The police section of the ABC de Zihuatanejo, the local newspaper in our area, is filled with photos of the dead. In a U.S. newspaper, pictures of the deceased tend to be sanitized – representing the dead with an old yearbook or wedding photo, or something similarly positive.
This is Mexico, though, and the dead here — at least in the police section — are captured frozen in their final moments of agony. In this month’s police section, we see a man, laying face down in the dirt, a bag over his head, with hands tied behind his back, spotted with bullet holes. Another man lays on his back in a pool of dried blood.
A neighbor or ours who has spent a lot more time here than we have, said that if you ask people from Mexico how many people they know who died before they turned forty, many could easily come up with a dozen. Ask the same question to someone from, say, the U.S. or Australia and chances are that number could be counted on just one hand, he hypothesized.
Soon after discovering the police blotter, and having these conversations, I went home for my grandmother’s memorial. With thoughts of mortality present in my mind, I conducted and brief and non-scientific survey of my family members.
How many people did you know, who died before you turned forty, I asked them. True to my neighbor’s hypothesis, none could think of more than five people. These consisted of things like a traffic accident, a fishing accident, or a congenital illness. Death just seems much more present in Mexican life, from my brief experience here – not just from the pictures in the papers, but from the things people say.
After my return from California, I took our car in for its weekly wash. There was another car ahead of ours, so I had some time to chat with the other guys standing around. At one point, a young sweater-clad man on a motorcycle drove in. I had seen him before, selling newspapers in Troncones.
“This is the guy who brings bad news,” Tito, one of the guys at the wash, joked and everyone laughed. What’s the bad news today, I asked. Without skipping a beat, he replied that cartels had killed fifteen people in a neighboring village the night before. Sorry I asked. Others nodded. They had already heard that news. It’s all drug-related, Tito said, criminals killing other criminals.
This could be true, but the thing that left the greatest impression on me was the casual tone in which murder and extortion were discussed. The Venezuelan/American comedian Joanna Hausmann has joked about this being a sign that someone is Venezuelan. The joke carries across cultures.
Tito went to relate how he had recently been extorted for some MX$200,000 (~US$10,800). He figured that someone he knew, who works in the narco industry, probably gave up Tito’s name as a way to cover the cost of a debt that the other person couldn’t pay. It happens, Tito says. Because Tito owns some successful business, people know that he has money. That makes him a target. I’m going to Canada as soon as I can arrange the visa, he says.
The idea that death and danger are always near brings new color my view of how things work in Mexico. Things here consistently appear in a state of mild disrepair. People may come when they’ve agreed to, or not. Although I see anecdotal evidence to suggest that many Mexicans work as many or more hours than the average American, there is what might be called a ‘relaxed’ attitude towards the quality of said work and the motivation for professional advancement. In light of stories like Tito’s, how hard would you be motivated to work if a reward for professional advancement was a higher risk of extortion?