nada más (dispatch #12)

Yesterday I went to a performance at a theater called Foro la Negra. It’s up in the mountains, way back in the woods. The directions they gave were basically “take a taxi or a bus up the mountain, and go past the first OXXO, and then past the second OXXO, and when you get to a little store called ‘Maggi’ get out and cross the highway responsibly, and walk half a mile up this other road, and we'll be waiting for you!” (1) I had been to Foro la Negra once before, but even so I had forgotten just how far it was, up in the mountains where my ears were popping from the altitude, past the place where I had bought a plastic cup of honey from a man in front of a muffler shop, past the two OXXOs and winding around and finally at “La Maggi.”

Outside the store, while I waited for traffic to clear so I could cross the highway, a man spoke to me in an incomprehensible accent and showed me a wound on his thigh, and I finally asked him if money would help him and he said yes, and I gave him ten pesos.

The performance was a one-person show called Perra Vida by a performer called Angelica Baño H, in which she imagined and acted out turning herself into a dog. It was brave and funny and moving, and Angelica is a dancer and a rapper and an acrobat as well as a playwright and actor, and it made me wish my Spanish were better because it included a rap that I maybe got a third of. I think that was where Angelica’s intentions really landed. But after many weeks of walking up and down Avenida Emiliano Zapata, where graffiti from a women's rights march still read No Somos Perras, it was hard to miss the implications of the theme.

Afterward I congratulated Angelica, and said hello to Salvador Sánchez, and had lunch, and chatted with the director of the theater, Yolanda, and finally made my way. I asked, “There will be taxis at the corner store, right?” and she said yes. So I walked back down to the highway and crossed to Abarrotes Maggi, where I bought a coke.

I asked the cashier if there would be taxis heading back to Cuernavaca. She said yes, although it was unpredictable, and that the bus would come along every forty minutes. I asked where I needed to wait. Then I paid, and as I was leaving she said, “The fare is twenty-five or thirty pesos. Nada más.”

So go back across the highway and stand by a light pole, drinking my coke and waiting. I’m pretty sure that in three and a half months in Mexico, I have not felt more like a sore-thumb USian, out in the woods hoping a taxi comes by.

I waited ten minutes or so, and then a taxi flashed its lights at me and I waved, and he stopped asked if I was going to el centro, and I told him Buenavista was better, and he said the fare was 25 pesos. And we wound back down the highway, past the OXXOs and the muffler shop, and finally got to Buenavista where I paid the driver and walked the rest of the way home.

And I reflected that you could look at my brief conversation in La Maggi two ways. One is, that there are taxi drivers who will see a gringo waiting by the side of the road and tell him the fare is 50 pesos or 100 pesos or 200. That’s a reality, and it sucks, although for that I can’t imagine how taxistas live on 25 pesos a passenger, so it’s a little hard to blame them.

Or, you can choose to note that a cashier took an extra moment to tell a stranger, who will probably never set foot in her tienda again, what the fare should be. Unasked. Something about Nada más said, “I got you.”

An act of kindness, not at all random.

(1) The full directions are:

If you’re visiting us from Cuernavaca our point of departure is the Mercado Buenavista. If you’re taking public transportation, here you can find group taxis that say “Montecassino” or similarly you can take the TUHS bus. If you come by private car, pass the first OXXO at Huitzilac, many curves going forward, you'll pass another OXXO on the right, and however you go you need to get out at this store known as “Maggi.” ... In any case, this is our landmark. Then we’ll cross the highway responsibly using the crosswalk to our next landmark, the entrance to the Montecassino subdivision. Then we just have to follow the road straight up and follow the wall. If you’re walking, heed the sign that says “slow” because the climb is steep. Once we’ve gotten to the end of the wall, we’ll continue our walk going to the left and again following the wall. At the end we’ll find the gate and follow the road to the right and immediately we’ll walk to the left on Calle Ocotes. Once you have arrived at Calle Ocotes, in the middle of the road you will find our beloved cultural center Foro la Negra. We’re waiting for you here!