I used to believe, naively, that a "home invasion" was a melodramatic synonym for "burglary" until two weeks ago, when at about ten-thirty at night four punks in their twenties broke into the small ranch of a retired American couple in their late sixties who live a few miles deeper into the countryside than us. …
Tag: mexico
Rand Paul for President!! Of Mexico?
Enchiladas, tequilas and mariachis we know, but who would have imagined Mexico as a living laboratory of free-market-to-the-max, let-'er-rip economic policies, a place where the heads of corporations and service providers can wheel and deal pretty much unregulated except perhaps for the long shot of an angry consumer coming after them with a gun?Rand Paul, …
Tale of a nervous Good Samaritan
How are your abuelitos doing I asked Félix last week. His grandparents have been on my mind ever since Stew and I brought them a Christmas despensa, a holiday shopping bag of groceries containing flour for tortillas, corn husks for tamales, cooking oil, sugar and other Mexican staples that we supplemented with a couple of packages of …
Tiptoe through the Cactaceae
When our house was still in the dreaming phase, circa 2008, Stew and I envisioned an enclosed front yard that would hold a collection of subtropical plants somewhat in the style of an English walled garden. It would provide a lush break as one entered the house, between the semi-desertic outdoors and the indoors.It was …
Small-time crooks
He's a slight but genuinely Mexican man, so our gardener Félix is not prone to bouts of crying, blubbering, trembling or fear-stricken stammering—least of all in public—yet that is what he was doing when he came into my office ten days ago."Alfredo, they are going to kill my family!" he said without any preambles."Who, what, why?" …
Mark your calendar
This week, the week of August 25, the MEGA supermarket in San Miguel de Allende started putting out Christmas merchandise. Considering Mexicans go on celebrating until January 6, this may be the longest holiday season in the Christian world.###
Countryside tour, includes dead body!
The church Stew and I attend, a non-denominational enterprise with a sketchy doctrinal corpus but a strong commitment to good works in small villages surrounding San Miguel, had organized an outing to Fajardo de Bocas, located about ten miles from our ranch, to inspect a domestic gray-water treatment plant some members had built at a …
Booze and the campo
As much as I have tried to understand the lifestyles of the folks who live in the small towns surrounding the ranch—by visiting with them, giving them rides to San Miguel and talking with them, attending fiestas and religious occasions and doing small favors, among other gestures—life there often remains as incomprehensible as a Chinese …
Sidelined during Holy Week
Except perhaps for the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Roman Catholic Church's grip on Mexico and particularly San Miguel de Allende, is never firmer than during Holy Week.It actually begins a week before Palm Sunday, when hundreds of chanting pilgrims come to San Miguel carrying a statue of a flagellated Jesus—ghoulishly bloody …
To an unknown gay neighbor
A year ago, while looking for a huesera at one of the villages near our ranch, I ran into a bit of graffiti, I suspect left by a teenager, that was brief and moving: "Soy puto y qué"It's not exactly poetry and translates as, "I'm a fag, so what?" I took a picture of it that has …
El Rancho Santa Clara 