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Hound Dog

Oct 15, 2010, 11:16 AM

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Aguacatenango

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Don Carlos of Aguacatenango comes to our house in San Cristóbal for espresso and croissant on occasional mornings and, over time, we have become sort of his pawn broker. If he makes one of his primitive, small rugs at his rudimentary home loom in Aquacatenango and brings it to the andador or market adjacent to the ex-convento Santa Domingo but cannot sell the thing, he comes to us and, over coffee and a treat assigns us the rug as collateral for the fare for a bus or combi ride back to his Zapatista village of Aguacatenango and, then, a while later, when he returns to San Cristóbal, he pays us back and reclaims his rug and that is just the way things are done thereabouts. Once in a while we may visit him without being intrusive since Aguatenango is a Zapatista stronghold and not particularly welcoming of foreign visitors and there he is in his ancestral shack wearing his typical Che Guevara T-Shirt and welcoming us with absolute civility and while this village is not warm and welcoming to foreign strangers, we always feel at home there for a while as long as we leave when the welcome wears thin as it inevitably must . Rural Chiapas can be intimidating but if you are able to overcome that then it ain´t so bad as long as you do not wear out your welcome.

Don Carlos is now losing his eyesight due to advancing diabetes and he came to us for advice and we visited the local San Cristóbal doctor at a hardscrabble clinic who told him he would lose his sight if he did not modify his diet and I don´t think that registered so soon he may not be able to weave the rugs that supplement his meager farming income and that is just the way it is where everyone is dirt poor and one eats what one has and that´s just the way it is. It may be hard, if not impossible, for middle-class folks who normally read this forum, to comprehend this dire poverty but there it is. That´s life.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 15, 2010, 2:35 PM)

RickS

Oct 15, 2010, 3:19 PM

Post #2 of 6 (3882 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Aguacatenango

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So, my question is, "how do we get THIS Dawg to post more and the OTHER Dawg, who called the Mexican lady at IMN in Guadalajara a 'fat broad', to post LESS??? I'm just saying.....

Hound Dog

Oct 15, 2010, 3:52 PM

Post #3 of 6 (3879 views)

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Re: [RickS] Aguacatenango

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So, my question is, "how do we get THIS Dawg to post more and the OTHER Dawg, who called the Mexican lady at IMN in Guadalajara a 'fat broad', to post LESS??? I'm just saying.....

The "fat broad" at INM was a bully and a moron. I can say that as I am not only super fat but I was, myself, a bureaucratic functionary for over 30 years in the United States. That fat bully was a disgrace to her calling and a racist to boot. Yesterday she assumed we spoke no Spanish because of our visage. Pure and unconsionable racial profiling. Yes we are of U.S.and French heritage and live in Ajijic (and Chiapas, by the way), have European white skin and, yes, we speak Spanish. There was no excuse for the way we were treated. She never heard a word from our mouths but automatically assumed we were incapable of speaking Spanish because of the way we looked. Pure and untainted racism. Inexcusable rudeness. Incompetence in the extreme.

Low class functionary flying higher than she ever imagined she ever would. Well, don´t dance on my dime.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 15, 2010, 3:59 PM)

Hound Dog

Oct 17, 2010, 10:00 AM

Post #4 of 6 (3786 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Aguacatenango

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RickS:

On my previous post I should have pointed out that the reason I characterized the female clerk at the INM office where one submits visa applications as a "fat broad" is that there are normally three female clerks on duty - at least when we have gone there. The particular clerk I referred to is stocky whereas the other two clerks are noticeably thin to skinny. The "thin" women speak English but Tubs gets more applicants because of her tendency to slough off applicants she presumes to be Spanishly challenged. Incidentally, the station of the person of whom I speak has been on the right as you face the stations.

I repeat my advice to you to stand your ground if you get the short straw and must deal with this incompetent person and she demands you go to the information line. Rick is right that most employees with whom we have had to deal at INM in Guadalajara could not be nicer or more accommodating. INM is trying hard to be user friendly but old habits die hard and it is difficult to impossible to get rid of tenured civil service employees.I know this as I used to be one.

The most thoroughly pissed off applicants we met at INM in Guadalajara were South Americans who spoke the native Spanish of the Americas. Don´t think this is simply a problem for Lakesiders. Actually, my darlin wife is a Latina from France for whom English is a second language so making unreasonable demands of her in English was not a supremely good idea.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 17, 2010, 10:07 AM)

Bennie García

Oct 17, 2010, 2:06 PM

Post #5 of 6 (3758 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Aguacatenango

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In Reply To

INM is trying hard to be user friendly but old habits die hard

You weren't around when the old habits ruled. You wouldn't even have had the opportunity to immigrate so quit your bitchin'.

Hound Dog

Oct 19, 2010, 10:19 AM

Post #6 of 6 (3666 views)

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Re: [Bennie García] Aguacatenango

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The combis and buses don´t drive into Aguacatenango because the dirt poor Zapatista village does not welcome them and this is, if you understand chiapas, a serious "unwelcome" not to be disrespected so, if you go there from, say, San Cristóbal via public transportation, you must walk a kilometer or so into town on a dirt road and that´s OK if a bit tiring and maybe you´ll get a ride from a local if you are civil in the request for same. Other local towns may welcome you with open arms but here is the problem; unless you are extraordinarily discerning, you won´t know where you are and are not welcome. So, here is my advice. Approach each and every village in Chiapas with discretion and be prepared to flee as in "Feets dion´t fail me now!" (courtesy of Steppin Fetchit or Mantan Moreland AKA Birmingham Brown).