Organized Civil Society Outreach July 26, 2021
The expatriates are organized and vocal in Historic Centro, and the most urgent issue these days is tourist assault. They published a report this week, which they have presented to the Prosecutor’s Office of Los Altos Zona, calling for state and municipal action. Specifically, the Organized Civil Society of San Cristobal de las Casas (OCS) demands “the creation of protocols of particular intervention in the face of violence in the streets, as well as in the nightclubs and bars of the city.”
This statement certainly sounds like it came from a committee, earnest, comprehensive, and toothless. To those Mexicans wrestling with daily suffering, however, the Expats sound like a squeaky wheel on a luxury vehicle. Tourists are afraid to go to bars at night, really? Such entitlement comes mostly from alternative-life chasers, those with tourist visas and vaccination records, who may have rejected the ethos of the developed world but still carry all its privileges. These fortunate people choose to be in San Cristobal, a place where most have little choice.
OCS identifies the perpetrators as “male individuals riding motorcycles at night” and the victims as “both national and foreign men and women, people of sexual diversity, people of African descent.” All the persecution boxes are checked on this page-long document, which includes brief descriptions of the 22 incidents documented in 2021. One assault involved 2 motorcyclists with machetes, another involved 6 motorcyclists with “tubes,” and still another involved the motorcycles themselves as the lethal weapons. Three of those attacked in the last month were killed.
Jodi, my neighbor from the States, is not scared in the slightest. That is what her weed is for. “I love San Cris. It reminds me of California back in the 60’s and 70’s—so wild, so free, so cheap.” Her survival strategy is to complete her partying in the daylight hours and lock herself in at night, but this is not an option for everyone. “This is like any other city,” she says. “Yes, of course, you can get into trouble if you stay out late drinking in a bad part of town. You ever been to Seattle?”
Her point is well taken. Still there is a cauldron of animosities here at a slow boil—chiefly, the poor Amerindian and Mestizo majority versus the wealthy outsiders, culture-seekers, utopian dreamers, the dealers and the healers—without a shared language or history. “La Ultima Frontera,” remarks one observer, walled off from the rest of Mexico by mountains and neglect. In Port-of-Spain, where there is a similarly lopsided class-divide, the only solution is armed private security and bigger walls. In Mexico, the preferred crime-prevention strategy often involves graphic posters, warning, “Si Te Agarramos, Te Linchamos!”
“Want to know where to go to see the stars at night?” asks Bill, a cantankerous expat who lives on facebook to excoriate the unsuspecting. “Go back to Beverly Hills, California!” This old-schooler actually applauds the gang violence of San Cristobal, referring to those local boys as Los Motonetos, and likening them to predators occupying the niche around a watering hole. “Trims the herd, keeps the sheep nervous, keeps Hilton and Marriott out. All good, I say.”