Lucha Libre and Zacatecas

This week I went to one of the bi-weekly Lucha Libre events, which happen every Tuesday and Saturday. Lucha Libre is like wrestling (WWF style), with two significant differences. First, most of the wrestlers wear masks. I’m not entirely sure why. Going into the Coliseo, I actually saw a wrestler entering the stadium, already with his mask on. .The second big difference, apparently, is that lucha libre is all about the crowd. The fact that there are wrestling matches going on in the background is really more of secondary importance. It appears that the primary form of entertainment actually occurs by different parts of the crowd yelling and screaming insults at each other, and to a lesser degree the wrestlers.

The crowd actually breaks down into two segments, the downstairs (abajo) with the theater-style seats which are are all essentially at ring level, and the upstairs (arriba) where there are open, unassigned, bleacher-style seating, and which you need to access from a separate entrance. There’s a clear economic divide between the two areas with the pobres (poor people) sitting upstairs, and everyone else downstairs. It’s these two groups which pass the entire match hurling insults at one another.

I was seated in the upstairs. On this particular night, there were actually many more people seated downstairs the upstairs, but it really didn’t matter. It’s clear that the upstairs crowd gets a lot more bang for their buck in terms of noise. I was seated right in an organized group of guys that are apparently regulars at this event. Their ring-leader, and distinguished 66-year old man in bifocals that went by the name of ‘Ghepeto’ (I don’t think that’s his real name), said he’d been there every single Tuesday for years. He had a crowd of buddies, most all of which were in the 25-35 year old range, that formed their own very efficient epithet-hurling machine. Most of them were wearing matching T-shirts, the front of which had the masked head of a luchador and read, roughly, “Whores – those that sit below” (Putos los del abajo). The backs read, “To be 1000% poor is not luck, it is a gift from God. --- Your mother is my whore”. You can tell they made them themselves as they each also had an individualized name on the back. Some seemed to be real names, but others included nicknames such as “Potato Face” and “The Little Rooster”.

The entire two hours of the event was thus a back-and-forth between these guys and the crowd below. The guys upstairs had a vast repertoire of vulgarity-laced chants, most of which I couldn’t make out. In between renditions, they’d single out individuals sitting downstairs and start hurling insults en masse. The downstairs was much less creative, usually replying with the simple chant (translated again), “Poor people, poor people, go <> your mother”.

Despite being outnumbered nearly five to one on this particular night (apparently a big soccer game pushed down turnout), the upstairs crowd dished out a lot more then they received. Everybody seemed to have a great time, though.

Over the weekend, I went to Zacatecas. This is a colonial town about 5 hours northeast of Guadalajara. At first, I wasn’t too impressed. The town seemed very slow, and in the daytime definitely didn’t have anywhere near the character of Guanajuato. However, the city really came alive at night, with people pouring into the main street through town. It also got really stunning, as the lighting on all the old colonial buildings looks really dramatic on the pinkish stone buildings, and most particularly on the façade of the incredibly elaborate baroque church.

Guanajuato

I checked into Guanajuato for a couple days this weekend. It’s a pretty nice little colonial town, with lots of winding, atmospheric alleys lined with beautiful old buildings. It seems like there’s a beautiful park with sculpted trees and a Florentine fountain around every corner in the old historic section. Apparently, all the luxury came from the colonialists that were funneling all the product from the local silver mines back to Spain. My guidebook said that for 250 years, the La Valenciana mine at Guanajuato alone provided a staggering 20% of the entire world supply of silver. There was some serious cash floating around, and it’s plainly evident if all the opulent old colonial buildings.

The town is built up in the mountains, and is sprawled out in the valley with some of the narrow alleys climbing steeply up the hillsides. I actually got a fairly decent workout walking back to my hostel every night. It wasn’t too steep on the streets until the route crescendoes with a straight uphill climb of a bunch of stairs about 50 meters into an alley. The city also has a maze of tunnels under the center of the city. They apparently redirected the river a couple hundred years ago into all these tunnels which are now used as the through-routes for traffic and many of the buses. Because of all the history, the great architecture, the warren of tunnels, and the winding, twisted nest of old streets, alleys, and tunnels, the town is a joy to just walk around. It can be challenging, though. Thank god I had a data plan with my iPhone—I can’t imagine how many times I would have gotten lost without Google Maps.

The big hubbub while I was there was El Dia de Los Muertos, the religious holiday where Mexicans remember their deceased family by going to the cemetery and decorating their graves. It was a lot different than I expected. I knew there was going to be partying in the town, but the party extended right up into the cemetery way up in the hills. For one thing, tons of food vendors set up right outside the cemetery, almost as if there was a street fair going on. People were dressed pretty casually, too. Most surprisingly, there was live music. And we’re not talking about solemn, pouty, weepy crap here. They were playing a kind of peppy, upbeat stuff that would feel right at home in a cantina. The most amusing thing about this is that the bands that were there were clearly not playing to the live crowd, but to the deceased. A couple times I saw a band arranged in a semi-circle around a particular spot on the layered, vertical sarcophagi on the walls, facing the sarcophagus and playing with their backs to everyone at the cemetery that actually had a pulse.

Most graves were decorated with flowers or other kinds of arrangements for the deceased one might have in the use. If the grave had them, bouquets of flowers would be placed in stone vases built into the grave. However, the majority of the people that couldn’t affort this used leftover large 32-oz cans from pickled jalepeños. (BTW – you can tell that La Costeña brand is the clear market leader here in Guanajuato.) The graves I really enjoyed, however, were decked out a la el Dia de Los Muertos with all the skeleton iconography and with all kinds of additional swag left, Egyptian-style, for the deceased. This could include anything the deceased enjoyed, but common elements I saw included opened cans of Modelo beer, Mexican torta sandwiches, oranges, apples, candy, roasted peanuts, shots of tequila, bottles of Coke, pastries, packs of cigarettes, bags of pumpkin seeds or chips, and some special sweet bread they cook for the holiday.

 

 

In addition to all the stuff at the cemetery, there was also plenty of stuff going on in town, as well. Lots of people had altars constructed for them, with flowers, but also decorations make from rice and beans, oranges, apples, and lots and lots of skulls. There was also a lot of street art, almost invariably featuring skeletons or skulls. One of my favorites was a picture of a skeleton in a pair of heals, a bikini, and a big floppy hat, hanging out at the beach. And everywhere ladies were selling little skulls make out of sugar, skull chocolates, skull-shaped lollipops, etc.

One of the other interesting aspects of Guanajuato was the Mummy Museum. Yes they have a mummy museum there. These aren’t millennia-old mummies, though. These mummies are the petrified corpses that have been taken out of some of the above-ground sarcophagi in the cemetery to make new space. Most of them seem to have been deceased between 80 and 150 years ago. Upon removing the bodies, they found the dry air and particular climate of the place kept some of the bodies exceptionally well-preserved, so they stuck them in a museum. The thing that struck me about this is that the museum is right smack next to the cemetery. When I went it was filled up with Mexican people presumably there for el Dia de Los Muertos, too. So you’d have a Mexican family, with their young kids in tow, hit the museum, and then likely afterwards go say 'hi' to Abuelito and Abuelita, mummifying away in the cemetery right outside where these petrified bodies were pulled from. Okaaaayyyyyyyy. I’m not much of an anthropologist and I’ve still only spent a grand total of 11 days in the country, so I’ll quote what my guide book had to say about this:

“This popular place is a quintessential example of Mexico’s acceptance of, celebration of and obsession with death; visitors come from all over to see disinterred corpses.”

Well, all-righty, then. Note that if you’re faint of heart you may want to skip these in the photos, as some can be pretty disturbing.

I’m banging out this post as I travel back to Guadalajara on the bus. The buses here (at least the ETN ones) kick ass. They’ve got massive bucket seats that recline about 55 degrees, have full-leg foot rests, wifi, private entertainment centers for every seat, provided snacks and drinks, and better bathrooms than I’ve ever seen on a plane, even in first class. It’s a great way to watch the Jalisco countryside wiz by. It’s pretty nice out here. Lots of rolling hills, dotted with little farms growing corn and their little conical piles of harvested corn left out to dry. It’s making me feel like some taquitos when I get back into Tlaquepaque.

Guadalajara

Four days into Mexico, and things are looking good. So far, I've got 6 hours of Spanish tutoring under my belt, and it appears that I'm going to really be able to up my game while I'm here. The place I'm staying at is also great. I've got a room in the house of a lovely older Mexican woman, Señora Alicia. I use the term house loosely, as it's really more of a complex. It's essentially a big, hollow square structure surrounding a beautiful garden with a half dozen trees that grow avocadoes, papayas, guanabanas, limes, and figs, and with a bunch of plants including tomatoes, epazote, yerba buena, Mexican oregano, and rosemary, among others. I've got what is essentially the upper level of a coach house on the opposite side of the garden from the main home. It's not the Four Seasons--the bathroom can get pretty dank, the wifi is extremely spotty, and the bed is pretty hard, but all things considered, for the 23 bucks a day I'm spending for this and the three included meals, it really can't be beat. And that food is pretty good. Señora Alicia cooks for me most of the time, and everything is fresh and tasty. Nights like tonight, though, where the señora is at the church working the food bank she organizes, Señora Sylvia, her housekeeping assistant that helps her when she has guests, is cooking for me.

The house is pretty big and has three other rooms in addition to my own. Right now it's just la Señora, myself, and her nephew who is hardly ever around. It's a good thing I like her a lot as her as we have a lot of alone time talking at meals. Apparently four other students from the school will be joining us next week, though.

The house and school are both located in Tlaquepaque, a city which is part of the larger Guadalajara area. It has much more of a Mexican village feel, as opposed to the big city, and is really charming. This is a relatively upscale part of town, and it has a beautiful square with things always going on. The big thing at the moment is the Fiestas de Octubre, some kind of Catholic whatnot that I don't understand. Also going yesterday was some kind of thing for the Virgin Mary. Whether or not these two things are related in any way, I couldn't tell you. I really didn't know there was anything special until I went to the main square in Tlaquepaque yesterday and there was all kinds of craziness going on, with ethnic dancers and kids cracking whips everywhere (which I made sure to steer way clear of). I checked out some other parts of town, and by the time I got back, most of the dancers were gone, but they were replaced with a group of four wackos that were sitting on this square lazy Susan looking thing at the top of an 80 foot pole. Each was tied by the ankle to the pole via a rope that was wrapped around the pole a bunch of times. They'd then fall backwards, scuba-style, off the lazy Susan, which would then start spinning around in circles, whipping the four dudes around the pole as they gradually descended to the ground, all whilst they were playing some kind of flute instrument. What all this has to do with the Virgin Mary, I'm not really sure, but it was neat to watch.

In addition to the wacky dancers and the crazy pole guys, there are also all kinds of street food vendors out. Again, whether this is an October thing, a Virgin thing, or just a general Mexico thing, I'm not really sure. I think it's actually likely a combination of all three. The other thing I noticed yesterday was the non-stop mass services. There are two gorgeous old colonial churches right on the square, and is seemed like there was a perpetual surplus of asses in pews. Looked like standing-room-only in a lot of occasions, actually, and I got the impression some guys were back for sloppy seconds. And all this is going on with all the crazy dancing and Yucatan guys flying around on poles right outside the flung-open doors. Apparently the priests are accustomed to competing with a bunch of background noise. I presume the perpetual church services were a Virgin thing and not just a regular Mexico thing, as I find it hard to believe that even Mexicans go to church that much on a regular basis.

 

I've hit most all of the historic stuff in the city already. If you want details, check out the photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Mexico?authkey=Gv1sRgCM7yv8aax46vXw#

 

I’ve been getting pretty good food outside the house, too. On Friday night, I hit what is supposedly the big place to go if you want fancy-pants, modern Mexican food. Got a great stuffed chicken breasts with some kind of Mexican herbs, huitlacoche (AKA corn smut), pineapple, and whatnot.  The real star of the weekend, though, was the birria de chivo, a braised goat recipe, that I got at my new favorite restaurant, La Birrieria de Las Nueve Esquinas in downtown Guadalajara. I love me some goat, especially when you jazz it up with fixings and make tacos out of it with fresh, house-made corn tortillas which are piping hot right off the griddle. I actually liked this place so much that I went back on Sunday. This time a got the cochinita pibil, which is native to Yucatan, not Jaliso. But I don’t really care—it was still damn good. I could sit around at that place, eat, and watch the women there bang out fresh tortillas all night.

Honorable mentions go to the place I went Saturday which, which made food from Durang. I also had a decent molcajete de camarones on Sunday, a bubbling hot bowl of a thick tomato-based sauce with shrimp in a Mexican-style mortar heated over the fire so that is cooks the food just by plopping it in there. I’ve gotten some pretty bad-ass ceviche tostadas and an octopus cocktail during class breaks, too. From other street vendors I’ve also been able to grab some grilled corn on the cob made with crazy purple corn with kernels the size of marbles, and coconut juice drank straight out of the fresh coconut (just like in SE Asia). Next on this list of street vendor food is the deep-fried sweet potatoes I’ve been seeing, which are both nauseatingly greasy-looking and yet incredibly compelling at the same time, and the ubiquitous torta ahogada.