Our first residence in Guadalajara was in an area near Plaza Del Sol, in a condo complex. We leased an upstairs two bedroom apartment with a laundry room and balcony opening onto the central open space, where nothing but a patch of land below and sky above was there to see. It was convenient to have a washer and dryer, and the apartment was new and very neat. I remember making love in the bedroom, with the window open to the air and the cool thick air of the night drifted in as we clung close to warm up. We drank brandy, played backgammon, read newspapers and watched Mexican television programs and movies. We took long walks around the neighborhood and chatted with the chaffeur who was always wiping the Mercedes clean for his employer, the Senora who owned all the nightclubs. Ah.. now I recall her name.. it was Carmen.. and when she invited me to her condo to join gatherings of all her friends, she always introduced me as “Martita”, and directed me at once to “seet down” and told her maid to bring me some cafe con leche. She liked having an American neighbor, and I think she liked it that I was so small and blonde. I do not remember her ever coming to our condo, though.. and now I am not sure why. Once, I went with her in her car as she had the chaffeur drive her to pick the maid up when she could not find a way to come to work that day.. and I remember how she disparaged the maid as she watched her walk to the car. She called her a “tortuga”, una tortuga que mueve tan lentamente .. a tortoise who moves so slowly... It was embarassing the way she talked about her even in her presence.
Our life in Ajijic and Guadalajara was such an interesting experiment.. in the condo complex in which we lived, in a development called Bugambilias, was filled with a diversity of Mexican nationals. There was Patricia and Caterina, both in their mid thirties, both married to professionals, one to an ingeniero (engineer) the other to an abogada (attorney). They made friendships with me and we went to lunch a number of times. These were outings they loved.. and in which they used to admire the men who were around. It seemed that they thought I had lived a wealthy and wonderful life as a blonde America, a “rubia”. They flirted with passing men, exchanged glances that were smoldering with them.. and making commentaries on their bottoms, their eyes, their hair. They were savoring the lustiness of life.
Carmen, who owned the nice Mercedes, was indeed a very wealthy woman. She owned nightclubs and commercial properties throughout Central and South America, including clubs where international backgammon competitions were held. Carmen had a file box of cards, one for each property she owned, and the box was about eight inches long, filled with 3 x 5 inch index cards.
One day in the condo, as I went to the open breezeway to launder something, I saw outside on the stuccoed wall what seemed to be a brown bat, clinging to the side of the building with a wing span of about eight inches or more. On its wings were big black spots on its velvety brown wings, spots that looked like eyes looking at you. Then I looked longer, and saw that it was a giant butterfly or moth. I had never seen such a huge butterfly. It seems that they were emerging from cocoons en masse, flying all over some areas of Mexico. A few days later we drove out to a village some hour or so away and there again were these butterflies, but this time they had died and lay on the walks and yards like brown leaves.Their bodies made a crunchy brown and black blanket everywhere, and I did not really want to walk on them. It felt wrong to step on their dead bodies. But the phenomenon was a remarkable experience, and I was grateful to have witnessed it. I am wondering now why I did not keep one preserved. I have no idea what kind of butterfly it was. It was as wonderful as being in the midst of the purple locust swarm just outside of Guadalajara. They were in the air.. probably a million or more.. making the sky dark with their winged purple bodies. They formed mauve colored clouds as they clustered together in flight. I saw them in the distance, forming dark purple clouds above and around the tall trees of the forest ahead. When they hit the front window of our car, they sounded like a “smack”,making "plop, plop, plop, plop, plop" noises as they hit the window. Soon the windows were covered with parts of them, their bodies broken and squished into a purple goo that we dared not spread with the windshield wipers. We just had to put up with the messy fat grasshopper/locust bodies until we got home and could wash the car completely. It was not a pretty affair to clean the car, but the beauty of those living clouds, .. well it is not something I will ever forget. In fact, I can relive it in my mind right now.
While we were in Guadalajara, in the year we lived in the condo, we took Spanish lessons at an Instituto Cultural downtown. The class included people from France, Japan, Germany and Israel. It was an interesting mix of personalities and backgrounds. A young woman from northern Germany, named Susanna, was the vice president of Il Lenguas, a foreign language school franchised all over Germany. She and Pete and I talked about pooling to invest and open one of their branch schools in Mexico. We investigated the laws and regulations for such an enterprise between international citizens, and it turned out that they were more favorable for Germans and other Europeans than for United States citizens. It would not work, as the restrictions on our activities in business in Mexico were so much different than they were for Susanna. And besides that, she borrowed some money from us and did not repay it. So that was the end of that.
Then we explored the idea of visiting Cuba, and of living in Sri Lanka. Neither of those ideas panned out either. Visiting Cuba was an option, as there were flights from Mexico on a daily basis, but we learned that anyone who visited the Cuban consolate or who booked a flight there was photographed with security cameras and then investigated by the CIA. Yes, the tentacles of the CIA and other U.S. agencies reach every part of the planet. We did not really want to call any unwanted attention to ourselves, so we put away any desire to visit Cuba. At the time the cost of living in Sri Lanka was so low that an American pensioner could live like a king there, and it was safe then. But it was not exactly a paragon of industry or business, so again we went on to consider other things. In the meantime, both of us continued to improve our Spanish fluency and I kept painting my watercolors every day.
The story of Hernan Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan (the leading Aztec center, which lay where modern Mexico City is today) captured my attention. I came across the book written by Bernal Diaz, who was the historian who was with Cortez in his entire adventure with the Aztecs. From the first arrival of the ships to the appointment of Malinche, the famous Aztec woman who was the translator between the Spanish and the Aztec leaders and who was also the lover of Cortez, to the initial killings to the all inclusive war with the invasion of the emperor's home and the complete massacre of all the tribe, it was an engrossing and incredible story. The events of Bernal's life after the conquest also was surprising: he married a native woman, Beatrice, a Guatemalan, and lived the rest of his days in Guatemala. (Pete and I had visited Guatemala and knew the appeal of the country.. it was beautiful with lush jungles and mountain high forests.. if I have not already told you of our visit there, wait.. I certainly will later.) I read the entire book by Diaz. It's description of the priests who lived in mud huts coated completely inside with human blood, and lined outside with stacks of human skulls was amazing and I absolutely could not put the book down. The deception that Cortez and the Spanish fed the Aztec leader, which led to the killing of his brother and then his family and himself was a nightmare that had been real. I looked at Mexico differently then, seeing in all the Mexican faces around me a bit of the Aztec features. There were Aztec sayings that still held true to day, such as one observation about corruption in politics / government: “Only snakes and birds of prey reach the highest pinnacles”, which of course is saying that only those who crawl on the ground or search for something to kill from the skies can attain the highest levels of power. Certainly true no matter the culture or “civilization.
In Ajijic, living in a house, we spent some time in the small town, where there were a number of North Americans. It was an enclave of immigrantes rentistas, retired Americans who lived there much less expensively than they could have in their home country. Rentals were rock bottom, electricity and water costs were pennies on the dollar, and maid service could be had for the price you would have paid a babysitter decades ago. Near the town there was an Instituto de Belles Artes, an art institute where a sculptor who created figures in the pre-Columbian style worked and gave instruction. He showed me the way that such figures were shaped, especially the arms, hands, and fingers. It was much simpler than one would have thought. It was in Ajijic that we met Jeanne and her husband (whose name I do not recall). They were Americans who spoke no Spanish at all.. they just did not bother learning it. Jeanne filled her days doing crossword puzzles and making decoupage boxes and wooden purses with plastic handles. They were actually quite charming, but the crossword puzzles everyday seemed to me to be a bit of anal insanity. Her husband was thin and red faced. I have no idea how he spent his time. What I do remember about him is the scorpion incident. There were scorpions everywhere, and when we got dressed in the morning we always had to shake out our clothes to make sure none were hiding inside our pant legs or shirts. There was even an island called Scorpion Island that was in the center of Lake Chapala, beside the town. One morning he pulled on his khaki pants without the usual shaking and checking.. and sure enough a scorpion was in there waiting. The scorpion did nothing until he had driven to the town center and was walking down the sidewalks past the row of small shops. Then it struck him, and he began jumping around and screaming. It stung him so much that he ran screaming into the nearest drugstore, where he dashed behind the druggist's high counter and took off his pants at once. Of course he had to be treated for the sting immediately and was certainly in the right place for medication. Pete and I were especially careful of our own clothes and house after that, and I was obsessively checking everything.
One morning as I opened the door to go out to the front yard, I saw a curious red mass near the doorbell, just beside the right of the door. It was a tangled mess of what looked like red-orange stringy material, like a plant but not green. I looked very closely at it and it began moving. Whoa ! What was this? It was alive and active with movement.. Then I realized it was a pile of spiders, all clustered together. It seems that they gather in such a huddle for mating. I had never seen that type of spider before. So far, I had seen purple locusts, huge brown moths/butterflies, and now red spiders. What a place Mexico was !
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