus from the city transport, and the painted sign must have given the name to the busses themselves. Mine is number 18 and it costs me each way either 5 pesos (about 50 cents of a dollar) or 4.50 depending on the whim of the driver or some regulation I have been unable to fathom.

The buses race through to the end of their lines, sometimes passing each other more than once in a short stretch and in defiance of oncoming traffic. When the driver is young you are assured of a five-peso thrill, made more exciting by the abundance of speed bumps. Cuernavaca’s motto is ‘the city of eternal spring’; ‘the city of a thousand speed bumps’ might be more appropriate, if less likely to attract tourism. I cannot decide whether the bumps where placed on the pavement in order to slow down the traffic or to offer bus drivers an added challenge. I am daily in the hands of two or more Evel Knievel wannabes.



Along Ruta 18 I observe the world and the bus itself. Most buses are small and tattered, but generally clean; they race with both front and back doors open to allow for ventilation as it is normally hot (or because the doors are stuck, who knows). Users are orderly and polite, and everybody pays their fare promptly and, often, silently (even though it seems the price depends on how long a ride one requires). Cuernavaca passes in front of me through the windows of the bus. Near my apartment, still in the center of town, the route goes by a number of car dealerships, including one for SEAT automobiles called “Catalana.” At the crossing of Galeana Street and Morelos Avenue, as the bus stops for one of the few red lights, vendors climb on the bus offering colorful ice waters, called, I think, paletas, or small packages of nuts or sweets; these vendors do not pay a fare and are accepted kindly by all. Diverting my view from the vendors I observe the monument that stands at the crossing of Galeana and Morelos. It is a realistic sculpture of an old-time cannon being fired by a boy of about ten years of age. I call it the monument to the young terrorist, but I saw a sign somewhere speaking of “El niño artillero”; as the bumpersticker says, war is terrorism with a bigger budget (the Mexican budget appears considerable tighter than that of the US). I recall vaguely there is an event in Mexican history called “Los niños héroes”, a phrase that does not seem to have the gruesome overtones here that it does for me.

Then Ruta 18 slinks along Morelos, crossing the highway to Mexico city (only I appear to cringe at the cavalier way this crossing is carried out), up and down several of the many hills of the city. I contemplate the activity: stores offering food everywhere and, along one stretch, a bunch of automotive repair shops, some a bit more established than others. I saw and smelled the fumes of a car being spray-painted on the very street, just inches below my window; the car’s windows and windshield delicately covered in newspaper. Finally the bus gets to the area where the school is, the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, campus de Cuernavaca, known as “el Tec” for obvious syllable economy. The Tec is on Paseo de la Reforma, a climbing promenade with a garden median which totters between splendor and neglect and sports a winding low wall made of cement with pieces of ceramic giving it some color and shape, a kind of poor man’s trencadís and thus a distant whiff of Barcelona architecture. On Reforma, at some crossing, there stands a monument to compensate for Artillery Child downtown: a gigantic ball with three books stuck to its sides, one with a cross, one with a crescent, and one with a star of David. Atop the ball perches a big dove, painted white like the rest of the monument. The monument is not particularly attractive, but if it’s the thought that counts, right on. Of course it is difficult to think of an idler thought. The three religions alluded to in the monument are based on exclusivity; each claims that theirs is the only God and the all others are impostors that need to be combated. To think that they may coexist is like thinking that objects will fall away from the center of the earth. But logic has never been common among bipeds.