My Mexican Insult December 24, 2021
The sun sets at 5:41 on the winter solstice in San Cristobal, gaining a minute of daytime from hereon, for the next six months, or so those cosmic-time experts keep saying. The skies have dried out this month, the molds thankfully in retreat, and the mushrooms have vanished from the forested hills. On the shortest days of the year, we see more sunshine than ever. Green baby avocados hang like Christmas ornaments next door. Life blooms in Chiapas.
Life is particularly active at the open-air markets on Almolonga and Santo Domingo, with floods of last-minute holiday shopping, as everyone is in town and preparing for a feast. The transactions at the scales are impossible to follow. I simply open my backpack, and it is filled with loose ingredients for sautéed nopales—cactus, garlic, onion, cilantro, oregano—followed by plantains and a papaya that is bigger than my head. Heaviest of all is a dark brick of Piloncillo, the unprocessed sugarcane used to sweeten Ponche, which is imbibed in mass quantities during Christmas. A little man stands behind an antique triple-beam balance, hollering out peso-subtotals, while other customers shout random questions about pricing. I would pay anything to extract myself from this mayhem.
At the first opportunity, I turn off Almolonga onto a quiet side street, only to find that I am not at all alone, just completely conspicuous. A half-dozen indigenous women sit on the curb, with another half-dozen children fidgeting beside them, munching on boiled ears of corn. My arrival immediately brings the ladies to their feet. I seem to be their only customer, and my bulging backpack suggests I am in the buying spirit.
Their wares today are seasonal with a rapidly approaching expiration date. These include carefully stacked rectangles of mossy turf, as well as a stringy grey lichen called Heno. Is this food, I wonder?
“Para Nacimiento,” says an eager vender, anticipating my question.
For sale are the necessary accouterments for a nativity scene, and time is running out. Children scamper in support of their mothers’ venture, gathering palm fronds and poinsettia bouquets, waving straw-made farm animals and oriental alchemists. This is all for my benefit, yet my gratitude is no match for their helpfulness. It is sort of a shame they are so happy to see me.
I try to let them down gently, saying frankly, “Yo no soy Catolico.”
I might as well have said I was the devil himself. The ladies’ smiling faces drop immediately. One reaches for the hand of her child, who has grown concerned by my admission. Clearly I have breached protocol by denying Christ on his birthday. For reference, I am reminded of the Cancun attorney who once advised, “In Mexico the truth is an insult.”
I want to explain to the Tzotzil Catholics that I mean no offense. My thoughts are with my family and loved ones, just as theirs are, just as everyone who has come to fill this city for Christmas. I, too, am preparing for the birth of a very special boy, I want to tell them. His cradle awaits him. Surrounded by loving parents. And perhaps a bit of mossy turf and Heno lichen, Mexican style.
“Yo Soy Su Abuelo,” I say, to the natural confusion of all present.