somehow…
Several of the killer rapists went to trial, others remained free. The assistant prosecutor was let go from his post and transferred to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer. There he could go after those who upped the price too much on video cassettes.
IV
Can it be that the black cloud of pollution that runs in the
fast lane from the northeast to the southwest slowly drives us crazy?
Yet there’s something beyond madness here: discipline. In Santa Clara-the industrial zone in the city’s far north, a neighborhood full of chemical slush and loose dirt-a patrol car waits at dawn for the workers to emerge from the graveyard shift at the Del Valle juice factory. The laborers have once again each received a small allotment of canned juice from the company. It’s a miserable concession to union demands in a time of crisis. The cops stop them a few meters from the exit and steal half of what’s in each worker’s box. They stuff the cans in the backseat of the patrol car until it’s full and they leave, the engine in low gear.
One day I saw the workers get together to protest their treatment by throwing rocks at the police. The cops didn’t retaliate, they just left. Do they sell the juice to a little store in some nearby neighborhood? Do they take it home to their families?
V
In these last few years, the winds of change have blown through Mexico-citizens have more power, protests have managed to kick out the old administration. But they have only been able to improve relations with the cop on the corner, not defeat the march of crime.
The madness comes back with new variations. Now we have a killer of old women, a cannibal who eats his girlfriends.
VI
A cop stops me. My motorcycle is missing a mirror. I’m not willing to pay a bribe. We both laugh at how forthright I am. He tells me he has to pay for that corner. His supervisor charges him a weekly sum. If he doesn’t pay, they send him to a worse corner, without traffic. Plus, he has to pay for whatever goes wrong with his motorcycle, and he has to do it at a private garage-in the police shop they steal the new parts and replace them with used ones. He also says that he goes out every day with only half a tank of gas, though he has to sign a receipt that says he received a full one. I tell him I’m not going to pay a bribe. He refuses to give me his name. I refuse to give him mine. We wait, it starts to rain. He gets tired of me. With a wave, he tells me to go. He smiles. There’s not even ill will, it’s all routine.
VII
Paloma, my wife, comes home in a fury and tells me a story about two guys she overheard reading headlines from a magazine in front of a newsstand.
The conversation goes like this:
Man #1:
Man #2:
My wife is indignant. She adds that, to top it off, the men didn’t even buy the magazine.
VIII
A couple of undercover cops come to your door to tell you they’ve found your car but wonder why you haven’t reported the theft. In fact, you didn’t even know your car was missing. You peer out the window to check if it’s true, that your car has vanished from where you parked it the night before. They tell you again that they’ve found the car. And where is it? you inquire. They give you the runaround. They finally ask for 10 percent of the car’s value (marvelously, there are fixed rates)-that is, if you want the car back; if not, they’ll drive it out of the city… and that’s that. If you have insurance you tell them to go ahead; but if not, you’re caught in the trap. Your car is worth 90,000 pesos and you’ve got to put 9,000 on the table. You’re now certain that these two characters sitting in your living room and drinking your coffee have stolen your car, checked the papers, and are here to do a little business. You assume that this type of transaction is a daily occurrence for them.
IX
There was once a marijuana trade here. Domestic product. Mexican names for unregistered brands: Acapulco Gold, Tijuana Black, Oaxaca Small. I sense that it’s gone now and that more alcoholic traditions have taken over. The narcotic seemed to disappear when hippies became bureaucrats during the economic crisis, and it’s only occasionally at a rock concert that you smell weed in the air. Heroin never got much of a foothold in Mexican society. Every once in a while you hear about a case, but it’s rare, and people talk about it as if it were something out of Hollywood, an extraterrestrial that no one entirely believes in. Cocaine, the yuppie and executive drug, provokes gossip and nothing more. The rumors sometimes become isolated newspaper articles. Here and there they say the white stuff floats around in Televisa bathrooms. There’s a story about a movie star who needed surgery to reconstruct her nasal passages, and another one about the comedian who hosts children’s programs and has to snort a little before facing the cameras to tell his jokes. But hard drugs aren’t a part of everyday life- although they’re available in just about all of the middle-class nightclubs. Here, the word “drug” is more associated with trafficking than usage.
We’re the great airplane hangar, the way station to the United States for tons of marijuana, kilos of cocaine. Local and South American product crosses the border on ghost trucks, right past blind customs officials.
Narcotraffickers in Mexico City find themselves persecuted and uncomfortable, but powerful. They show off their gold bracelets and sip cognac in the company of cops. The trained dogs at Mexico City’s airports usually can’t get past the smell of Loewe cologne.
On other corners of the city, human throwaways roam the streets for everyone to see, stuttering kids only five, eight years old, with glassy eyes, hands and faces smudged with dirt. There are thousands of them. They’re called “chemos”-they inhale chemical solvents like paint thinner and turpentine, they get high from sniffing glue in plastic bags. It’s the drug of the lowlife, of misery. For a few pesos they sleep forever. The neurons die. Life is shortened.
X
