Mexico: Where A Rose Is More Than a Rose

A Rose is a Rose ... in Mexico! 

Every once in awhile, something happens that reminds me all over again why I enjoy Mexico. I do our big weekly grocery shopping at Superama, a ten-minute taxi ride from our apartment. After three years, I know most of the drivers from the taxi stand in front of Superama, and many of them know me.

Yesterday when I arrived with my cartful of groceries all the taxis were out on trips, so I had to wait about ten minutes for one to return. One couple was ahead of me, but within a couple of minutes after their departure another car rolled in. While the grocery bags were being loaded into the trunk, I had time to notice that I didn't recognize the driver, who struck me as being quite tall. Plus the car was relatively new, which is not all that common.

As we exchanged pleasantries,  he seemed open, friendly.  I told him where we were going, and we headed out.

There are two ways to leave Superama. One way is to turn right onto Calle Pacífico, Pacific Street, then right again to go around the block, which involves bumping along on cobblestones since the streets in Coyoacán maintain the colonial tradition. These streets were recently 'restored', but restoration doesn't mean that the stones were replaced with asphalt, only that the cobblestones were relaid. After a couple of bumpy blocks, it's an easy left turn onto Calle América (America Street).

The other way to leave Superama is to make a U-turn after the initial right onto Pacífico, followed by a left turn onto América. This way takes longer because the traffic light at the busy intersection of a main thoroughfare is a long one, but the paved street is easier on cars. Waiting for the light to change, cars sit for at least a couple of minutes. This wait time attracts street vendors who sell to people waiting for the traffic light to change.

One of the vendors was selling bunches of roses. The driver engaged the vendor in an extended conversation that I couldn't hear, then I saw the vendor reach in and pull out a single red rose, which he handed to the driver who gave it to me.

I was astonished, delighted and touched! His spontaneous gift initiated an animated conversation about his philosophy of life, which seemed to boil down to:

"Enjoy life ... and don't worry."

My response was something to the effect that

"It's one thing to know with your head, but unfortunately the heart doesn't always follow."

His instantaneous response was, essentially, a derisive snort followed by saying something to the effect of

"It's up to your head to tell your heart what to do."

His entire style was so distinctively non-Mexico City that, out of curiosity, I asked,

"Were you born here in Mexico City?"

With evident pride, he replied,

"No, I was born in Puebla."

Reflectively, I added,

"Hmm, I would have guessed that you're from Veracruz. Your style and attitude are very much from the Caribbean."

He reacted to my words with sheer delight! Clearly, I could not have given him a greater gift had I tried. With a warm, generous smile stretching from ear to ear, he replied,

"Well, my pueblo is very close to Veracruz."

Then he leaned forward and turned up the volume to the music he was playing: cumbia! We laughed companionably as together we enjoyed this lively, joyful music from the Caribbean.

Later, Reed reminded me that the boundary between Veracruz, a long, north-south state along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and Puebla, a state mostly on the Altiplano [High Plain in Central Mexico; Mexico City is on the Altiplano], isn't at the crest of the mountain range that separates the two states, but farther east along the Gulf's Coastal Plain. The driver's pueblo may be formally in the state of Puebla, but culturally it belongs to Veracruz and the Caribbean.

Tradition of the Rose in Mexico

Yesterday in the course of chatting with a young Mexican friend, I told her about my 'gift rose'.  I also mused that roses have a long tradition in Mexico. Instantly, she offered, "Sí, la Guadalupana."

Then I remembered. According to tradition, after Juan Diego's first vision of a young woman while he was on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City, he went to the Archbishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to relate his vision. The archbishop asked for miraculous proof.

Three days later Juan Diego returned to the hill. Again the Virgin appeared and, speaking in Nahua, told Juan Diego to gather some flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill. It was winter when no flowers bloomed, but on the hilltop Diego found flowers (by tradition, they are roses), and the Virgin herself arranged them in his tilma, or peasant cloak.

When Juan Diego opened the cloak before the Archbishop on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and in their place was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, miraculously imprinted on the fabric.

In an earlier post, I gave this account of the miraculous appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her incarnation of the earlier Mesoamerican Mother Earth, Tonantzin, and her subsequent adoption by all Mexicans as Mother of Mexico and Latin America. Juan Diego's vision occurred in 1531, ten years after Hernán Cortés felled the Aztec king.

Our friend also reminded me that roses appear on the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe carried by Father Miguel Hidalgo at the start of Mexico's War of Independence from Spain.

Banner Carried by Father Miguel Hidalgo
Virgin of Guadalupe (center) and Roses at Lower Corners
(Photo: Internet)

The Mesoamerican tradition of flowers long predates the Spanish. The revered poet-king Nezahualcóyotl (1402-1472; his name means "Fasting Coyote" in Nahua) wrote this poem to flowers:

They will not die, my flowers,

They will not cease, my songs.

I, the singer, proclaim them,

shared and scattered.

Even when the flowers

are yellowed and withered,

they will be carried there,

to the interior of the house

of the bird with feathers of gold.

                        - Nezahualcóyotl

No acabarán mis flores,

No cesarán mis cantos.

Yo cantor los elevo,

Se reparten, se esparcen.

Aun cuando las flores

Se marchitan y amarillecen,

Serán llevadas allá,

Al interior de la casa

Del ave de plumas de oro.

               - Nezahualcóyotl

Apparently, distinct rose species evolved in different parts of the world: China, India, Asia, North Africa, Burma, Europe and North America. The Carolinae species, which displays white, pink and bright pink flowers, is native to North America. The Rosa Cinnamoneae species, with its white, pink, lilac, mulberry and red flowers, evolved everywhere but in North Africa.

On the highway to visit the archaeological site at Xochicalco, we passed at least twenty vendors' stalls on both sides of the highway with counters stacked a couple of feet high with beautiful bouquets of roses. We were told that growing and selling roses is the tradition and backbone of the economy of the original people in that area.

Medieval Christians in Europe identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. Later, roses came to be associated with the Virgin Mary. The red rose was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. Although I haven't been able to find direct evidence, this symbolism strongly suggests to me that the Religious Brothers sent by the Spanish king at the specific request of Hernán Cortés into Mexico to evangelize the indigenous peoples, brought both this species of roses and their attendant symbolism to Mexico.

So my reply to the question—Why do we like Mexico?—is deceptively simple: Where else exists even the possibility that an anonymous taxi driver might give a passenger, and a foreigner, a single red rose? And where else would reflections on that rose revolve around Spanish colonial and Mesoamerican cultural traditions more than five hundred years in the making? My vote is ... only in Mexico!

Still Curious?

• Mexico Culture: Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of Mexico;
• Wikipedia/Rose;
• Wikipedia/Symbolism associated with the rose.

Reflections on Culture Shock in Mexico City

This post is the last of four that describe what has been involved in renewing the rental contract on our apartment, a condo. At the first renewal, our landlady, the condo's owner, shocked us by giving her own arbitrary interpretation of the contract's terms. Earlier posts describe the events as objectively as possible (see Still Curious? after this post). 

This post describes our subjective experience with an aspect of Mexican society we had previously encountered in only the most tangential way. Although I wrote it last year, I dragged my feet in publishing it. Unsure about its message, I asked a trusted Mexican friend to read it. His response was reassuring: it is a fair description of this facet of Mexican society.

Reassured on that front, I still hesitated to publish. The story seemed 'unfinished'; it lacked an ending. In the last month of the contract, under the law, the owner could notify us of her desire for us to vacate the apartment, but the initiative was hers. As the final month came up, we waited quietly. Nothing. No contact whatsoever. None.

With two weeks to go, we sent an email to our attorney asking him what our next action should be. In the email, Reed relayed what he calculated to be the new rent based on the annual inflation rate as specified in the contract.

The attorney contacted the owner, who after some delay, finally responded. Accepting without comment Reed's calculation of the new rent, her only request was that since she has been having problems proving to the government the source of the rental income, she is asking that instead of making cash deposits to her bank account, we write a check and deposit it into her account. 

We were also asked to sign the new contract in person, which meant a trip to the office of the company that writes rental contracts and underwrites rent insurance for landlords (in case we fail to pay). After the meeting, I wrote an Update to describe the meeting. You'll find it at the end of this long-delayed Post.

We feel comfortable in Mexico. We have developed enjoyable daily routines and have begun to reach out to ordinary Mexicans by participating in a workshop on Reading and Writing at the Coyoacán Culture Center.

But none of this seemed to matter when we received the owner's email response to our message informing her of our intent to remain in the apartment. We know full well that most landlords are not like ours, but it seems important to tell this story as a way of fostering understanding about an aspect of Mexican society often hidden from view and rarely discussed.

Culture Shock

First defined in 1958, culture shock is the disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or visit to a new country, or to a move between social environments. In the United States, I experienced a certain culture shock when as a young adult, I moved from the breezy informal style that characterizes California to the East Coast, where a far more formal culture prevails.

We are just completing our fourth year of living in Mexico—three years in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, and one year in Mexico City. In Pátzcuaro, our Mexican friends were middle-class professionals and small shopkeepers. Slowly, we are making friends in Mexico City—once again, among middle-class students and professionals in our workshop at the Culture Center and our local shopkeepers.

A scant month ago, we would have placed ourselves in the Adjustment phase of culture shock:

• Honeymoon phase, where everything is seen in a romantic, rosy light;  
• Negotiation phase, where initial excitement gives way to unpleasant feelings of frustration and even anger as one continues to experience unfavorable events that may be perceived as strange and offensive to one's cultural attitude. Cultural anxieties arise not only from unfamiliar ways of performing basic daily routines, but of almost-constant communications challenges—language, including culture-specific body language signals, linguistic nuances and faux pas, conversation tone and customs;
• Adjustment phase, where one grows accustomed to the new culture and develops routines based on knowing what to expect in most situations; the host country no longer feels all that new as events and situations become increasingly "normal". As problem-solving skills for dealing with the culture develop, one begins to accept the culture's ways with a positive attitude. As the culture makes more and more sense, negative cultural reactions and responses diminish;
• Mastery phase, where one participates fully and comfortably in the host culture. Mastery does not mean total conversion; expats often keep many traits from their earlier culture, such as accents and languages. It is often referred to as the stage of biculturalism.

Although it seems unlikely that we might become bicultural at our age, it does seem to us that the longer we live in Mexico, the more genuinely accepting we become of cultural differences. A comment by a British philosopher and his wife interviewed on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary is equally applicable to culture shock:

"If you live long enough, you even come to enjoy each other's foibles."

So that's where we thought we were when our rental contract came up for renewal. Our sense of "adjustment" lasted until the condo's owner sent us an email asking for a 10% rent increase—more than double the 4.3% increased allowed under the contract (rent increases are pegged to Mexico's inflation rate).

We replied in writing that it was our understanding that the annual increase is subject to the terms of the contract, copying the applicable clause from the rental contract. Her reply put us into culture shock:

"The amount specified in the contract is the minimum the rent can be raised."

From our Northern European point of view, she was saying that her signature meant nothing; the contract was meaningless; she was in control of the annual rental increase. Feeling that we had just fallen down Alice's Rabbit Hole, we contacted a lawyer. See Jenny's post, Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo in Jenny's Neighborhood.

Culture Shock 101

We have read a lot about los de arriba (the Haves) in Mexico, its moneyed elite class. We have visited Polanco and seen the opulence, but it has seemed far removed from our lives here in Coyoacán. An expat friend from Pátzcuaro told us about a neighbor who had steered her to a reliable woman for household help. Both  the woman and her husband have been very helpful. My friend pays her what seems fair.

The neighbor woman, who claims she is a granddaughter of one of Mexico's former presidents, asked my friend point-blank what she is paying for household help. When she learned, she hit the roof:

"Do you realize what you are doing to me? You don't realize that the point is to get as much work as possible out of these people and pay them as little as possible."

Gulp. This sheds new light on a remark the apartment owner made when she called me. When I asked her to call our lawyer and discuss the issue with him, she asked me,

"Why are you calling a lawyer? You are my inquilinos, tenants." 

When I thought about her remark later, I couldn't help thinking, "It wouldn't be much different if she'd said, 'You are my peons...on my hacienda." She was saying, in effect, "I own you; I define reality; you do as I say."

When I told Reed, he protested,

"We are not her anything. We are renters mutually bound with her in her role as owner under a signed contract." As our lawyer put it, "As a renter, you have rights and obligations, and so does the owner."

At the end of the earlier Jenny's post, we wondered how she would respond. When we met with the lawyer, we found out that she had insulted him by asking, in a blatant attempt at intimidation, "Joven, young man, how old are you?" Refusing to rise to the bait, his answer was,

"I am young, but fortunately, the law is clear, and I am old enough to know what it says."

The owner called Doña Carlota, the building's administrator and told her that we are groseros, rude people, because we had consulted a lawyer. Carlota was magnificent. She pushed back, saying,

"They are not groseros; they are good people. They came to me because they were worried about your response, and I sent them to the lawyer."

We are in Mexico, which means we were not surprised to learn that the story has yet another layer. Intuitively, I have intentionally developed a good relationship with Carlota, who now told us that the previous tenant had left without paying the rent for several months. Furious, the owner approached Carlota and informed her that part of the money the tenant had paid the building for her parking spot was rightfully hers.

Clearly stung by the episode, Carlota told me, "I had to write her a check from the building's funds." So on another level, our struggle with the owner was, in Carlota's book, payback time.

The owner lives in Cuernavaca, a small city about ninety minutes away from Mexico City. Many of Mexico City's wealthy elite have weekend homes in Cuernavaca, which makes me wonder about her own status.

When we met her a year ago to sign the rental contract, we thought her very well put together. Given her poised self-assurance, we guessed that she was a professional—physician, lawyer, possibly a businessperson. Now we suspect that she may be de arriba, from above.

After the signing, Reed laughingly commented,

"This could have been the closing on a house; it was that formal!"

Little did we know! By asking us to sign a renewal contract, she was binding us to an obligation to pay the full year's rent, whether or not we continued to inhabit the apartment. With her current actions she is, in effect, telling us,

"You are legally bound by the contract, but I am not."

We have neither the owner's address nor her telephone number; her nephew's wife, introduced to us as a lawyer, fronts for her. Last fall I called the lawyer-niece to report that the toilet bowl was leaking water all over the floor and had to be replaced. She explained, "The tenant is responsible for all repairs in the apartment," which is not what the contract says.

Under the contract, infrastructure repairs are the owner's responsibility. Repairs or improvements "for the tenant's convenience" are the tenant's responsibility. Fortunately, I had respectfully hit the roof:

"I am seventy years old, and I have never paid for infrastructure repairs in a rental apartment!" 

The end result was that we split the repair cost fifty-fifty. Given all that's happened since, I feel proud of having successfully extracted fifty percent from her!

Culture Shock 102

Symptoms of culture shock include feelings of helplessness, irritability, anger, withdrawal, fatalistic thoughts, and sleep disruptions. I can relate to these symptoms, but I am also thinking of los de abajo, those from below, Mexico's Have-nots, who historically have been truly powerless.

A Purhépecha friend in Michoacán once told me about the company store still in place on the former hacienda where many of her friends live and work. Theirs is a no-win situation. I can't help thinking about the famously fatalistic mindset of many Mexicans: Is it rooted in this helplessness before arbitrary authoritarianism?

The owner's sense of entitlement ("you are my tenants") to get what she wants is coupled with her willingness simply to ignore the law in order to get it. Her attitude rings a bell. In an earlier post, I wrote,

To be absolutely clear, the social and political structure of Nueva España—authoritarian, hierarchical and often arbitrary—was designed to protect and preserve the Spanish ruling elite. The common people (los de abajo, those below, the Have-nots) had no choice but to defer to the demands and whims of anyone with any kind of official authority.

Her attitude is infuriating precisely because it cannot be challenged within her frame of reference. This no-win situation engenders feelings of helplessness if one intends to remain in the relationship (like us), or if there is no other option (those living on the former hacienda). At the time, the only option we saw was to walk away from the apartment. It seemed to us that the psychological price of remaining was too high.

Unfortunately, walking away is not an option for most of Mexico's Have-nots. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it has not been an option in the past, because today there are signs that many of los de abajo, the Have-nots, are claiming their appropriate status as free agents. It must be noted that the price they pay for claiming their free agency can be very high.

Predictably, our decision not to give in to the owner's attempted manipulation has infuriated her: "How dare you defy me by going against my will?"

Through our lawyer, we communicated our intent to comply fully with the terms of the contract by depositing the legal increase directly into the owner's bank account. We have subsequently learned that the owner has accepted the legal increase, and we are now waiting for the new rental contract. On August 1, we deposited the rent plus the legal increase into the owner's bank account.

Postscript

When we met with our lawyer to sign the new rental contract, he observed:

"The owner was ignorant of her rights and responsibilities under successive contracts, such as rental agreements."

His comment is interesting because it speaks directly to the observation of the legal expert who wrote recently in a Mexican newspaper:

"The Mexican citizenry has a weak commitment to 'legality'. The citizenry has a tendency to see the law as a space for negotiation rather than as a framework of obligations with which one must comply."

I shared this comment with a wise Mexican friend much experienced in the practical aspects of Mexican legal practice, and I asked her, "Is this how the condo's owner sees the issue?"

"I agree fully with the author of the paragraph...that the majority of Mexico's people do not see the law as a set of rights and obligations, but as something that can be adjusted to their own needs or simply not even taken into account, if one has sufficient influence or economic power.

"And yes, effectively, that is the position of the owner of the condo."

Teasing out cultural meanings in Mexico often seems like trying to do a 5,000 piece puzzle without the picture on the box top! It often means making connections between comments and observations made by many different people. In this case, I recall Sandra's offhand comment about the owner,

"She believes that you are foreigners alone in Mexico...without support."

Vulnerable and hence fair game because we seemed to her to be alone, defenseless. Given this legal context, it is encouraging that our lawyer sees his role as one of raising awareness among his fellow countrymen and women about the legal 'rules of the game'.

So it is our hope that we have succeeded in establishing a precedent. We hope that next year's renewal process will be routine. We hope that our record of consistent on-time rental payments, coupled with our care of her property, will persuade the owner over the course of the next year that we are in fact the buenos inquilinos, good tenants, that she initially judged us to be. Time will tell.

Update: August 7, 2013

We just returned from signing the new contract. It proved to be the case that the on-time appearance of rent payments in her bank account, plus our care of her property appear to have persuaded her that we are, in fact, buenos inquilinos. In fact, she said as much, as did the rental contract/insurance company representative.

Interestingly, in her review of the new contract, the landlady noticed that it indicated we had paid a one-month security, when in fact we had made a two-month security deposit. She also discovered an error in the amount of the maintenance fee.

Our attorney was late. While the administrator was having the errors in the contract corrected, the landlady made several disparaging comments about how difficult it is to deal with our lawyer. She observed that since the rental contract is now quite routine, perhaps it isn't necessary for us to have an attorney. Reed responded diplomatically, saying that since we struggle with the language, it's advisable for us to have a lawyer.

By the time the attorney arrived, the errors had been corrected, and we were in the process of signing the contracts. The day ended well.

Still Curious?

A light-hearted, even humorous article comparing U.S. and Mexican attitudes toward rule of law appeared recently in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Legal "Fines" as a Teaching Tool was written by a Mexican anthropologist and academic who lived in California for some months while he taught at UCLA.

Other Jenny's posts dealing with the general theme of the rule of law:

• Renewing Rent Contract 1: Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo relates our initial reaction and the first actions we took when our rental contract came up for renewal;
• Renewing Rent Contract 2: Rule of Law Kicks In describes how 'the system' effectively corralled the owner by enforcing limits around her arbitrary wishes;
• Renewing Rent Contract 3: We Sign New Contract!; 
• Bureaucracy: Labyrinths of Power relates what we learned when we had to move our bank account from Pátzcuaro to Mexico City;
• What Makes Mexico's Legal System So Different? is the question we had to answer when trying to renew our resident visas at Immigration;
• Work in Mexico: "It's my job" discusses the rise of the informal economy not only as a coping strategy for dealing with an authoritarian, often arbitrary and hostile environment, but as a way of maintaining personal dignity and respect;
• Partying With Impunity next-door to Jenny's apartment discusses yet another aspect of the rule of law; namely, a lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. 

Related articles translated from Mexican newspapers and posted on Reed's Mexico Voices blog:

• Mexico Post-Election: And now what?" asks Marta Lama, anthropologist and leader in the movement for women's rights. Her description of the destructive role of machismo in Mexican political practices and advocacy for development of a strong opposition in the Congress includes the role of negotiation in arriving at solutions agreeable to the entire country; the discussion is useful because it means developing agreements that are mutually beneficial, rather than one-sided;
• Mexico Post-Election: On Education and Politics by Manuel Pérez Rocha, President of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), celebrates the success of informal education projects undertaken at the grassroots level by the left and urges their continued effort;
• Mexico Post-Election: Creatively Fed Up by internationally-recognized activist Gustavo Esteva describes growing grassroots social movements, precisely the kind of activity urged by Pérez Rocha in the previous article.

A Sense of Time in Mexico

Once we'd decided to move to Mexico, Reed and I began reading everything we could get our hands on about Mexico, including a delightful book titled On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel de Allende. Written by U.S. expat Tony Cohan, it is a readable, affectionate account of the cultural adventures encountered by Tony and his wife as they slowly made the transition from life as busy professionals in Los Angeles to full-timers in Mexico.

As I began this post, the title On Mexican Time quickly came to mind. Mañana must be nearly a universal idea these days. At the least, it conveys the notion that Mexicans have a concept of time a bit different from that held by most folks in the U.S. But what is it exactly?

I was reminded of this when we had to replace the vertical blinds in our bedroom. The strong winds that come up in the afternoon had broken several of the slats, which meant we had a gaping hole about 18" wide. But finding someone to replace them seemed a 'mission impossible' until Victor, our trusted vigilancia (building guard and informal majo domo), introduced us to Antonio, the albañil (master tradesman) who does a lot of work in our building. We began to believe that new blinds might be in our near future.

Antonio arrived promptly the same day to measure the window, and he told us he'd return on Friday at noon with the sample book so we could make our selection. The story gets a little complicated here, so before I go on, bear with me while we take a small detour. It'll be worth it, I promise.

Time Viewed in Mexico

Twenty years ago I did a two-year project with Pemex (Mexican oil company). One of my co-consultants recommended the little book Mexican Etiquette and Ethics: Anticipating and Understanding Mexican Social and Business Behavior (1996). I just discovered that the book has been lightly updated, and it remains remarkably useful. Where it seems outmoded, we ask ourselves, Does this still apply today? If not, we use the text as a jumping off point for understanding our own experience.

One section, titled Hora Mexicana / Dealing with Polychronic People, draws on the work of social scientist Edward T. Hall, who identified two kinds of time values that operate in different cultures:

• Monochronic, or one-thing-at-a-time time, which includes most people in Anglo-European cultures, including most people in the United States; and
• Polychronic, or many-things-at-a-time time, which includes most Asians, Mexicans and most other Hispanics.

Monochronic people (M-people) see time (M-time) as moving constantly forward in a straight line. Compulsively measuring time in tiny segments to keep track of its passing, they schedule things to happen sequentially—one at a time in specific time frames, and they tend to be obsessed with things happening "on time". M-people find any deviation in their precisely structured use of time to be very upsetting. Sound familiar?

Polychronic people (P-people) have a much more amorphous view of time. When we visited Teotihuacan, I wrote about the Mesoamerican view of space and time. Teotihuacan's first god-kings and city planners designed Teotihuacan to illustrate their vision of the cosmos. Above all, the Mesoamerican view is a cyclic view of time represented by the symbol ollin, the Life-Force that animates all life.

Ollín - Intertwining Ribbons represent the Life-Force that neither begins nor ends.

P-people, then, have a far more fluid, even seasonal sense of time. By seasonal I mean a morning, a mid-day, afternoon and evening recognized more as seasons than as specific hours, let alone minutes. Even days and nights are somewhat seasonal, or fluid. Far more open-ended than precisely segmented into strict minutes and hours, or even days and weeks, seasons neither start nor stop 'on the dot'. Instead, they seem to flow into each other. Agrarian societies all over the world, operate on P-time.

P-people routinely schedule—or allow—many things to occur at the same time. They are at ease juggling things around so that eventually all of them—or, at least, some of them—get done. They don't think twice about scheduling more than one appointment at the same time, accepting more than one work assignment that is "supposed" to be done in the same time frame, or intermittently doing two or three things during the same time period.

I wish I could remember where I came across this definition of mañana, but it is very useful. When a person on P-time agrees to do something mañana, it doesn't necessarily mean in twenty-four hours. It means that the task now has a place on the doer's list of commitments, and it will get done...when it more-or-less rises to the top of the list, or when it seems to be the next natural thing to do.

Maybe now's the time to mention that one of Mexico's many cultural divides is between the global, neoliberal business sector and the rest of Mexico. A relatively latecomer to the world scene, M-time arrived with industrialization, which demands it. As key sectors of Mexico become increasingly global, more and more Mexicans are becoming accustomed to M-time. Many here in Mexico City even speak of being puntual, punctual.

Back to the Vertical Blinds

But Reed and I don't live in modern Mexico and, most assuredly, neither does Antonio. So we weren't surprised when he didn't show up at the agreed-upon time. Feeling ourselves to be 'old Mexico hands', we were cool for the first several days, figuring that he'd show up in good time. Nothing.

Then one day as I passed through the Lobby, and there he was! Victor was on duty, so we had a lighthearted exchange around "What happened?"  I told Antonio that I thought he wasn't interested in doing the work. The genuinely shocked look on his face told me that he did want the work, which reassured me enormously.

He hung his head in mock guilt and agreed to come on the following Monday at noon, but Monday noon came and went with no sign of Antonio. Maybe now's the time to mention another trait we've noticed: it seems to be very difficult for Mexican tradespeople to tell us that they either don't have or can't do something.

Three weeks had now passed, and I'd given up when I again came across Antonio in the Lobby. This time he told me that the salesman had brought the sample, but he had to pay for it and he didn't have the money.

"But now I have it," he added, and we made yet another appointment.

This time I decided to pull out the stops—well, actually, I pulled out the only stop I know: suffering. I told him that so many of the slats have broken that now when our upstairs neighbor across the air-shaft leaves a light on in the bathroom, it shines right on my face so I can't sleep:

"Estoy sufriendo, Antonio; es muy dificil"—"I'm suffering, Antonio; it's very difficult". 

I was appealing to Antonio's chivalry and his sense of honor toward women. Maybe my tactic worked, because this time he arrived at the appointed hour with sample book in hand. We chose the color and made an appointment for him to install the blinds on the following Saturday at noon.

Now here's the fun part of P-time. I next chanced upon Antonio on Monday, and he told me he had the curtains and could install them on Thursday at 4:00 PM. On the appointed day, I made a quick trip to the local market, arriving back at 3:30 PM, a full half hour before our appointed hour.

Who was waiting for me in the Lobby with the new curtains at his feet? Antonio...all smiles. He'd been chatting with his good friend, Victor, while he waited for me to return. Obviously, installing my blinds had risen to the top of Antonio's list. When I mentioned this to Reed, he observed,

"Yet another example of the personalismo, where business is conducted subjectively based on personal relationships rather than objectively based on an impersonal fee-for-service transaction."

To us M-timers, a specific date and time is sacrosanct, but for people operating on P-time it is just one more task that will occur sometime in its season. I'm convinced that personalizing my experience—I'm suffering because I can't sleep—is what propelled installation of our blinds to the top of Antonio's list. Oh, yes—the blinds look great, and I'm sleeping much better, thank you!

Still Curious?

Jenny's Post: Mesoamerican God-Kings As City Planners.

Another book by Tony Cohan Mexican Days: Journey into the Heart of Mexico.

The Colonial Roots of Mexico City's Shopkeepers and Street Vendors

A funny thing happened on our way to the José Luis Cuevas Museum in Mexico City's Historic District. After almost five years in Mexico, Reed and I are pretty much accustomed to encountering adventures on even the most ordinary of trips. So when we set out to visit the Museum, we weren't looking for adventure but we weren't surprised when it appeared.

We found ourselves walking in a section of the Historic District new to us. Unlike many streets where street-level facades have been 'modernized', the area around the Museum has not suffered this fate. In order to see the original colonial features of buildings on the commercialized streets, one has to look up to the second and third stories. But in this neighborhood the colonial features of the buildings are satisfyingly at eye level.

As we walked, Reed's attention was increasingly focused on finding the best way to capture the street's magic in the camera's lens. Probably now is a good time to mention that when Reed turns on his camera and is looking for the 'best frame', he tends to wander off like a toddler. His wandering opened a space for some quiet reflections of my own.

The colonial structures caught my eye, but the sidewalk shops interested me even more.

I felt drawn to the people and to how the buildings are being used today. These streets are just a block or so east of the monumental grandeur of Mexico City's Zócalo (main plaza) and of the National Palace, the country's seat of government.

These buildings were first a symbol of the power of the Spanish Crown, then later of Mexico's landed elite. Now they are a working class neighborhood with small shops tucked into the original colonial structures. On Sundays, the streets are closed to traffic, which enhances the always-vibrant street life.

As I continued to stroll along the street of this gritty, yet dignified and friendly neighborhood, something tugged at a corner of my mind...asking that I pay attention.

The sign on the shop advertises "School Uniforms Rosita" - Rosita is the shop's owner

Then we turned the corner, and the José Luis Cuevas Museum came into view.

The Museum's trim facade makes a dramatic contrast to the gentle aura of benign neglect that characterizes the neighborhood.

Then and Now

The Museum occupies space in what was once a Convent for Franciscan brothers brought to evangelize the original people. My thoughts float back to the earliest years of Nueva España, the colony that Cortés established in the lands that today are Mexico. Few Spanish women made the arduous voyage to this colony on the other side of the ocean.

As a result, Cortes's former soldiers took indigenous women as their wives. But their offspring, the first mestizos (mixed-race people) were forbidden by the Crown to own land, hold office, or serve in the military. Consequently, mestizos were essentially outcasts surviving as best they could.

Excluded from gainful employment and labeled léperos ("oafs"), they were often reduced to becoming street people who lived by begging and petty thievery. Colonial accounts tell of motines, periodic riots by léperos who ransacked buildings, leaving them in shambles.

I remember being intrigued by an historian's observation that "sons beloved by their Spanish fathers were often set up as small shopkeepers." The sociologist in me wondered about the underlying logic...why shopkeepers?

Most likely, of course, the answer lies in the rich market tradition that predates the Spanish by hundreds of years. My hypothesis is that in setting up their sons as shopkeepers, these Spanish fathers were capitalizing on their sons' natural aptitudes and skills.

Reed has a saying that, "Wherever three Mexicans are gathered together, at least two of them are  selling something." Twenty years ago, my longtime Mexican friend commented, "Mercado (market) is an essential piece of Mexican culture." It has taken some time for me to absorb this aspect of the culture, and its richness seems to grow apace with my understanding.

Some of you are aware that Reed and I select and translate articles from the Mexican press--opinion pieces, expert analyses, government reports. We publish the translations in the Mexico Voices blog, thus making them available to English-speakers in the U.S. who want to understand our southern neighbor better.

One of the key themes over the last six months is that sixty percent of Mexicans work in what is termed the informal—i.e., cash—economy, which means that these workers lack such benefits as vacation and sick time, health insurance and pension. Sixty percent!

As I strolled through this unrestored colonial neighborhood, I couldn't help wondering whether the historic roots of these small shops may be found in those first marriages between Spanish soldiers who settled here seeking lives of luxury and leisure and the indigenous women who entered into those unions seeking a better future for their children. Are these the shops of the "cherished mestizo sons" of Spanish fathers who did their best to provide them with a means of making a living?

In the U.S., temporary or contract employment falls into this category. Jobs in Mexico's informal economy make up: 94% of work in agriculture; 73% in construction and manufacturing; 63% in transport; 48% in the service sector; and 22% in financial services, insurance and government posts.

Workers sitting at the side of the Mexico City Cathedral offering their services as albañiles (tradesmen):
Plumber and Natural Gas, Installer of Wall and Floor Tiles, etc. (Photo: René Soto in Milenio)

I also wonder about Mexico City's ambulantes, the street peddlers found on almost every street hawking their wares. Most certainly they are part of the informal economy. Ambulantes offer to drivers of cars stopped at traffic lights a variety of products: the day's newspaper, bottled water, sleeves to protect the bare left arm from the strong sun during the dry season, umbrellas during the rainy season, fruit, chips, candy...you get the idea!

Today on my way to the laundry, an ambulante selling leather belts called to me from across the street. We buy our drinking water from Sergio, an ambulante who brings the bottles from a platform on the front of a tricycle, which he supplies from his pick-up truck parked about a block away. Another ambulante pedals a tricycle with steam kettles from which he sells Oaxaca-style tamales wrapped in banana leaves.

One of Many Street Vendors Selling Food (Photo: Reed)

Is it possible that today's street peddlers are descended from those first mestizo outcasts?

Street Vendors in the Tabacalera neighborhood
(Photo: Reed)

Still Curious?

From Jenny's blog:

• Saturday Market in Coyoacán;
• Mexico: A Short History.

From Mexico Voices blog:

• Using New Metric, INEGI Finds 60 Percent of Mexican Workers in Informal Economy;
• Mexico Workers: "We Just Want to Work, So Our Families May Eat".

"Cover Me With Your Rebozo" - Museum of Popular Culture

A funny thing happened to this post on its way to publication. I thought I knew what I was writing about. A year ago, I published a post about rebozos. For months, Rebozos in Michoacán and Elsewhere has been among Jenny's Top Five All-Time Most-Viewed Posts.

So when the Museum of Popular Cultures in Coyoacán announced a rebozo exhibit titled "Cover Me With Your Rebozo", I was one of the first in line.

Rebozo from Exhibit "Cover Me With Your Rebozo" at the
National Museum of Popular Culture, Coyoacán (Mexico City)
Photo: Reed (Click to Enlarge)

The rebozo is a typical Mexican garment worn like a shawl. It is described poetically as the cradle that lulls, the jacket that covers, the shade that refreshes, the garment that crowns, the elegance that distinguishes. As an ongoing tradition in all parts of the country, it is regarded as a national symbol.

Gregorio de Gante's poem titled,"Ode to the Rebozo" makes explicit the symbolic value of the rebozo. The introduction to the exhibit quoted two stanzas from the poem. Curiosity piqued, I found the poem on the Internet. And that's where the post fell off the rails of this blogger's best intentions and editorial control. (See my translation, Poem: "Ode to the Rebozo")

Poem's Historical Context

The poem is beautiful; its imagery vivid. References to the rebozo's role in the life cycle of rural Mexicans resonated so strongly with my experiences in Pátzcuaro that I decided to translate the poem into English. But translation brought me up against references so distinctly Mexican that I considered omitting some stanzas. Fortunately, my inner self cautioned, "Not so fast, Jenny." I turned to my good friend and teacher of Spanish for help (CELEP).

The more I learned, the more I came to understand the poem's complexity and relevance. Not for the first time, my attempt to understand a seemingly isolated piece of the complex fabric called "the culture" of Mexico, seems to lead straight into the complexity that is Mexico's multi-layered cultural whole.

A light bulb went on as I read a biography of the poet Gregorio de Gante. Why was I not surprised to learn that Gante was born in 1890, which means he was twenty years old in 1910 when the Mexican Revolution broke out?

The poem's references are not only to the Mexican Revolution, which Gante and his brothers joined, fighting in the Revolutionary Forces under General Antonio Medina, but also to the War for Independence from Spain, which had taken place a hundred years earlier.

Brief History of Mexico | Setting the stage

I recall that Mexico's War for Independence (1810-1821) was begun by criollos (Spanish born in Mexico) rebelling against their lack of political rights and hence their exclusion from political power. Intent on maintaining control, the Spanish Crown permitted only peninsulares (Spanish born in Spain) to hold office. Once gained, however, Independence simply set off a hundred years of civil strife inside Mexico.

Conservatives favored establishment of a monarchy; Liberals favored populist, representative government. These forces struggled to gain control over the fledgling country that lacked practical experience in self-governance, including basic notions of compromise and rule of law.

The election of Porfirio Díaz in 1876 brought some stability to the country, but at a steep price. Once in office, Díaz held onto the presidency for thirty-four years (1876-1911), a period of dictatorship known as the Porfiriato. Primarily by encouraging foreign investment, Díaz not only achieved internal stability, but fostered modernization and economic growth. Economic progress, however, was achieved through violent repression and exclusion of most Mexicans from economic opportunity and power—injustices that triggered the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910.

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) was not a coherent political movement under a unified leadership. Rather, it was another bitter fight between the landed elites and the masses in an ongoing political dynamic that continued to pit Conservatives (landed elites in favor of strong central government) against Liberals (populists in favor of representative government).

Nurturing Mexican Nationalism | Enter the rebozo

When the fighting wound down in 1917 and the dust finally settled in 1920 with the election of Álvaro Obregón as president, the landed elites had more or less prevailed over the populist forces. But if the government was intentional about subduing popular revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, it was equally intentional about fostering a sense of Mexican nationalism to support the nation's newly approved Constitution (1917).

To support its nationalist goal, the government drew on the traditional values of Mexico's indigenous peoples and actively supported the arts and artists. Literature, poetry, music, dance, photography and painting—all received government support. The common denominator in the theme of this cultural work was the Mexican Revolution, whose anniversary is celebrated annually on November 20.

Government support fostered the internationally recognized Mexican Mural Movement. The "Great Three" Mexican Muralists—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros—embraced the twin themes of indigenous values and the Mexican Revolution. In doing so, they created a mythology around the Mexican Revolution and Mexico's indigenous people. It is a mythology that remains strong in the imagination of Mexico's people to this day.

Silent films made from 1917-1920—years recognized as being a significant precursor to the famed Golden Age of Mexican Film (1935-1959)—provided valuable documentaries of key events in the Mexican Revolution. When 'talkies' arrived, the key themes were explored in various ways, often by means of tragic love stories pairing los de abajo (those from below, indigenous peoples) with los de arriba (those from above, the ruling elite).

Mariano Azuela, a physician during the Mexican Revolution, wrote a collection of short stories titled Los de abajo (Those from Below), that have become classics...as have the short stories of Juan Rulfo titled El llano en llamas (The Plains in Flames).

Regional bands playing traditional Mexican songs and traditional dances are an integral part of this national project; the world-famous Ballet Foklórico of Mexico, for example, was founded in 1952.

This, then, sets the stage for Gante's poem and for the rebozo exhibit. My translation and notes are available on Jenny's Page "Ode to the Rebozo".

"Cover Me With Your Rebozo"

The title of the exhibit at the Museum of Popular Cultures speaks to the rebozo as a transcendent national symbol that 'covers' all Mexicans: certainly, los de abajo (those from below) but los de arriba (those from above) as well.

The rebozos in the exhibit (shown below) are winners of a national competition.

Exhibit Photographs: Reed.
Click to Enlarge.

Regional Rebozos

Crafting a rebozo is a time-consuming, fifteen-step process that moves from spinning, winding, twisting and dyeing the thread, to weaving and pressing the finished product.

Given all these steps, each rebozo takes from 30-90 days to complete, depending on the complexity of the design. Both men and women weave rebozos, but the rapacejo or tejido en las puntas ['knitting on the stitches' to create the fringes], is an art practiced only by women who, with their fine finger dexterity and skill, create figures ranging from 'grecas' [traditional geometric patterns] to stars and legendary figures.

Rebozos may be of cotton, wool, silk, raw silk, or artisela. Artisela is a synthetic silk whose cellulose is made from wood fiber. Artisela, or Chardonnay silk, was invented in 1886 in France by Count Hilario of Chardonnay. Artisela was shown for the first time in Paris in 1889. Less expensive and easier to obtain than silk, artisela is often substituted for silk, which is an increasingly expensive raw material. Because of the cost, traditional silk rebozos are today generally made to order and affordable only by the wealthy few.

Rebozos are made in several states of Mexico. Each state's rebozos are identifiable by style, form and colors. The most highly recognizable rebozos come from:

• Tenancingo, State of Mexico;
• Silk rebozos, Santa María del Río, San Luis Potosí [see videos, below];
• Los palomos, Uriangato, Guanajuato [see video, below];
• Raw silk rebozos from the Cajonos region of Oaxaca [The opening 15-second segment of this UTube video is delivered in an indigenous language, but the excellent images of manual processes speak for themselves];
• Gasa (chiffon or crepe) rebozos from the Sierra Norte of Puebla; 
• Rebozos from Piedad and Aranza in Michoacán [see video, below].

Still Curious?

"Tápame con el rebozo": Recent Exhibit at Museo de Culturas Populares in Coyocán (Mexico City); also article from Milenio newspaper (in Spanish).

Piropos al Rebozo de Gregorio de Gante (Spanish original).

Casa de las Artesanías, Santa María del Río, San Luis Potosí:

• Rebozo Designs and Colors;
• Six Remarkable Ways to Wear a Rebozo.

Elsa Castillo Gallery, seda (silk) and artisela (synthetic silk made from wood fibers) rebozos from Santa María del Río, San Luis Potosí.

History of the Rebozo (Uriangato, Guanajuato): UTube video features old photographs and segments that show the spinning of thread and weavers at looms weaving rebozos.

Sociedad Cooperativa de Piedad, Michoacán (English); web site provides useful description of the process for making rebozos, including definition of key terms.

Related Jenny's posts:

• Poem: "Ode to the Rebozo" (my translation);
• Rebozos in Michoacán and Elsewhere;
• A Short History of Mexico;
• Diego Rivera: Artist for Mexico's People.

On Searching for Coriander in Mexico City

Cilantro Seeds
Photo: Butterfly Kitchen
See link in Still Curious? section, below.

Cooking in Mexico is quite enjoyable. For one thing, way more fresh ingredients make their way into the pot. To tell the truth,  fruits and vegetables just plain taste better down here. The carrots are sweeter, tastier—as are the beets. Spinach and Swiss chard come straight from the fields. Beans simmered in my traditional earthenware bean pot from Pátzcuaro carry a flavor all their own.

Herbs and spices can be a challenge. It isn't that they aren't here; it's just that searching for them with their Spanish names is often daunting. On the upside, I've discovered that crushing herbs with my small wooden mortar and pestle—rather than crushing them with my finger in the palm of my hand—releases the herbs' fragrances in a most pleasing way.

Then there are the recipes that produce multiple challenges. I had one this week. I had made a big pot of garbanzo beans. On an impulse I'd also bought half of a HUGE squash, which I'd baked and pureed hoping I could use it as a substitute for sugar pumpkin. Short answer: it is scrumptious in Pumpkin Bread!

Looking for a dinner option, I googled the ingredients. Up came a promising Chicken-Pumpkin-Garbanzo Goulash. So far so good. I sauteed onions and chicken in a little oil. The seasonings were easy: 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger and cumin; and 1 tablespoon of coriander. Oops. Coriander?

Just so I don't leave the cooks hanging, the recipe also calls for a couple of cups of diced tomatoes—I did mention that I use all fresh ingredients, didn't I? I use plum tomatoes, no additives, no preservatives...delicious. And pumpkin. I used a cup of the squash puree that I'd made, but chunks of baked pumpkin could also be used—actually, I'll try that next.

Served over couscous, the recipe was okay without coriander, but definitely lacked pizazz! Time to start looking.

Day 2: Getting Started

My first stop was the dictionary: Coriander is coriandro in Spanish. So far, so good—or so I thought. But a thorough search of the spice shelves at the supermarket yielded nothing, so I quizzed the young woman who stocks the spices. She'd never heard of coriandro.  The hunt was on!

While I was in the produce area, I asked the man stacking cucumbers the same question. He kind of looked around, then sotto voce told me, "We don't have them. Go to the abarrotes (little grocery stores), they'll have them."

Confused, I asked, "In the mercado?"  His smile lit up the area, "Yes, that's right."

I smothered a smile as I thought of our good friend in Pátzcuaro whose reply to the query, "Where can we buy...?" was unfailingly "En el mercado" (in the market). It became a standing joke among the three of us.

When I got home, I emailed my longtime friend from Mexico City, who now lives with her family in the United States. From her I learned that coriander is the seed of cilantro:

"Ask for semilla de cilantro," she urged me, "in the herb section of the mercado." I sighed...yet again...está en el mercado...believe me, Mexico's market tradition goes back millenia...way before the Spanish arrived, and it is alive and well!

Curious, I googled cilantro and learned that cilantro leaves (used in Mexico even more than parsley is used in the U.S.) and its seeds deliver two entirely different flavors. But how on earth would I roast the seeds?

A Canadian friend who winters in Ajijic, Mexico, is a gourmet cook. So I emailed her, asking if I could persuade her to bring me coriander when she comes in a week. She demurred in favor of my finding cilantro seeds.

"It's easy," she wrote, "just clean up the seeds, dry roast them and grind them in your coffee grinder. Your coriander will be much fresher than any I can bring." This was starting to get interesting.

Day 3: Our Local Mercado, Perhaps?

On my way out, I happened into our building administrator, Doña Carlota, who is a wealth of information. I believe she's on a mission to wean me from the 'super' (supermarket). Each time I make a discovery of something else I can buy in our local market, she nods approvingly while commenting, "Now you're learning."

The truth is that every week, I buy more products locally. So I asked Carlota if I might find cilantro seeds in our local mercado—a block and a half away. Carlota was doubtful. As we chatted, it became obvious that she didn't know anything about cilantro seeds.

Mindful of the advice of both my long-time friend and the produce clerk ("go to the mercado"), my next thought was the Tianguis de Sábado, the open-air market held each Saturday on a street about a 10-minute walk from our apartment. The Tianguis is a rich source of all kinds of food stuffs: beans, chiles, fresh fruits and vegetables, so it seemed natural that they might have coriander as well.

Day 4: Saturday Open-Air Market

When I arrived at the Tianguis, I began looking for the herb lady, but she wasn't there that week, so I proceeded to the stall where I buy the sinfully-delicious almond-chocolate mole (delicious over baked chicken breasts), dried cranberries, granola (amaranth, sunflower seeds, various nuts, naturally sweetened) and ALL my beans (black, garbanzos, May and June beans—similar to pinto beans, but harvested in the named months).

As I was leaving, I spotted plastic bags of natural (unrefined) sugar. So I bought a two kilo [four pound] bag for 25 pesos [US$1.89]. One more item bought locally. Carlota would be pleased.

I'd begun to walk up the street when I remembered the cilantro seeds, so I stopped at a produce stand featuring a large display of greens. The vendor greeted my query with disinterest, but his customer lit up and told me to go to the stall that sells chiles: "They have them."

I had to laugh. It was the same stall I'd just left, and the vendor's wife laughed when I came back for a third purchase. She told me that she hadn't brought cilantro seeds this week, but she'd have them next week.

Day 6: Local Mercado Churubusco

Despite Carlota's skepticism, I nonetheless decided to ask the owners of the wonderful abarrotes shop in our local mercado if they had seeds of cilantro. To my surprise, Tonita nodded yes, then added, "Son bolitos" (little balls), before turning to look for them. I can definitively state that coriander is not in common use in Mexico City!

Tonita and her husband, Armando, must have searched for a full five minutes. I'd about given up, when approached the counter with a plastic bag full of a seeds.

"How much do you want?" he asked.

I had no idea, so I tentatively replied, "Medio?"

He looked at me as if I'd suddenly developed an embarrassing tic, then tactfully suggested, "I'll measure out 100 grams, and you can decide."

Keep in mind that I still struggle with the metric system. I know that a kilo is roughly two pounds (2.2 pounds, to be exact). I'm comfortable with cuarto (1/2 pound) and medio (1 pound). I felt quite proud recently when I heard a woman ask for tres cuartos (pound and a half) and realized the utility of tres cuartos, but grams...to ounces??? 

I had little clue how to respond, but I can now definitively state that 100 grams [3.5 ounces] of cilantro seed is, of course, more than I'll be able to use in about a hundred years. Maybe I can take some seeds up to our daughters.

When I got home, I realized that I had no idea how to dry roast the seeds. So I checked the Internet...and  an entirely new world opened before me!!!

"The Taste of Conquest" immediately pops into my mind. It's a fascinating account of the role the spice trade played in the Europeans' explorations of the world. My former next-door neighbor in Connecticut is not only a voracious reader, but an incurably curious one as well—and a superb cook, often using ingredients she's grown in her garden. So when she recommended this history of the spice trade, I knew it would be good.

The role of pimiento (pepper, capsicum) in global exploration is especially interesting, but cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cumin, nutmeg and allspice were all important items of global trade—and many spices are seeds that are dry roasted then ground to a powder or even mashed with mortar and pestle.

I had indeed hit the jackpot with the web search. What I found are several sites that discuss dry roasting  of a whole variety of seeds, starting with—you guessed it—coriander and cumin, two of the ingredients in my recipe.

Day 7: Coriander the Old-Fashioned Way by Roasting and Grinding Cilantro Seeds

Finding coriander had now morphed into a cross-cultural effort spanning the ENTIRE North American Continent: Mexico, United States and Canada. Gotta love it.

Back home, the next task was separating good seeds from the inevitable twigs and seed husks. After a laboriously slow start, I found that if I spread a couple of tablespoons of the seeds on a piece of wax paper and nudged them with a dinner knife, the good seeds would roll easily and could be herded by the knife into a custard dish. It took awhile, but eventually I had separated about half the seeds.

Next I got out and heated my faithful Calphalon deep skillet, tossed in the seeds and stirred them continuously for about five or six minutes while I waited for them to release their fragrance. Then I emptied them back into the custard dish to cool before grinding them in the coffee grinder.

Coriander: Roasted and Ground Cilantro Seeds
Photo: Butterfly Kitchen

I have to admit that when I added the cinnamon-ginger-cumin and freshly prepared coriander to the onions I was sauteing, the fragrance alone was worth all the effort. Served that night over couscous, the goulash was pronounced a success. Interestingly, it was even more flavorful the following day.

People sometimes ask us, "But what do you do in Mexico?" Perhaps this post gives a few hints. !Buen provecho!  Bon appetite!

Still Curious?

Related Jenny post: Saturday Market in Coyoacán.

How to Dry Roast Coriander Seeds (nee Cilantro Seeds). I also read that spice seeds are available in Natural Food Stores.

From AllRecipes.com Chicken-Garbanzo Bean-Pumpkin Goulash. After I'd already published, I decided to include the recipe. When I searched, I found all kinds of wonderful combinations, including a Tunisian adaptation that looks promising.

Renewing Rent Contract 3: We Signed New Contract!

The outer bands from Hurricane Ernesto persist today over Mexico City, but the sun is shining in our apartment. Today, August 13, is turning out to be a very good day for us. This morning we met with our lawyer to sign next year's rental contract.

August 14 at Dawn! We feel blessed by the gods! After way too many days totally socked in due to rain bands from Huracán Ernesto, here's the vista that greeted us this morning! At the left, snow-capped Iztaccíhuatl sleeps nestled among the clouds, while Popocatéptl continues smoking away at the right. Today is a very good day!

The number thirteen is significant in Mesoamerican culture. The Divinatory Calendar (El Tonalpohualli) was created by combining twenty day-names with thirteen numbers in rotation. The Divinatory Calendar was used to foretell the fate of individuals at birth. I haven't been able to discover specifically why thirteen, but a scholarly paper notes that:

"The mathematic relationships and interactions of the tonalpohualli, involving the Venus cycle in conjunction with the solar and lunar calendars, gave rise to complicated calculations, auguries, myths and legends in the Mesoamerican belief system."

August 13: Auspicious Day to Sign a Contract

Our meeting with the lawyer was quite remarkable...as have been many of our encounters with the people of Mexico.

We were at the lawyer's office promptly at 9:00 AM. He arrived a couple of minutes later. The contracts were ready for Reed to initial and sign. We wrote the check for the "rent guarantee" that will kick in if we fail to pay the rent.

Then we chatted a bit. He told us that the owner had been ignorant of the law in the area of "successive contracts", such as rental agreements. Then he added:

"My job is to conciliate—not to provoke the owner, but to find ways to raise awareness about the applicable law and in so doing, to reconcile the interests of all the parties to a contract." 

I responded:

"As foreigners, there is nothing we can do to raise awareness about the rule of law in Mexico. But when we encounter a legal situation that involves us directly, we feel it is our responsibility to take a position that upholds the rule of law.

"We could not have done this alone. We want to thank you for your help. Not only do we lack the language skills, but we lack the necessary legal foundation and cultural awareness. You have been essential in helping us, perhaps, to raise the awareness of one landlady in all of Mexico about the rule of law." 

He smiled as he nodded in agreement, then added:

"It is my pleasure to help you. When people try to take advantage of someone, I want to use the law to protect the rights and obligations specified by the law on behalf of all the involved parties."

At his words, I recalled our first meeting, he spoke what is, for him, obviously a much-rehearsed line:

"As renters, you have certain rights and obligations under the law...but so does the owner."

His comment is interesting because it speaks directly to the observation of a recent legal expert who wrote in a Mexican newspaper:

"The Mexican citizenry has a weak commitment to 'legality'. The citizenry has a tendency to see the law as a space for negotiation rather than as a framework of obligations with which one must comply."

I shared this comment with a wise friend much experienced in the practical aspects of Mexican legal practice, and I asked her, "Is this how the condo's owner sees the issue?"

"I agree fully with the author of the paragraph...that the majority of Mexico's people do not see the law as a set of rights and obligations, but as something that can be adjusted to their own needs or simply not even taken into account, if one has sufficient influence or economic power.

"And yes, effectively, that is the position of the owner of the condo."

Given this legal context, it is encouraging that our lawyer sees his role as one of raising awareness of the legal 'rules of the game'.

So it is our hope that we have succeeded in establishing a precedent. We hope that next year's renewal process will be routine. We hope that our record of consistent on-time rental payments, coupled with our care of her condo, will persuade the owner over the course of the next year that we are the buenos inquilinos, good tenants, that she initially judged us to be.

This has not been a comfortable process for us, but we feel gratified by the outcome. We are hopeful that this process may have contributed in a minor way—by helping one landlady become more aware of what 'rule of law' in Mexico is coming to mean in everyday terms.

Still Curious?

Related Jenny's posts:

• Renewing Rent Contract 1: Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo relates the first actions we took in response to the owner's 'arbitrary' demand for a rent increase in violation of the contract;
• Renewing Rent Contract 2: Rule of Law Kicks In adds richness to the tale by adding the point of view of both the rental agent and don Rigoberto, who owns a couple of rental properties;
• Partying With Impunity next-door to Jenny's apartment touches on a key issue for rule of law; namely, the absence of reliable enforcement mechanisms;
• Aztec Stone of the Five Suns describes the Divinatory Calendar;
• Bureaucracy: Labyrinths of Power relates what we learned when we had move our bank account from Pátzcuaro to Mexico City;
• What Makes Mexico's Legal System So Different? is the question we had to answer when trying to renew our Mexican resident visas;
• Work in Mexico: "It's my job" discusses the rise of the informal economy not only as a coping strategy for dealing with an authoritarian, often arbitrary and hostile environment, but as a way of maintaining personal dignity and respect.

Posts about Rule of Law in Reed's Mexico Voices blog, which presents articles in translation from the Mexico press:

• UNAM Head Urges Mexico Legal Profession to Resolve Challenges of Justice reports remarks by President of National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to meeting of legal professionals;
• Mexico: Citizenship in Its Infancy and the Culture of Illegality by Héctor Aguilar Camín—journalist, historian and novelist—who writes often about Mexican politics and the challenges facing Mexico. He is editor of Nexos, a monthly magazine of political and cultural commentary.