For a gringo (as far as I am a gringo), life in Mexico is always lived under the Damoclean sword of Moctezuma’s revenge. Even though Catalans did not participate in the conquest and early exploitation of Mexico, still the emperor’s punishment should single me out, as a Spaniard, rather than the US folk that come here for whatever reasons. (We speak of Athe Spaniards’ conquering and then exploiting Mexico and the rest of Spanish America, but it would be more appropriate to say Athe Castilians’; folks from the old crown of Aragon were not allowed to settle in the New World until the time of King Carlos III of Spain, sometime in the nineteenth century.)
Other than the fear of diarrhoea (its spelling appropriately to illustrate a spilling of letters), the only physical bane to my daily Mexican experience is having to cross at least twice a day the Avenida Morelos on which I live. Avenida Morelos is one of the main North-South thoroughfares in Cuernavaca. Morelos was one of the revolutionary heroes who gave name to the state Cuernavaca is in. The avenue is used by all kinds of bus lines: the smallish and white city rutas, but also the long-distance lines that go to Mexico City, Acapulco, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, and so on. Some of these have been given names to entice the public with an image of speed, brightness and pulchritude: Estrella Blanca is one, Estrella Roja another, and not to be underdone there is also Tres Estrellas. Those could be the names of beers, but I guess the bus lobby was more powerful than the brewers’ and the beer had to be called Dos Equis, a couple of points short to qualify for Aestrella’.
Crossing Morelos (need I say that zebra crossings are five or six blocks apart, and in any case olympically ignored?) means manoeuvering myself amid large busses, city busses (always behaving like the little engine that could --and didn’t care), private cars, trucks, and the many taxis. Taxi drivers, upon spotting a gringo-looking fellow like me (my shorts and sunglasses give me away), slow down, beep their horns gently, and send me a hopeful and inviting look. You’ve heard of folks buying things in auctions just because they scratched their earlobes; well, here if you simply twitch your nostrils a cab will stop right in front of you. Taxi drivers’ capability for estimating exactly the shortest distance between your hand and the door handle, and also their craft at making the horn emit the shortest beep, is nothing but wondrous.
You can imagine that all these reflexions bubble in my head as I calculate my risks to cross the avenue. The elements to take into consideration are many: traffic north-bound, south-bound, turning off to a side street, turning into Morelos from the same street (in front of my house where I try to cross a side street makes a tee with Morelos); the shift in speed of taxis; the always mysterious stops city busses make; and the one or two automobiles that are trying to pull onto the parking lot of the Oxxo (a local 7/11-type store) at the corner. Crossing Morelos is not for sissies.
Of course I know this avenue more than anything else in Cuernavaca, but it seems to me Avenida Morelos is the essence of the town. Closer to the center and the cathedral, Morelos tries to look like a main drag in a major city, Fifth Avenue in NY, say, or the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. Banks and other offices sit there, though no fashionable shops. As you go South there are a few more imposing buildings: the tourist office of the state (could this be anywhere else?), the ADiario de Morelos’ newspaper, and the ARadio de Morelos.’ There is also one of those huge stores called, with simple elegance, AMega’; I have bought a few things there and cannot think of anything they don’t sell. The stretch has a few restaurants, including one across from my apartment called El Capricho which has been recommended to me but haven’t yet tried (it looks fancy; I’ll wait for Fresca and Miró). Further south, towards the Monument to the Young Terrorist, appear the car dealerships interspersed with the flowering of Mexican life: street vendors grilling meat for tacos, a few more modest stops. One of these puts out on the sidewalk a dummy or mannequin of a female, clad in a halter top and shortish skirt. It’s life size, so you can see it from quite a distance, and I suspect more than one eager taxi-driver has slowed down, bleeped, and sent Señorita Inanimate an inquiring glance. OK: What would you think that the store that uses such machista ruse as lure sells? If you guessed house paint you’d be right.
A fellow in a wheelchair seems to spend a lot of time right on the double line in Morelos just above the Young Terrorist monument. That is a crossing with traffic lights (and also a Samsung screen as an animated billboard, just as in Times Square), and several folk make their living there peddling sweets, ices (>paletas’), nuts, newspapers. One enterprising chap offers several kinds of products for your car from an ingenious contraption hanging from his left arm: amulets (a favorite seems to be an itsy-bitsy and very yellow plucked chicken), deodorizers, key rings, and even cinemascope rearview mirrors that you can attach to the standard one in your car. So is the microsmos where Morelos is joined by Galeana and continues South. Now, given that most drivers think of the double line separating both senses of a highway as merely advisory, as a no-pressure suggestion, the will to live of the poor guy in the wheelchair must be thin indeed. Oberving him I’ve come to suspect that Nietzsche would have revived his notion of the Übermensch had he spent time on Morelos Avenue rather than in Sils Maria.
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