Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Dreams and Nightmares

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

In the sala, I talked with Patricio (a pseudonym) from El Salvador. He had received troubling news: the government had informed his family that it would take their land unless they built a house on it by a certain date. There is an issue with documents and a signature that I don't understand. 

How does one take care of such family business when one is a refugee? Patricio and his wife have a four-year old son. With luck, they will join Patricio in February. 

Patricio shared with me a photo of his son, along with phone recordings from conversations between him and his little one. 

Nightmares awaken Patricio. 

~~~~~~~~

My Spanish isn't good enough to understand the specifics of Patricio's situation, but below are relevant issues, any one of which could touch on his family's predicament: 

• August 2024, Tico Times: The Battle for Land: Coastal Salvadorans Fight Eviction as Tourism Rises
• June 2021, Waging Nonviolence: Unable to claim title to homes they paid to own, Salvadorans unite to fight developers for land rights

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Deportees

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.

Some women and men deported from the US also passed through the guesthouse. I've given them pseudonyms. 

Some new folks arrived today. 

A married couple came up with the first caravan from Guatemala. They'd been deported from Austin, Texas. They believed it best for their two young children, ages three and five, to leave them in safe hands in Austin. 

Another man, Juan, originally from Chiapas, arrived. He'd been living in Chicago for a number of years, working for a landscaping company. Deported just last week. Instead of returning to Chiapas, he plans to stay in Mexico City for now, as there are more opportunities here. 

A third man, Guillermo, who'd lived in Nevada for more than 20 years, was visiting New York when tapped. He's lived in Mexico City for almost a year now, and plans to move to his own place here in January. Originally from Jalapa in Vera Cruz, he says, smiling: "Yo soy jalapeño." Chuckles. 

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Emergency Health

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

One of the asylum-seekers became ill, and I wrote this:

So when you are vomiting blood and have no money, what do you do? 

In the case of one of my housemates, you go to a pharmacy for a consult - in some pharmacies free and in others, for a nominal fee (but even this is inaccessible if you have no money, so one of your housemates pays the consulting fee for you - about 35 pesos). 

The pharmacist takes your vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and throat check), but no blood, stool, or urine tests. 

The pharmacist takes a history from you, considers the possibilities, rules some out, and recommends an endoscopy. Which, of course, is outside your financial reach. 

The pharmacist suggests there is an irritation in your esophagus or at another milepost along the gastrointestinal boulevard, and to eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid spicy foods. If still producing blood in two days, do what you can to get that endoscopy. 

What could be the cause? 

The violent blows to your torso, delivered 10 days ago by fellow caravanners from a different country than  yours, who maybe took umbrage at your membership in the caravan's LGBTQI group? Or the cocaine you ingested yesterday evening, even though you've never had such a reaction before? Or stress? Or malnutrition? Or an ulcer? Or a pulmonary issue? Deadly? Or a passing health incident, self-repairing? 

Does an affliction care if you are kind and amiable, that you sometimes engage in risky behaviors, are poor, have left all that is familiar to you, and your access to food, shelter, and employment is insecure? No, it does not; it is impersonal. 

Maybe there's a biological tipping-point algorithm at play: stress+malnutrition+uncertainty+a beating+cocaine+compromised immune system from the cold virus that's been visiting the house = a crocodile crack on a corporeal byway = vomiting blood. 

A truism: Time will tell.   

The Meaning of Yellow Flowers

Yellow flowers and rain gutter near Campbell and Fort Lowell. Tucson, Arizona. May 2019.

Yesterday, as I lay on my airbed reading a young-adult science fiction novel, I was warm; the surface supporting my body, soft. If I had to go to the bathroom, the toilet and sink were literally around the corner of my bedroom. Hungry? Get up and walk a few steps to my refrigerator or pantry, in clean socks, on a clean floor.

In a parallel universe, in Mexico City, was a young guy who'd slept on the street last night. It dropped into the 30s. In the past 18 months, he'd survived:

• Journey in one of the caravans from Honduras to Mexico City
• Journey into the US, where he was detained in an "icebox" for some time
• Illness and despair when he returned to Mexico City
• Year, in all, in Mexico City, with food and shelter insecurities
• Isolation from family and friends back home, and the friends and short-term security he'd held while at Casa de los Amigos
• Faltering hope

Such long-term hardship - beginning before he embarked on a self-rescue mission, when he joined that caravan from Central America - has pushed his spirit into a crevasse, and this weekend, maybe he is on a bus to Chiapas, Mexico, headed back in the direction of Honduras.  Honduras. Whose nickname from the Reagan era was: USS Honduras. 

He told me: "I don't want to keep suffering."

Here's the thing. There will be suffering in Honduras, too. But maybe it will be closer to family and old friends, so perhaps a more familiar suffering, with people who love him?

I say this with a question mark because I really don't have a clue. I can have an intellectual grasp of his life in this moment, but not the gut understanding of one who has also lived through a war. Because a war, it is, for the usual things: power and greed, both in-country and from out-of-country, and where men, women, and children, individuals like my cheeky, charming young guy are just collateral damage.


Oh, right. The yellow flowers.

In the U.S., yellow flowers bespeak happiness and joy. In Central America, death and funerals.

Arizona: Sasabe: Humane Borders: July

View of sacred mountain, Baboquivari, through the Wall. Sasabe US and MX. July 2019.

Being part of a water run for Humane Borders offers four-fold benefits:

1. Take an action that might save lives; 
2. Give eyewitness testimony to friends and family about the effects of government decisions on the lives of individual women, men, and children;
3. Hear fresh perspectives on borderland issues from fellow water-truck passengers; and
4. Revel in the sensory gifts of the Sonoran Desert, which indiscriminately transfixes and kills.

Water being transferred in Sasabe for Grupo Beta, Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico. July 2019.

On this day's run, the beginning of July, we went to Sasabe in the US, and Sasabe in Mexico. Whether north or south of the border, Sasabe is a village.

The Wall between the Sasabes, Arizona and Sonora. July 2019.

A handsome US Customs compound sits on the US side of the border.


The Sasabe run has only one stop: Just over the border in Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico. Humane Borders delivers a tank of water to a receiving tank in the yard behind the Mexican Customs facility. Grupo Beta uses the water to give humanitarian aid to trekking migrants on the Mexican side of the Sonoran Desert.

It takes a little over half an hour to transfer the water from one tank to the other. During this operation, there's not much to do other than observe the community affairs of bi-national ants and to gaze thoughtfully at the United States from Mexico through the metal bars and gulag-style razor wire of the Wall.

The Wall between the Sasabes, Arizona and Sonora. July 2019.

On the way back to Tucson from Sasabe, we stopped on a desolate stretch of the road to visit the Crosses. The still, red Crosses speak in their inanimate silence of the individual life forces who let go their last breaths in these spots. Each Cross represents one woman, man, or child who left behind family, friends, home, school, the favorite corner store, the house of worship, the garden with the mango tree.

Alvaro Enciso Crosses to mark people who died crossing the desert. Look how close to the road they were when they died. July 2019.

I learned from my fellow water-truckers that artist Alvaro Enciso makes these Crosses, and most Tuesdays, under the auspices of the Samaritans, he heads up a group to plant the Crosses in the location, as marked with GPS, where the remains were claimed by the Border Patrol, ICE, or the Pima County Sheriff's or Medical Examiner's Office. If a deceased person's family is ...... lucky? ..... there is identifying information on the remains that allow Pima County to notify the family of their loved one's death.

Alvaro Enciso Cross to mark people who died crossing the Sonoran Desert, Arizona. The sweet purse that belonged to a girl or woman. July 2019.

Through his Crosses, Mr. Enciso calls attention to the human dignity of each person who died. That each soul breathed, ate, loved, feared, and had the same rights and desires that our Declaration of Independence says are inalienable - that which cannot be taken from us - to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.


Not long before our visit, someone had vandalized some Crosses.

Alvaro Enciso Crosses, one vandalized, to mark people who died crossing the Sonoran Desert, Arizona. July 2019.

A cumulative slide show of desert water runs via Humane Borders and Samaritans below:

Nogales, Mexico: First Look

Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. April 2019.

I didn't expect the hills.  Pretty.

Nogales, Arizona. April 2019.

I didn't expect the Wall to feel uglier, more menacing than its section in El Paso.

Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. April 2019.

I didn't expect an early dinner of, basically, a pulled meat burrito that was sandwiched in a sweet roll with icing on it (!) instead of a tortilla, drowned in a sauce that may have been the best flavor of the lot. The dish was a torta ahogada. To people whose Spanish is as wobbly as mine - attention: Torta means cake, period. At least in Nogales, at least in this particular restaurant. Not "sandwich," no matter what someone might say to you. I'm going to put this dish in my mental file drawer that includes regional dishes I don't have to do again: Navajo taco, poutine, and Frito pie.

And, yes, eating pulled pork with icing on it tastes about the way you'd think it would, once your brain reads and accepts that it is, indeed, what it seems to be. But the lag time between taking that first bite and understanding that first bite creates no little consternation. 

Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. April 2019.

My friend and I parked the car in the lot next to the McDonald's, then used the McDonald's restroom, then walked the three or so blocks to the walk-through port of entry. No money needed coming or going. Also, normally there's a $5 parking fee for the lot, but there was no one on duty, so evidently the day we went was a gift. Thank you, Nogales!

Whereas Juarez has an open-sky, expansive feel to it, Nogales has a mid-size town vibe, a bit like a Midwestern air. My opinion on this will likely evolve if/when I return to explore for longer than the hour or so we dipped our toes in. 

Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. April 2019.

A slide show of Nogales below:

Mexico City: The Caravan: Family Values

Mexico City. Flowers on stone wall. November 2018.

I said goodbye to "Sara" and "Esteban," the young parents of charming princeling, little "Edgar," and soon-to-be parents of the infant "Yasmina," due any day now.

As I left the guesthouse, this refugee family of the 2nd caravan was on the guesthouse stoop, along with their belongings, awaiting transportation to a new shelter.

Esteban is the man with the glorious voice, which he displays while showering. Once, he stood on the stairs that climb up into the open meeting room, where refugee women, children, and men sleep on the floor on mats. He looked down at me, at the dining table in our communal sala, and sang.

I hope this family finds the safety, health, food, shelter, and employment they seek. The basics that we all want.

Sara, Esteban, little Edgar, and the soon-to-see-light Yasmina - these are the souls who are "criminals"?

No, Edgar and Yasmina's parents are doing exactly what they can do to protect their children.

We in the US are ready to tear gas them out of fear.

Mexico City: The Caravan: The "Invaders"

Mexico City. A little girl's birthday cake. November 2018.

This is the birthday cake for one of the potential "invaders" of the United States.

A little girl who just turned eight.

Before the cutting of the cake, the birthday girl´s daddy gave thanks to God, while holding his daughter in an embrace, for all of the blessings he appreciated for his family and the people around him, and his faith in their future.

This is the same man who, out of the blue, crafted two paper flowers for me last week.

The little girl´s mommy is who runs through reading and math exercises with her daughter and son ... because ... being a refugee means no school. ...

Yeah, so these are the "invaders."

Mexico City: The Caravan: A Homey Dish

Mexico City - Atol de elote. December 2018.

Last night, one of my Salvadoran housemates introduced me to atol de elote.

"Linda" was rather nonplussed by the rave reactions from me and a Mexican housemate, as to her, this is an ordinary budget dish.

White corn (elote), cream, and cinnamon are the predominant flavors.

Its warm, sweet, thick creaminess soothes your heart and belly like a bowl of oatmeal or cream of wheat made for you by your grandmother.

Although atol de elote may be mundane to Linda, there are others who quite disagree:

Saveur: Guatemalan Sweet Corn and Milk Drink
Global Table Adventure: Creamy Sweet Corn Drink
196 Flavors: Atol de Elote

Mexico City - Atol de elote. December 2018.

Mexico City: My Daily Eats

My typical fare in Mexico City. November 2018.

In my early days here, I had my share of tacos and gorditos deliciosos, but then I settled down into more typical eating for me.

Most days, I boil eggs or make an omelette for breakfast. Day-to-day, my lunch, dinner and night-time meal are a variation of:

• Bread from my preferred panaderia;
• Hard, salty farmers´cheese from the Saturday market;
• Tomatoes;
• Fruit;
• Carrots;
• Jicama.

In the photo above is a giant, angry-red orange from Michoacan. It is sweet with a fragrant, sharp note.

Also above is a clutch of variegated rosemary, which I add to my tomato sandwiches or omelettes.

Mexico City: My Laundry

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

Once a week, I take my laundry to one of the several lavanderias in my neighborhood.

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

Sometimes my laundry is ready for me to pick up the same day, sometimes I´m asked to pick it up the next afternoon.


To have my items washed, dried, folded, and placed in a tightly-wrapped plastic shroud, it costs 20 pesos per kilo.

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

One time, my laundry weighed 3.5 kilos and it cost me 70 pesos (about $3.50 US). Another time, my laundry weighed 3 kilos, so it cost me 60 pesos (about $3 US).

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

The people who operate the lavanderia that I patronize are amiable and professional.

I estimate a minimum of three lavanderias within four square blocks of my residence. Does the local demand for external laundry services support such an intense supply or is the competition to attain and retain customers fierce?

Are the lavanderias owned by a chain, franchised, or individually owned? I see the name "Edison" associated with them, but I don´t know if this is a chain brand or perhaps the brand of the machines used.

I don´t know the answers to any of these questions.

Mexico City: My Bakery

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

Every day, I go to the same bakery. In addition to offering the prosaic bread I seek, it seduces its visitors with sweet concoctionary dreams.


From the crowded sidewalk, the interior looks like this:

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

Bolillos, white and brown, nestle in a wide, deep nursery of sorts, sometimes warm from the oven, where they await plucking by those of us ready to gobble them up.

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

A brief tour in this video below:





Let´s talk costs of my daily bread:

• White bolillos x 2 = 3 pesos
• Wheat bolillos x 2 = 5 pesos
• Seeded, flat roll x 1 = 5.5 pesos
• Total for day = 13.5 pesos = 66 cents US

I am put in mind of the Bowie Bakery in El Paso´s Segundo Barrio.

Mexico City: The Caravan: The Roses Left Behind

El Paso Municipal Rose Garden. May 2017.

One day, "Lina," a young married woman with two children, showed me photos of the rose bushes from her garden back home in El Salvador.

The photos are all that she has now of her garden.

El Paso Municipal Rose Garden. May 2017.

Lina showed me her roses while we stood in the communal kitchen of the guesthouse - the guesthouse where I had a tiny, but private room, and where her family of four slept on mats on the floor, next to strangers, in the meeting room above us.

Lina used to have her own kitchen, her own sala. She had the garden. She and her husband and their two children used to sleep in beds. Their own beds. Her children went to school.

Regardless of your view about human migration - documented or undocumented - let's always remember this: No one casually leaves behind everything of comfort they knew before. No one casually pulls their children from school. No one casually enters into a journey of thousands of miles into an uncertain future, but with known dangers to themselves and their children. No one casually gives up control over their own home domain to enter into a temporary shelter to sleep on the floor with strangers.

No one casually abandons the roses they tended in their personal gardens of Eden.

What reality would be so dire that Lina and her husband would take their two young children, abandon their home, school, neighborhood, and close family, and flee into the unknown? To be imprisoned, en famille, in a Mexican jail before finding release into a Mexican shelter?

Death. Specific, detailed, written death threats against Lina's husband for something he saw.

El Paso Municipal Rose Garden. May 2017.

Mexico City: Misadventure in Translation

A very special shampoo. Mexico City. November 2018.

The delightful Rasha, the woman-who-loves from Oman, and a fellow guest at the guesthouse, speaks a lot and a little of a several languages: Arabic, of course. English, fluently. Some Swahili, some Spanish, and ... oh, let's go back to the Spanish.

Like me, Rasha had a private room with a shared bath. For convenience, fellow guests often leave some of their toiletries in the shower, such as shampoo.

Rasha loves fragrances, and sometimes will use shampoo to wash her hands because of their lovely scents. Well, there's that reason, plus in the shared baths of the guesthouse, tiny pink bars of soap may be present in one moment and gone the next, so shampoo might do in a pinch, anyway.

One day, Rasha was in the bathroom and when came the moment to wash her hands, she remembered a chubby tube of shampoo in the shower. Rasha lifted it to her nose, inhaled the scent, and liked it. Rasha read the label, yup, shampoo. Who cared that it was for men? It cleaned and it smelled good.

Rasha wetted her hands, squeezed some shampoo on same, and lathered up. Mmm, the creamy shampoo felt nice and smelled nice. She rinsed off, walked out of the bathroom, and set about the next business of her day.

...... Until not much time later when she noticed that her hands and fingers had become streaked with walnut brown stains.

Aieeee! What happened?!

Rasha dashed backed into the bathroom, snatched up the squeeze bottle of shampoo, re-read the front, and, only then, processed the full translation:

"Fades the gray" 

"Coloring shampoo"

Rasha found some real soap and vigorously scrubbed her hands and nails to remove as much colorant as possible.

It took days for all of it to disappear.

Mexico City: Mexicrania

Mexicráneos art installation (skulls), Mexico City. November 2018.

Dear Toronto Brains, I have found your missing skulls. They are in Mexico City.

Mexicráneos art installation (skulls), Mexico City. November 2018.

The exhibit is Mexicráneos, written about here and here.

Mexicráneos art installation (skulls), Mexico City. November 2018.

A slide show below, which includes some of my companions:

You'll see in the slide show that I had my favorite skulls.

Mexicráneos art installation (skulls), Mexico City. November 2018.

Mexicráneos art installation (skulls), Mexico City. November 2018.

Mexico City: March of the Zombies

March of the Zombies, Mexico City. November 11, 2018.

Families that gross each other out together stay together?

March of the Zombies, Mexico City. November 11, 2018.

I don't know. And I don't know how my brain parses the entertainment distinction it makes between a show like Dexter, about a serial killer, and the venerable old show, The Sopranos, about old-school gangsters. Why did I feel entertained by Dexter but repelled by The Sopranos?

March of the Zombies, Mexico City. November 11, 2018.

Why do I feel entertained, in a feel-good horrified Halloweeny way, by what I saw at the March of the Zombies, yet almost traumatized by certain scenes from the Queen of the South and the first episode of Season 7 of Walking Dead? In regard to the latter two TV shows, I had to turn them off and never return.


A slide show below:



A creepy baby movie below:

Thousands of zombies marched from the Plaza de Revolucion.

Ooh, I could reach out and touch these zombies:

This video starts out blurry but once it sharpens up, you can see how many folks marched!

I got sortova kiss from this tall dude:

Zombies vogued for a TV journalist next to me, then one granted me a little love, too:

It was all so much creepy, creative fun! Damn cool makeup.

Mexico City. The Prosaic and the Profound

Pupusas being born. Mexico City, Mexico. November 2018.

Today, this is what happened:

A refugee Salvadoran family of four, some of my housemates, invited me to a dinner of homemade pupusas and curtida. Delicious! Served with the curtida, a sort of cabbage slaw, and a drizzle of thin salsa atop the pupusa, one eats it with one´s hands, tearing off a portion of the puposa and folding, then embracing a bit of curtida, then bringing it to your mouth for a smooth, crunchy, tart, bean-y, fatty bite.

The pre-dinner conversation among the Salvadorans at the guesthouse was of how flavorfully important pupusas are in the culture! It was a passionate conversation. Not just anyone can make a great pupusa!

 A young woman from Honduras, refugees from one of the caravans, will give birth in about two weeks. Where? She does not know. She and her husband have a cheeky, chortling one year-old who loves to kick a ball in our community room. Can you even imagine what would prompt a young couple with a small child and another due, to leave everything they know behind, to walk into an uncertain future?

After dinner, I learned how to say fart in Spanish. And what you call someone who farts a lot. (BTW, that someone is a "pedorro.")

A woman I know told me of something she did that was so emotionally brave, it kind of blew me away.

Earlier tonight, while I lay in bed, I listened to the young father of the one year-old singing in the shower with a confident, operatic voice.

One of the young Salvadoran women here witnessed a man outside the Revolucion metro station assaulting a woman who was presumably his wife. While other witnesses stood by watching the assault, my housemate ran for the police to get help.

Mexico City: The Community Cold

Anti-cold arsenal. Mexico City. November 2018.

Everyone at the guesthouse has or had (or will have) a cold, including me. Scratchy throat, runny nose, occasional sneeze. I´m getting off easy so far, with no persistent cough.

Reminds me of the first days of school in Rustavi, which made for a happy reunion of all of the country´s bacterial and viral families in all of Georgia´s schools, transportation of said microbial populations provided at no charge via shared cups, utensils, the lack of soap in the school bathrooms, the blithe exchange of promiscuosly-touched coinage with bare-handed clutching of khachupuri. And of this memorable adventure in health.

So, here, at the guesthouse, there is the communality of the bathrooms, kitchen, keyboards, doorknobs, and faucet surfaces. With gregarious contagions transported from the stadium where some of my caravan housemates stayed before coming here, or from the U.S., or from wherever any of us came.

I walked up to Walmart and laid in a stock of:

• Eucalyptus lozenges
• Cold medicine
• Chamomile tea
• Anti-bacterial liquid

Uncharacteristically, I impulsively bought a can of V-8 juice. I´m not sure I´ve ever bought this product. One does strange things in unfamiliar surroundings.

Mexico City: New Housemates and the Saturday Market

Corn at the Saturday market. Mexico City. November 2018.

Last night, new refugees arrived, this time from the second caravan. They were a group of LGBTQ folk from Honduras, including one group member´s younger sister.

One of the young Salvadoran men from the earlier group of refugees has been looking assiduously - so far to no avail - for an affordable place to live, as his shelter time at the guesthouse is to end in the next 24 hours. There´s not only the tangible anxiety involved in the search -- money + safety + suitability + location to potential employment -- there´s the anxiety of leaving the intangible comfort-warmth-camaraderie of the guesthouse.

Today I went to the nearby Saturday market, where I bought fresh cheese made with peppers, a kilo of carrots, a jicama, some fresh basil, a tomato, and a bag of fresh rolls.

The cheese is less salty than what I bought last Saturday, and a bit creamier.

I subsequently learned that what I thought was the minty-version of basil was really yerba buena - more minty than anything else.

Mexico City: A Mystery at the Plaza de Revolucion

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.

I packed some cheese (“salado” - salty) and an apple into my backpack, then stopped at the tortilleria and bought three warm tortillas. I walked to Plaza Revolucion for a picnic lunch.

I ate by the spray park, perched atop a charcoal-black wall, watching a big, well-nurtured German shepherd try to negotiate the spray cycles to get a drink of water.

Teens danced through the spray.

After finishing my lunch, I moseyed around to the monument´s entrance, where I witnessed several people donning white, full-body hazmat-type garments.

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.

Two women, dressed in severe, black pant suits, manipulated a mannequin woman into various positions under a tree.

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.

Ahhh. Students of crime scene investigators at work.

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.

The women in black laid a handwritten note on the pavement next to the tree well. They handed it to me to read, if I liked. I did. It was a suicide note. ……. Or was it?

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.

Eventually, the women arranged the deceased against the tree with a noose around her neck. Arrayed in the vicinity were: the “suicide” note, a fresh cigarette, an opened pack of mints, some loose mints from the pack, an empty water bottle, a bit of trash. Even some dog poop, with hovering flies. I did not remember if that was present already or not.


A video below:

A mystery to be solved.

Crime Scene at the Museum of the Revolution, Mexico City. November 2018.