Killing The Golden Goose, ctd.

“No vendedores, no estafadores, no tontos,” says the imaginary sign hanging above La Gringa’s door. No street vendors, no con men, no stupid people. Because she is D-O-N-E with with them, vamos ya, shut up and paddle. How do you know you’re making progress in Iquitos? Because you get a little less screwed this time than last time.

But it’s hard to avoid getting screwed altogether. La Gringa has been here for years, and speaks charapa Spanish like a local. She knows the score. But still, it happens. Oh man, I could tell you all about the guy from Tamshiyacu who used to be her guardian. What a pendejo he turned out to be. But that particular episode is still unfolding, and we’re waiting to see how it shakes out. She’s gone through a string of guardians over the years, and each one had a chance to be honest and straight with her, but all eventually went crooked for one reason or another.

Most recently there was Cristóbol, also from Tamshiyacu, a nice young guy with a wife and a one year old son. Cristóbol is from the jungle, kind of a country mouse, never very comfortable in the city. He was happy to have a steady job and missed his family so much that La Gringa let them stay there too, during the week when he was working. He did gardening and maintenance and painted pictures, made flutes and built cabinets and shelves. He had a lot of skills. He was making good money. Then one day the great estafador, Miguel Mentiroso, came by for a visit.

Miguel and La Gringa have known each other a long time, long enough to trade insults and laugh in each other’s faces. She never trusted him. He taught her a lot about the charapa life, and she returned the favor by teaching his wife how to be an empowered, independent woman, which is a favor Miguel could have done without.

The story of Miguel’s family really is incredible. It’s hard not to like the guy when you learn how his mother, abused and neglected by a cheating husband, then menaced by Shining Path guerrillas, took her children on a balsa raft loaded with plantains, jugs of water and a few chickens, and set off from Yurimaguas. It took them a full month on the river to reach Iquitos. She was a strong woman. When they landed at Nanay, his mother gave ten-year-old Miguel a load of plantains and told him to walk down the street selling them, calling out ‘hay platanos’ all the way. A few trips up and down the block, and he had sold them all. She gave him another load and told him to walk up the next block, and when he had sold out again, to go to the next block further down. So he made his way block by block until he reached the city center.

Then he learned his first English words: “Shoe shine, mister?” He earned enough to buy a shoeshine kit, and worked the city square, shining shoes for gringos and practicing his English, while his mother found a home for them. She walked to the end of the last road at the edge of town, and beside the last house on the road she built a platform with a hole in the floor for a toilet. Then she was the last house on the road, until the next immigrant came along. There she raised her children, supporting them by making a hundred tamales each day and selling them at the market, earning enough to feed everyone and buy more yucca and rice for the next day’s wares.

So Miguel Mentiroso truly earned his education from the street level on up, starting with nothing but a load of plantains and a couple of coins, until his English was fluent and he got a job in the tourism industry as a translator and guide, and then eventually earned enough money to buy his own motorcar.  He supplemented his income selling whatever it was gringos wanted to buy, and along the way he learned the art of the con, playing the angles as they came.  Because if he didn’t take advantage of a situation when a gullible gringo wandered into his web, someone else was going to, and then he would be the fool for passing the opportunity by.

And now, all these years later, with money in the bank, two children, and a stable middle-class career, still he can’t resist the easy money. La Gringa hired him to drive to town with Cristóbol to buy wood for a cabinet. They returned with wood they claimed was white cedar, and Cristóbol built a beautiful shelf from it. She liked it so much that she sent them back the next day for more. She was expecting to tip them for the effort, but when Cristóbol came back, he did not have her change. Miguel had it. And Miguel had not returned.

She called him on his cell. “Where’s my change, Mentiroso?” she demanded. Miguel began to talk in circles in that infuriating way Peruvians have, those masters of obfuscation, talking an equivocating rope-a-dope all the way around the thing and then changing the subject.

“I don’t care, bring me my change, now dammit!”

The phone rang next door on the landline. It was the phone in Cristóbol’s room, but Cristóbol was not there. He had gone to run an errand. She went next door and answered it. It was Miguel.

“What you want, fool?” she said. “What do you need to talk to Cristóbol for?”

More circular words, distractions, excuses flying like frightened birds. She hung up on him and waited.

When he showed up ten minutes later, La Ginga demanded to see a receipt, but there was none. He told her, OK, Cristóbol has your change, he was lying to you. It’s probably in his room, what he stole from you, I’ll go get it. He went to Cristóbol’s room and took fifty soles out of the guy’s pants pocket and brought it to La Gringa.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s it. That’s all there is.”

After Mentiroso left, she thought about it for awhile, and chose her words carefully when Cristóbol returned. She confronted him directly, and he quickly broke down and admitted everything, even started crying. Yes, Miguel had offered to split the proceeds from overcharging her for the wood. How much had they inflated the price? Double. He’d given Cristóbol twenty soles the first day, and a hundred soles the next day when they got away with it again. And then, when cornered, Mentiroso didn’t take money from his own pocket, but robbed Cristóbol instead!

Mentiroso is a slick character. He convinced this innocent hayseed to go along with the scam, and then turned around and stole half of it back from him. It was money twice stolen. And, as a result, Cristóbol lost his steady, well-paying job and had to go back to Tamshiyacu, all for fifty or sixty soles– about twenty bucks.

I feel bad for Cristóbol. He was a nice guy. True, he also stole a bag of rice and some yucca from La Gringa, but when she called him out on it, he admitted it and said he only wanted to be able to cook a meal at his own house.

“You know,” Gringa told him, “if you had asked me for some food, I would have given it to you. You didn’t have to steal it.”

“I know,” he replied. He apologized again and again, and then he packed his bag and left her employment.

As for Mentiroso, he would be the first to agree there is no honor among thieves in the jungle. Some Peruvians will screw each other over just as quickly as they will gringos. There’s so little trust here, even among families. He stole from the Gringa, who was friendly with his wife and his mother, who entertained his children, who hosted him with open arms whenever he came around. Gringa told him, I feel sorry for you, Mentiroso. You will never know what it feels like to trust someone, or to be trusted.

That’s the real, grinding poverty of the spirit, and Mentiroso has chosen to live deep in the ghetto, where he will always go hungry.  Even now that he has enough money, he still steals whenever the chance presents itself.

Opportunity makes the thief, and he can’t help himself. It’s just the way he is.

Sunday, Sunday

Sunday is the day everyone in Iquitos does something.  They take a ride out on the Carretera, they visit family, they go for a swim or a hike in the jungle. It’s my favorite time of the whole week in Iquitos, because Sunday afternoon is the only time it is ever quiet. All the stores are closed and there’s hardly any traffic. And wherever you go in the city or out in the jungle, you find people enjoying themselves, relaxing, eating, drinking, talking, celebrating with good company. It’s a beautiful thing.

Like most Sundays here, this one was a compendium of sense experiences, when your day flows along from one impression into the next, and at the end of the day you add it up and wonder how it all fits together. Sometimes it holds together on a mood or a thought, sometimes there’s no common thread at all but your own forward momentum.

Last Sunday, Corrina and I loaded up little Maverick and started the day by going down to our favorite ceviche restaurant. We ate a fantastic meal and splurged a bit, by Iquitos standards, spending 27 soles, which now feels to me like a special occasion, although it’s only ten bucks! I laughed to myself thinking, here I am getting uptight about spending ten whole dollars at a restaurant . . . but when you’re counting your dollars, every one matters of course.

An elderly blind man came in with his family towards the end. I watched the way he sat down and felt the contours of the table, orienting himself. I had a moment when I was almost moved to tears by the delicate grace of his hands, which had the lightness of touch of butterflies, as he found the corners and the angles of his position. The blind become virtuosos of touch. And yet I think it must be difficult to perceive so much. To be sensible of all the contours of the world, and of men, is the realm of saints, and saints are crazy.

We got back on the scooter and went to Casa Fitzcarraldo to meet some friends. We were excited because it was Maverick’s first experience with swimming, and he took right to it. He was wearing a lycra top with a hoodie that had a little shark fin on the top, a gift from my sister, which is pretty much the cutest thing ever. He started paddling along, having a great time, and then Corrina said I should dip him all the way in the water, so I held his nose and sort of dunked him backwards, baptism-style, in the water, and he did not like that one bit. But he got over it, and our friends had their five-year old there as well, and we all had a great time hanging out poolside.

Maverick goes swimming

Then we called my parents on skype, with video on a very fast connection for Iquitos, and we all got to chat with the folks back home. We had a couple of beers and some fried bananas, and watched the sun ripen with the afternoon. Dragonflies flirting with the bougainvillea. The ocelot asleep in the shade. The flaxen tangles of hibiscus flowers spilling over the pathway, and children splashing in the brightness. A vision of total contentment.

Late in the afternoon, we settled up and got back on the motorbike. We were close to the port of Bellavista Nanay and decided to go have a look. Nanay is busy in the afternoons because you can get fresh fish and fruit later in the day, from locals who come there straight from the jungle.  We pulled up and it was pretty mobbed. An old woman pointed at the bike and nodded at me, the universal symbol here for “I’ll watch your bike for half a sole” and I waved her off, the universal gringo symbol for “no thanks, I’d rather not give you half a sole, it’s fine like it is.”

We waded into the market and bought some aguaje, the palm fruit that is the unofficial snack of Iquitos, but they weren’t very good. The woman was dipping them in water with achiote to stain them orange, a trick to make them look more ripe, but then when you buy five for one sole and try them, they are soggy and salty from soaking in the water, and the orange color stains your fingers. That’s just so wrong.

street food in Nanay

A fisherman came in with a string of fish, boquechicas fresh out of the water, and people gathered around to ask his price. I thought about buying them all, but then one of the local senoras stepped in and bought them. She took them to her stand, where she was grilling fish and bananas and selling jungle fruit, and immediately marked up the price. There are many woman selling grilled fish in the market stalls, but the price has gone way up with the rainy season, because the fish disperse into the depths of the tributaries and are harder to catch. A good-sized sabalo on the grill now costs thirty soles, about eleven dollars, a full day’s wages for many people here. We bought some tacacho instead, delicious balls of fried banana mixed with bits of fried pork, and strolled down the main artery until we reached the water. It is as high as I’ve ever seen it, all the way up to the street, a good thirty or forty feet above where the river runs in the dry season.

Corrina, tacacho, farina, oh my!

We went out to a bar by the edge of the water, perched on stilts looking out over the confluence of the Nanay and the Amazon, and ordered a beer. I watched old men in camo baseball caps rowing their little wooden dugout boats up to the shore, bringing fruit or fish, or ferrying passengers back across the river to the hamlets beyond the city. I was struck by the sight of one of these elderly men in his canoe, wearing his shiny black church-going shoes as he paddled delicately towards land with the patience of a sage. He glided by solemnly, stone-faced, making not a sound nor stirring any wake behind him. He moved as seamlessly as one with a lifetime of being upon the water. I wondered how far he had traveled that day.

The port, in contrast, thrummed with activity as late Sunday afternoon pulsed along into the evening. It was loud, muddy, casually overcrowded. I didn’t care, we were having fun. I didn’t even mind the latin pop music blasting out of the enormous speakers on the pier, but Maverick was getting a little fussy so we packed it up and headed back. On the way I bought some gorgeous-looking mangos and Corrina got some farina, and I walked along smiling at the musicality of Corrina farina.

I also saw some jungle meat for sale, bright red and glistening fresh. The woman said it was sacha vaca, or jungle cow—tapir meat. Tapir is a pig-sized animal with a prominent snout; as I recall, its closest relatives are horses and rhinos. The meat was eight soles a kilo, which is like a dollar and a half per pound. I bought a kilo, and we took it home and grilled some. It tasted like beef, but it was very tough and sinewy, so I made tapir stew out of it. Which is, you know, like beef stew, except it’s made with tapir.

As we walked through the plaza, we encountered a young, jungle-hardened girl coming up from the boats, carrying a bucket of fruit. Her little boy carried one as well. We bought some bananas and papaya and a spiky green fruit they call the ice cream fruit.  They seemed weary, stoic, ready to sell their wares and return to their village. A floatplane flew overhead and landed in the river. It was starting to get dark. We turned for home and Maverick went right to sleep, as he always does on the motorbike, maybe because he rode on it so often when he was in the womb. One last stop of the way home, to Corrina’s mother’s house, to give her some snacks bought at the market–tamales made with fish eggs. They taste about like you’d expect. But her mom likes them.

Sunday afternoon in Iquitos is family time. Home again, safe from the chaos of this strange paradise, I was happy to have my family, both near and far, as the thread that held the day together.

Killing the Golden Goose

I got a lot of emails recently from people telling me their own experiences with Peruvians killing the golden goose, getting greedy and exploiting a situation as soon as they are able. This could mean cheating you out of your time or money, or abusing a situation in a way that ruins any future opportunity to make a steady income, opting instead for the short-term, one-time payoff.

So I want to revisit this theme, and go further with the story of the shaman named Henry that I wrote about before. Chillum was working with Henry recently on a trial basis, hosting ceremonies on his land out on the Itaya. Henry is a well-known curandero with many years of experience with ayahuasca, and he did six ceremonies in a row out there with Chillum. Things were going well at first, and it may well have turned into a steady gig for the shaman. He certainly was being well compensated for his time. But as soon as he started getting paid, he wanted to talk about raising his rates. He woke Chillum up early to ask him for money for the next night’s ceremony. He started to get pushy about it.

Then in the middle of that week, I was in town talking with a Canadian woman I had just met, and she told me about her recent experience with Henry. She spoke in excruciating detail about the sexual harassment she had had to tolerate from this man, during and after an ayahuasca ceremony, in which he’d groped her and then later followed her to her cabin and tried repeatedly to get in bed with her. There are so many stories like that in Iquitos, even among the most famous and successful shamans… especially so, in fact.

After Chillum talked to her directly and heard her account, he ended his association with Henry. The incident she described happened during a retreat organized by a respectable gringo named Charles, on a night when Charles had gone back into town for supplies and Henry was in charge and unsupervised. When Charles heard what happened, he ended his association with Henry as well.

Anyway, I was so piqued by this woman’s story that I started writing an editorial to post on a prominent tourist website here. Chillum and I even talked about starting a message board for reviews, a kind of Iquitos-specific ‘Shaman Advisor.’ I wrote the following and sent it to Chillum to get his opinion, before it ran on the website:

“People come to Iquitos from all over the world specifically to drink ayahusca. It’s good for the economy, and a lot of shamans here make a very nice living guiding others through the many wonders that this sacred teaching plant has to offer.  The shamans who work professionally with ayahuasca are mostly a respectable group, but all too often you hear stories of shamans taking liberties with women. This can range from the mildest indiscretions of an inappropriate touch or comment, all the way to the worst situations you can imagine.

“Like many of you, I have heard these stories from time to time. Usually you hear them second-hand, but nothing ever comes of it. Even if the victim files a complaint with the police, Peruvian law requires you to be present at any court hearing, and tourists cannot afford to hang around in Peru after their vacation is over, waiting for their trial date, which can be postponed weeks or months, or until the trouble blows over.

“Last week, just a day or two after I did a wonderful ceremony with a highly-regarded shaman (and his wife), I met a woman who told quite a different story. She had been on a retreat with this shaman a few weeks previous, and he had made some very unwelcome advances towards her, both during ceremony and afterwards. This woman, who happens to be young and attractive, paid a lot of money to come to the Amazon and work with the medicine, so she was understandably appalled by all of this.

“Of course, there is always the chance that this woman is completely nuts, and is making it all up, but I doubt it. When confronted by his employer about it, the shaman admitted that there was a problem, but said that this woman had been ‘having visions’ that he’d tried something with her, trying to blame his actions on ayahuasca for creating her illusions! That is unconscionable. His employer was wise to part ways with him over this, because his employer’s own good name was at stake as well.

“These kinds of abuses are a stain upon all those shamans who work with the medicine with the integrity it deserves. Eventually you hear stories and rumors of indiscretions attached to even the most reputable shamans. It’s a huge contradiction, to be sure, one that a lot of people, particularly locals, shrug off as a joke or a testament to the virility of the shaman.  The thing that really blows my mind is that a lot of these guys really are great shamans. They invest years in learning to do healing work with the medicine. But once in a while something happens, they find an attractive woman at the ceremony, and they take advantage of the situation.

“I can understand that men are going to be tempted, and they are only human, and sometimes in ayahuasca, channels of sexual energy can be opened up in such a way that women respond consensually, albeit in an altered state of mind. Shamans are in a position of power and influence during an ayahuasca ceremony, and in certain contexts that can be a turn-on for women. If it’s consensual, then chances are the biggest problem the shaman has is that his wife is going to find out. But it’s still wrong.

“What I’m really concerned with is the deliberate and even predatory sexual advances that happen between shamans and women, when the women are not sending out any signals at all, and are looking to the shaman to provide the same safe passage through the spirit world that they’re providing for everyone else. To do otherwise is in total contradiction with the healing spirit of the medicine. Unwelcome advances go by another name: sexual assault. Sometimes these charlatan shamans convince women, when they are in an utterly vulnerable state, that the sexual advance is part of the cure. They persist until they succeed, either because the women are gullible enough or out of their right minds enough to go along with it, or they are merely tired of fighting off the shaman’s advances.

“For a shaman to abuse the trust of this relationship, which is supposed to be all about healing, is an insult to the spirit of ayahuasca and is inexcusable for anyone presenting themselves as a reputable healer. Perhaps it is part of the machismo culture here. Perhaps even the most virtuous man can be tempted by a beautiful woman. Mostly, as I’ve said, these stories amount to rumors and not much more. Some women, understandably, don’t want to talk about it afterwards.

“But that needs to change, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. It seems to me that the only way this behavior will ever change is when shamans start to lose business, and their actions follow them around to the point where it costs them their reputation and their livelihood.”

So, I asked Chillum for his impressions, and he said, ‘I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’ve painted a big target on your back.’ I thought about it some more and realized he was right. I really had no desire to be the point man for an operation ferreting out the sleazy behavior of these guys. I’m not even in the ayahuasca business, as it were, and I would have been foolish to put myself out in front of that kind of information. I mean, why make enemies when you don’t have to? Why make yourself a part of someone else’s problem?

In the end, I scrapped the whole idea. I still think it is a good one in principle, I just don’t want to be the one doing it. However I have a couple of other friends here who do want to take this on in a serious way, and they already have some skin in the game. One runs a tourism website about Iquitos and manages a jungle lodge, and the other has just started his own ayahuasca retreat business. Both have expressed interest in collecting and publicly posting reviews from ayahuasca tourists, so that their experiences with the good ones and the bad ones can be seen by everyone. So if you want to read or write a review on this subject, please send it to Gart at www.ikitos.com or Andy at www.ayahuascaodyssey.com.

Also check out Gart’s post on the Dawn on the Amazon blog addressing this very issue; the comments thread is pretty interesting too.

http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/2011/02/24/proposal-an-ayahuasca-organization-for-iquitos/

The Minga

Last weekend I was up early, wandering through Belen market up along the topmost street where they sell the fish and jungle meat, and I happened to run into Chillum. I wasn’t there to buy anything in particular. I like to go there in the early morning for the ambiance, just to walk around, when everything is fresh and it’s not too crowded. Chillum was shopping, buying palometa and plantains for a minga out on his land later that day, and he invited me along.

A minga is kind of like the jungle version of an old-fashioned Amish barn raising. It’s a gathering of a community to complete a task that benefits everyone. You call your neighbors to come and help with a project, and in return you provide food and drinks and everyone gets to sit around and socialize afterwards. In this case, a chacra (plot of land used for crops) at Amaru Spirit needed to be cleared so that Chillum can start construction of his maloca (large circular building used for any kind of group activity.) Showing up at a minga also implies that you can depend of those who invited you to return the favor in the future. This communal labor structure makes good sense and also fosters a sense of community, which is important in this part of the Amazon where it is impossible to guard every inch of your land all the time, and there are a lot of thieves coming up the Itaya from lower Belen to steal wood or anything else left unguarded.

Chillum was having a big problem with this for awhile, thieves showing up to scout opportunities, and then threatening him with violence when he tried to get them to leave.  That changed when he got permission from his neighbors to act as neighborhood guardian on their behalf, and he got himself a gun. He put up a prominent sign on the river by his entrance that not only announces this but also explains that he is armed and ready to defend himself against trespassers. It might be the skull and crossbones graphic, or the little graphic depiction of a thief getting shot, but just posting this one sign has reduced the illegal traffic on his land from dozens of incidents a year, to none.

(Also, this sign gets big karma points because it was painted by the artist Lucuma, who himself was a notorious violent criminal for years, before twenty years in prison straightened him out.  So when he paints a skull and crossbones, it’s not idle speculation. It means something . . . he knows what it’s like to be the guy pulling the trigger.)

So Corrina and I loaded up baby Maverick in the carrier and headed out to Amaru Spirit. The water is so high now that you can’t cross the Itaya directly, as the entrance path on the other side is flooded too far inland.  So we went downstream and entered through a quebrada (stream) that leads through masses of floating weeds and water hyacinths up to the back entrance. The workers had already finished clearing the chacra, and some were sitting around eating grilled fish, chicken, rice, and plantains. There was also masato, the fermented yucca beverage that is traditionally prepared by chewing yucca root and spitting it back out, so that the enzymes in the saliva help the fermentation process along. This batch was made with fermented sugarcane juice, not saliva, which was great because saliva-free masato happens to be my favorite kind of masato.

Besides the workers and the guardian and their families, Chillum had also brought Florita and her sister. Both of them just had babies within the past month, and we had brought along Maverick who is almost six months now. It was the first time in the jungle for all the little ones. They spent most of the afternoon upstairs in the Big House, which was officially completed that same afternoon when the ironwork was installed.

the Big House at Amaru Spirit

Chillum had designed iron window grates and doors to protect the kitchen, and had them made to his original design by a local machine shop that does specialty work.  The grates are made from rebar and depict the Flower of Life and other sacred geometry designs. I have to say, in spite of the numerous delays and logistical pratfalls that happened before the work was finally installed, they really did a beautiful job.

sacred geometry ironwork detail

details matter

I sat upstairs with Corrina and Maverick for awhile, listening to the sounds of the afternoon jungle. The mosquitoes are terrible out there, especially during the rainy season, but the workers meticulously sealed every inch of the place with bug screens and it’s totally mosquito-free on the inside, which is an absolute luxury.

Downstairs, the guardian’s kids were running in and out of the house, leaving the door wide open. I had to stop and point out why they should shut the door.  They listened respectfully and then ran off laughing and screaming, lost in childhood games, leaving the door wide open again behind them.

I hung out some with Ongo the mushroom guy and a Portuguese dude who had just arrived from Lima through mutual friends, and who was planning to stick around and do a few ceremonies while he was in town. I told Chillum I was enjoying my first minga and he said, you’re not really doing a minga unless you do some work. So I guess I was just an observer to the minga, because I was merely there for the company, not the labor!

True to charapa time, Chillum told me to come at noon for lunch, so we got there around 1:30, and then the firewood they were using was still green, and wouldn’t burn properly, so we finally ate lunch around 3:30.

Corrina and Maverick

After that it was time to go, because we had to wait for the boat and then paddle back to the scooter and getting anywhere in the jungle always takes longer than it seems like it should. Maverick had a great time, he seems to enjoy being where the action is, for such a little person, he is totally comfortable around strangers and is not fazed at all by noise or activity. In fact, on the way back in the boat, he was staring intently at me while I was paddling, with complete focus and solemn concentration. Then Corrina made a pretty sharp observation about him. She said, ‘when there’s action happening, he’s quiet. And when it’s quiet, he makes his own action.’

Sounds a lot like his old man.

 

 

 

Every Man For Himself

Some further observations about the quirks of Peruvians, if I may. First I have to vent a little bit about the way people drive here. Instead of driving defensively, here people drive offensively. There are no lanes, only gaps in the traffic patterns that flow around the immovable objects such as public buses, logging trucks, and other heavy equipment that menaces the main road. There is only one main road in and out of town and everyone has to use it, so I have learned not to make any sudden moves. People zip past you with no regard for safety, and everyone drives as if they are the only vehicle on the road. There is no regard for who might be behind you, and since almost no one has rear view mirrors (I have had mine stolen twice now, both times in public places) the responsibility falls to whoever is behind you to stay out of your way. Motorcars weave back and forth, trawling for passengers, slowing everything down, and as the motorcars tend to drive in a phalanx pattern, two or three straight across, they block anyone from passing them. They drive as if totally unaware of anyone behind them on the road. If you are in hurry, this is very frustrating.

A similar behavior applies to queues and lines in public places. It’s a running joke here that Peruvians will cut in front of you in line, at the supermarket or wherever you happen to be, and I mean they will literally step in front of you and put their items on the counter, pretending that you aren’t even there. The first few times it happened, I was polite and let it slide, but then I realized that I was being a sucker. So now I call this behavior out, militantly and gleefully, calling out everyone who tries to slip in front of me. I have a theatrical routine worked out in Spanish that goes something like this:

“Senora, there is a line here, no? Do you see who is next in line? It is me, can you see that? And yet you’ve stepped in front of me. I’m shocked, shocked that you would try to cut to the front of the line! But I am happy to see that you have noticed me now. Please wait your turn as I have been doing.”

That usually gets a smile from the cashier. They see this all day long. It is considered normal to be opportunistic, and if you cut in line and get away with it, all the better. If not, nothing lost. But it forces the person behind you to be confrontational, and if you don’t say anything about it, well then they get away with it. I would contrast this behavior, as an insight into the culture, with a trip I took once to Germany. I was waiting to cross the street, and the light at the crosswalk was still red, although there was no traffic coming. So I began to cross the street, and the crowd of Germans still waiting at the curb for the light to change began to chuckle about the American who was is such a hurry that he couldn’t wait for the proper signal giving one permission to cross.

So a few days ago, Corrina and I went to pay the electric bill. We went into the office and I got into one of the two lines separated by a rope. An older gentleman in the other line got something out of his bag, then ducked under the rope and in front of me in the line. I promptly stepped around him, and the next thing I knew, the security guard was confronting me. He was not happy that I had cut back in front to the place I had been before. He was explaining in Spanish that, while I had a reason for doing so, that the elderly gentleman had forgotten something in his bag, and to let him go ahead. He seemed a little bothered by my behavior. I was surprised. I couldn’t tell if he was asking me to show deference for a confused elder, or was just angered by the sight of gringo marching in and presuming to be first in line. Whatever the case, it turned into an argument and made me look like the bad guy in the scenario, so I backed off. The guard gave me an icy look when we left, and I gave it right back to him.

That same day, Corrina and I were going back to town, and I ran a red light by a little bit. Everyone does it. But a motorcycle cop had pulled out from the side street and seen this happen, and he waved for me to pull over. He asked me if I realized that I had run the light. Corrina said in English, just apologize to him. So I did. I said, you’re right, I’m sorry. That was my fault.
And the cop actually smiled when I said this, I think I took him by surprise, because he is used to people never admitting any wrongdoing, but instead trying to talk their way out of it by playing dumb. So he said, so you recognize that was illegal? And I said yes, yes, it was an accident. And he replied, OK, as long as you admit that was wrong. You can go. The cop seemed very satisfied with the outcome of that encounter, and I was too.

Now if I could only get my rearview mirrors back. I know where to find them, at Tacora, the black market. That’s the first place I check when something gets stolen. I could buy them back, thus encouraging the cycle of theft and resale. There’s lots of purloined tourist goodies there—phones, digital cameras, that sort of thing. But I never buy them, because I know that it’s just going to feed thievery, and karma is a bitch.

So for now I’m driving without mirrors, like everyone else, and hoping the guy behind me doesn’t make any sudden moves.