San Louis Potosi

 

 

November 4, 1998

It was not Mexico that was lost when I set out to look for her, it was me that was lost.  Yet Mexico was lost too, at least

to Americans such as myself.   I first realized it the Sunday evening I arrived in the North Central Town of San Luis Potosi.

 

I got out of the cab that had just taken me from the bus station on the outskirts of town to the hotel I had selected from my

guide book in the center of town.  I felt at risk in getting out of the cab and paying him off.  I half understood the driver’s assurances that my hotel was just a block up the street, as he seemed to have said, but I didn’t trust him.  Why hadn’t he delivered me to the hotel?  What could the man be up to?

 

But what choice did I have?  I hung my bag over one shoulder and my lap top over the other and headed off into the pedestrian only section of San Luis Potosi.  Feeling nervous and insecure, I watched the people I was meeting in the street – would I be robbed?  If not – why not?  I was helpless and alone in Mexico!  Why was I even here?

 

"What if he just dumped me!" was what I was thinking.  "Why didn't he take me to the hotel?"   It wasn't that I didn't see

that the street was closed to traffic.  The driver had told me that the entire "El Centro" was closed to traffic. I was afraid of any transaction between me and a Mexican - afraid that I would

somehow be taken advantage of - screwed!  Afraid, not only because I was in a strange country where I didn't speak the

language, I would not have felt this in Europe. I was afraid because this was Mexico!  I was afraid of being in Mexico, I was afraid of

Mexicans! 

 

Why should the cab driver take me to my hotel?  I asked myself, what was in it for him?  I had no idea where I was, he

could take me anyplace and just tell me to pay up and get out!  My Spanish was not better than the driver’s pointing and

urging understood it to be.  I trudged up the stone paved street toward the plaza the driver had assured me was only a block away

I did not look up at the buildings or pay much attention to the vendor stalls that began to fill the streets as I walked toward what I hoped would be my hotel. I was unhappy, trudging up the street carrying my bags as best I could and looking at my feet.

 

It was about six o'clock and the air was thick with evening and Mexican warmth.  As I neared the square, I heard music, a choir singing somewhere up ahead, but I was not in the mood for music. Besides the music was discordant. When I reached the corner of the plaza itself, I could see that there was indeed a conflict. I stopped for a moment to figure out what was wrong with the music! Music was coming from the bandstand in the center of the plaza, where a full and very vigorous band played.   The singing was coming from the cathedral on the corner of the square very near the bandstand. The effect, while discordant in a way, was harmonious in another way.  The crowds that attended the concert at the bandstand blended with the overflow of the crowds that stood upon the steps to the cathedral which was too full to hold everyone and the overflow spilled into the plaza. 

 

Yet, only the attention of the two groups was turned a different way, those that had come to the Catholic service attended upon the open

doors of the cathedral, those that came to the plaza for the concert looked toward the bandstand.  Otherwise both crowds

were one and the music, in a haphazard way blended into an only slightly discordant whole.

 

It is tempting to suggest that I somehow perceived the tension in Mexican society as I stood there, my bags hanging off

me, looking at the Plaza.  Perceived the complex relationship of the parts of Mexican culture, even to suggest that I

understood the vast and historic tension that exists between the secular culture and the Catholic church - but that would

be an exaggeration.  What I really felt, standing there at the edge of the Plaza de Armas in the viscous evening light and

the warmth of the February evening was something quite different.  I felt enchanted.  I was Dorothy opening the door of the gray old house of her childhood and seeing OZ in full color for the first time!

The blended crowds, one facing the open Cathedral doors, the other the bandstand had more in common to my eyes than anything that I could see that separated them.  Both were made up of lovers with arms entwined  and bodies pressed close; men and women with children by the hand, teamed as husband and wife in a way I was not used to; old men chasing small toddlers who ran bouncing on short legs and screaming in delight at being chased by grandpa;  Singles, staring intently

into the midst of the mystery of their choice -whether it be the open Cathedral doors or the Vivaldi coming from the bandstand.

 

The Plaza de Armas was full of what seemed to me to be people completely content with their lot in life, happy to be in

this plaza on this early Sunday evening, splendid as a painting by Monet in the heavy evening light. Where was the travail

of the Mexican Murals by Rivera or the horrors of those by Orozco?   Why was I looking upon a scene so serene that only a French Impressionist could have captured it?  Where was the Mexico that my California politicians conjured – railing against illegal immigration?  The Mexico from which small brown people fled North and hoped only to wade across the Rio Grand and escape into the welfare arms of the United States?  Who were these tall, happy, elegant people? Who were they to be so splendid in the serenity of their own town square on an ordinary February evening? It was at that moment, standing on the corner of the Plaza De Armas in San Luis Potosi, with my bags hanging off my shoulders, that I began looking for Mexico - like Dorothy - newly crashed into Oz.