More rambling about Mexican Immigration

Pictured above, our xmas nativity.

I made it through Veracruz, passed a few pleasant days in Oaxaca, and headed back to Guadalajara.

Sadly, going back to Guadalajara meant going back to the immigration office. Of course my paperwork had been rejected once again (for mysterious reasons), and now I would have to pay a huge fee for a special letter allowing me to leave the country for Christmas. This time I got an "audience" with some big boss to protest the situation. Typical of Mexico, behind the supposed web of intricate bureaucracy and complex rules there is a swaggering patrón who decides everything according to his capricious moods. The "audencia" happens right in the packed waiting room of the lobby. El Patrón calls out names one by one, and you have to push forward and make your case before he loses interest or someone else grabs his attention. Unfortunately, I hesitated a bit after he barked out "¡Dígame!" (tell me!). That, combined with my accent, was too much. He cut me off before I got a whole sentence out and told me to write my NUT number on a scrap of paper so he could research my case file. Then I had to wait another two hours before talking to him again. There are worse fates though. Another guy (who was a native Spanish speaker) failed to respond after his name was called 3 times. When he finally did answer, El Patrón contemptuously crumpled up his slip of paper in front of him and skipped to the next person.

This was the last day before the offices closed for Christmas. If my papers weren't in order, I wouldn't be able to get back into the country. In the end, Jenny who works at the American School, had to talk to someone to talk to someone so that an expert with inside connections could come to my rescue. Having spent from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM, I was the very last person there, but I finally got my damn work visa extended for another year. Since I'm not staying that long, this means I should never, never have to go back there again...(knock on wood).

Now I am back in the land of War on Christmas for a few weeks to relax, drink non-poisonous water straight out of the tap, be cold, and other such yuletide traditions.

Helicopter blades correctly installed and vehicle is ready for takeoff.

I love museums in general, but they can´t all be winners. When I was a kid I was very attached to a "Pirates & Buccaneers" coloring book, which I think is what led me to think going to the Veracruz Naval Museum would be a good idea. After all, a venerable museum in this historic port should be filled with Spanish cannons, old maps, cutlasses, blunderbusses, pirate flags, and so on. Unfortunately, this tourist attraction would be more aptly named "The Veracruz Museum of Falling Apart Dioramas and Blurry Photocopies."

The building is a former naval academy and it is staffed by uniformed women of the Mexican Navy. They operate it as they would any other military bureaucracy, with a curious attention to the minutia of regulations. The attendant watched like a hawk as I filled in each blank of the guest registry, and shook her head "no" when I left one space empty. I didn't understand what the question was asking, so I just wrote my name again. Next, she marched me to the big board to explain the layout of the museum, which rooms I was to visit in what order, and a brief recap of their contents. In some Mexican museums the guards get freaked out if you don´t go through the exhibition halls in the prescribed order. This was definately one of those museums. Naval officers patrolled the halls to shepherd visitors to the rooms they were supposed to go to next. Often they would make curious announcements such as "When this building was a naval academy, the chemistry classroom was here."

The actual contents of the museum were quite dismal. Probably 1 in 30 displays contained an original artifact. Many of them didn't actually say "reproduction", but they clearly were. For example the statue of the Aztec flower god that A) Is actually in The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City B) HAS NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER WITH NAVAL HISTORY. Other highlights included photocopies of portraits of Cortes, photocopies of letters to and from the King of Spain, and photocopies of maps. There were, humorously, pirated pirate flags though--the museum staff had clearly made them with black cloth and house paint.

The oddest gallery in the museum may have been the "modern navy" section. The hall used photographs of training exercises and dioramas to try to construct a kind of GI Joe fantasy world where the Mexican Navy was storming beachheads, launching succesful amphibious assaults, and exploring underwater sea caves with spear guns.

The single most interesting thing in the museum was a stained glass window on the staircase that some cadets were covering over with plywood. Probably they wanted to put a giant color photocopy on top of it.

As dull and miserable as the museum was, I felt some anxiety about leaving because I knew that the attendant would force me to write a comment in the guestbook. Sure enough, when I tried to walk past and ask for my bag back, she looked down at the registry, back up at me, and issued a crisp "Sus comentarios, POR FAVOR." I considered "bien lleno de fotocopias" or "este no es un museo," but I couldn´t with her eyes bearing down on me. I knew I had to write something postive and my contempt would have to lie hidden in the brevity of my praise, so I settled on "bueno." It was a little pathetic, this is what Mexicans say when they answer the phone. She was not satisfied; previous guests had composed whole paragraphs of praiseful commentary. Finally I added "gracias," which was enough to coax her into handing my bag back, if grudgingly.

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology continued part 2: toys

Strangely enough, in ancient Mexico they had invented the wheel, but they only used it for making toys.

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology continued: Cosmetic dentistry

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology--decapitated ball player

Instead of blood, 7 serpents sprout from where his head was removed. Seven serpent was also the name of the god of ripe corn. The harvest of corn was symbollicaly like beheading; the former to feed humans, the latter to feed the gods.

Zempoala

Continuing my wander through Veracruz, I stopped at these Totonaco ruins. They´re especially notable for being the first city the Spanish encountered in the Americas and a stepping stone in the conquest of Mexico. When Spanish scouts reported a city built of pure silver in the distance, Cortes and his men set out immediately, but it turned out only to be the polished white stucco gleaming in the sun. Still, Zempoala was a pretty advanced city with temples, defensive walls, systems of drainage and irrigation. King Chicomacotl (who was not exactly chico, he was too heavy to walk) recieved Cortes with lavish gifts, and the two formed an alliance against the Aztecs. One informational plaque noted that Chicomacotl personally offered Cortes 7 ladies, including his own neice. But I´m sure that being such a devout Christian gentleman, Cortes must have responded by lecturing him about sex outside of marriage, ha ha.

In the photo above, I was standing in the middle of a ceremonial gladiator ring. The crenallations atop the low stone wall would have been hidden under elaborate leaf-shaped stucco ornamentation. Warriors captured in the flower wars were brought here to fight to the death. The "home team" so to speak, got to use macuahuitles (wooden swords mounted with razor sharp obsidian blades). The captured warrior weilded a similar instrument, only instead of razor sharp blades, his weopan was studded with feathers. If he somehow managed to defeat his enemy anyway, he had to immediately fight a second warrior. If he won again, he was set free and given all kinds of gifts. This almost never happened though.

In the background is the most important building of the city, the Templo Mayor. It was the site of various shennanigans by Cortes. Here he ordered the idols smashed and a Christian mass to be given to the puzzled Totonacos. Later it was the location of a battle between Cortes and Panfilo de Narvaez, who the governor of Cuba had sent to stop him pillaging and raping strange lands against orders. When Panfilo´s eye was put out, he was obliged to surrender, and suddenly Cortes had even more men under his control.

Despite its historical importance, this was a very laid back place to visit, practically deserted. There were only four other visitors, two of which were teenagers from the town making out behind the temple of the wind god. Only a chain link fence divides the most important buildings from the town. There is another pyramid in a vacant lot beside some store, and even more out in the sugar cane fields. I asked one of the guards about them, and he said that if you give them notice they will take you on a tour, but going alone "no es recomendable." Apparantely the farmers get freaked out by unaccompanied tourists, and its best not to upset a man with a machete in hand.

Mexico's saddest Olmec head

O how the mighty have fallen! Once commoners were forbidden to meet his eyes. Once his name was whispered with awe. How many comely wives kept his mug filled with pulque? How many slaves attended him?

Was he a mighty prince? A high priestof the jaguar cult? The greatest athlete of his generation, who triumphed in the ballcourt to the adulation of thousands?

Now he holds court in the Xalapa bus station, wedged between lost luggage and a kiosk selling useless knick knaks. Continually tormented by the odor of the pay toilets on the 2nd floor, he bides his time eternally gazing out at the taxis whizzing past outside.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 4: Yay, you're dead!

These inanely smiling ceramic heads are thought to somehow be associated with death, as they're frequently found in graves.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 3: a reconstructed pyramid

They dug up a pyramid "Las Higueras" with original frescoes depicting mythological scenes, ceremonies and ball games. In ancient Mesoamerica it was thought that there was a chance the world might end once every 52 years. So whenever it did not, they would add a new level onto their pyramids to make them more grandiose. The result is that the layers of murals show 3 centuries of changing beliefs and artistic styles.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 2: were jaguars

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 1: Colossal Olmec Heads

Note that it is likely not that distorted, they were really into head shaping.

On the road

I´ve left Guadalajara and I´m travelling a bit with my extra time. Yesterday I took a bus to Mexico City, and then made a random decision to go to Papantla, Veracruz (being the next bus leaving that looked interesting). The big thing to see there are the ruins of El Tajin. I hadn´t yet visited any ruins of the Gulf Coast cultures. On a whim I hired a guide, which I almost never do. You always have to take what they say with a bit of salt, but he was pretty good. He was a Totonaco, a civilization native to Veracruz that way back in the day was suffering under Aztec opression when Cortez came along with a deal to make everything better...He grew up sort of around the ruins, only when he was a kid it was just hilly farmland--the pyramids were still buried underneath.

Because El Tajin had been abandoned so long, they escaped both the Spanish military/religious zeal, as well as the clumsiness of early archeaologists who have tended to reconstruct Mexico´s ancient cities haphazardly. There are some pretty well preserved reliefs along the ballcourts and even sections of original paint on some pyramids. The one pictured was bright red and blue at one time. A lot of the pyramids have shallow niches built into them, which is apparantely unique to this site, and no one is 100% sure what they were for. This Pyramid has (well, had) 365 niches, giving it some kind of calendar function. Also, a lot of the buildings also have ¨greco¨ zig zag patterns that are typical of the Zapotecs, showing an interchange of ideas with Oaxaca. You can see them in this picture on either side of the central staircase.

It´s interesting--for a national INAH site--that Totonacos live kind of in and around unexcavated sections of the ruins. I could see people´s plots of corn in the surrounding hills (well, probably pyramids underneath). Also a short commute if your job is selling knick knacks to tourists. There is a statue of Tajin (aka the rain god Tlaloc) on one of the pyramids, which according to the guide is still focal point of ritual activity. I realize that this completely sounds like the kind of thing that is made up for gullible tourists, but from the strange offhand way he was talking about it I actually think it might be true.

All of this has been, by the way, just to register that there is no change whatsoever in my employment status.

Another day, another damnable trip to the immigration office. Yesterday I arrived 40 minutes before the office opened, and there were 27 people ahead of me. (Luckily only about half of them were there to go to the pick up documents window though). So I only had to wait about an hour and a half before getting the bad news: I'd put an extra "2" in my passport number on ONE of the official documents, meaning the whole application had been rejected and I would have to start over from scratch. (Actually I hadn't done this. The woman I paid to do it correctly for me had).

My classes are finished, so luckily (?) I had the whole day to re-gather, re-fill out, re-photocopy, and re-submit everything. Oddly enough, the woman once again typed up my letter with the exact same mistake, but this time I caught it. Perhaps I'm back so frequently that she just has the thing on file, who knows. I had some more lovely photos taken. This one is extra because the immigration office demands six, while the photographer across the street has a special camera that only takes groups of four pictures. I always wonder whether things like this are just part of the day-to-day randomness of Mexicoor intricate plots to squeeze a few more pesos out of gringos. Then it was back to the immigration office to wait in the line to drop off documents, which I was miraculously able to do in the same day. Everything appeared to go fine except for a brief episode where I had to convince the lady at the window that I was not in fact "Eva Evalin" from the Russian Federation, despite having grown up in Moscow, Idaho.

Return to the Dark Tower

Yesterday I arrived at the immigration office early before it opened and got a relatively good spot in line-#30. I also bit my tongue and let the Lake Chapala Society members stand in the wrong queue (see my earlier post on the immigration offices for why I would stoop to such knavery). I have actually been back to INM a number of times since that visit. Each wretched occasion has involved a long boring conversation with the retired followed by a personal meltdown. I now know each INM official on either side of the hall as well as the security guards, and I hold a personal grudge against each of them.

My goal for yesterday was not to lose my shit. It was going pretty well: I had a book to read and some Louis Armstrong cued on my MP3 player. It's a little harder to be angry at the world when listening to Louis Armstrong. But then, as the time dragged on, I became nervous about making it to my 1 pm class (factoring in the commute). It was the day of the final exam, so it would be a pretty big deal to show up late or miss it. Finally, the number on the counter changed to 28. Clutching my ficha #30, I went to hover by the windows lest they skip past me. Then, I waited and waited. And waited. At a certain point I realized that no one was being helped at any of the windows. It was about that time that a terrible rumor began to circulate throughout the waiting area: "se cae el sistema." Indeed, about 10 minutes later a smiling man came out to tell everyone in the front row where I was seated that the system had crashed. We were welcome to wait as long as we liked, but there was no telling when Mexico City would resolve the problem. I calmly got up and left without doing a Basil Fawlty impression. Mission accomplished.