narcos (dispatch 8)

The first thing to get out of the way is that I’m safe.

We were in Mexico City, my visiting friend Yeshwant and I, and arrived back in Cuernavaca on Sunday. When Yeshwant’s homestay mother Dora picked us up at the bus terminal, she informed us that the cartel boss El Mencho had been killed by the government, and violence had erupted in various places. As it happened, we were fortunate we left Mexico City when we did, because not much later the bus company canceled its schedule. (They are running again today.) We are here now and OK.

The second thing to get out of the way is the politics. Honestly, this theme doesn’t interest me a lot today, because I don’t know anything about anything, and even less the future. My correspondent had said “Something must be done,” and killing the narco boss was certainly something. Following the politician’s syllogism to its conclusion, “therefore this must be done,” may have been a basic error in logic made by someone important, but I never really studied logic much.

What I had said back in that post was

Maybe the thinking [behind Trump's statement about the Mexican-American War] was, the threat of invasion will spur Sheinbaum into launching her own war on drugs. And maybe it will. But a savvy political operator, which Sheinbaum is and most of the White House crew are not, would recognize that initiating such a program would make her look like a puppet. Again: I don't see how his statement succeeded, if this was the goal.

Well: Some part of that is wrong, certainly the bit about not thinking Trump would succeed, and possibly that the action would make Sheinbaum look bad, or possibly that she’s a savvy political operator and Trump is not. Or maybe the whole damn paragraph. [Refer to statement “I don’t know anything about anything” above.]

And, the Associated Press last night wrote:

That’s a U.S. perspective, but to my mind it certainly moves Sheinbaum in the direction of the “puppet” category, at least as a question of image. I confess I haven’t had time to read the Mexican press, which tends to be slow going for me due to its excess of formal vocabulary and the simple future. Neither have I had the kinds of conversations, so far, that would tend toward a “hombre en la calle” report about people’s political takes. I will say that the AP’s use of the phrase “major victory” in its lede ...

... seems premature at best, given the kicker:

Bueno. We had planned, Yeshwant and I, to go to the Zocalo so I could show him the lay of the land (mostly hills) and the cátedral and all that. Shortly after, we got texts and I got a call telling us it wasn’t a good idea. Although Morelos was not on the initial list of affected places, there had been violence in Jiutepec, a pueblo about ten miles away, and nobody knew what shoes might drop next.

So we stayed in the neighborhood and walked Dora’s dogs with her up and down those damn hills, and she pointed out the good taco joints (and the dubious ones) and the paleta shop and the Walmart Express.

Then we went back to Dora’s place and talked about cooking, and I realized that’s a whole other vocabulary to learn.

I walked the ten minutes home. The streets were empty. I haven’t been out much after 10 pm on a Sunday, so I don’t have much to compare them to, but they were really empty. A few cars and motos passed me, and to my generalized but legitimate fear, that any car coming down this street might carelessly mow me down, was added a ridiculous, precise fear of “any car coming down this street might be driven by someone pissed off at the United States.”

A young man, early 20s, came out of the Farmacias Guadalajara store carrying a bottle of Pepsi, and unaccountably struck up a conversation with me as we walked up Avenida Emiliano Zapata. That alone was enough to say, this is not quite a normal night. I only caught about half of what he had to say, because he talked like a joven, lots of jerga and murmullo. But the half I caught was: That was certainly something. We parted at the corner, where I gave him my name, and he told me his was Emiliano.

I got home. I responded to some texts that were coming in and sent a few others. I wanted to say, Mexico is a big country. I didn't, because the reality is that Jiutepec isn’t far away. It was more tranquil than normal. Even the dogs seemed uneasily quiet.

The vibe all evening was: This is normal, and also not normal. Normal in its lack of normality. It was like the feeling when a tropical storm hits. It’s definitely terrible over there, on the barrier islands or in Guadalajara. It might get bad here. We need to take care the way we need to take care. We’re going to live our lives.

I may have missed the conversation over desayuno at the school this morning, or maybe there's a tacit understanding among our hosts at CILAC that we don’t talk about these things outside the family. Or maybe there were other things to talk about. The far more likely risk remains that I’ll be walking down the street, staring at my phone, and fall into a hole in the sidewalk.

This evening we’re going to make that visit to the cathedral.