Saturday in Guadalajara

Yesterday was an easy day. I wandered around downtown for a while, then took a taxi west to Colonia Americana.

Wound up at a Chilis for lunch.(Yes, same chain as in the US) I ordered and ate a hamburger. I rarely, almost never, eat red meat but the hamburger, it seems, was calling my name in a very plaintive voice. LOL. The Chilis was on the ground floor of a small shopping plaza. I don't remember Chilis in the US as a very good place to get real food and they are no better in Mexico. I would have chosen a salad or something else, but there were no options to go with the hamburger. It was fries. Limp, greasy, sodden fries. Am I complaining too much. Yeah maybe.

Then I fooled around in the plaza. On the third floor was, a great playground for little kids. It was about 150 feet long and about 40 wide. The floor was firm, but soft enough so that a child who fell would not be hurt. And they did fall while I was there, but not often. There were wonderful climbing things, a three tier balloon structure. It was about 15 feet in diameter at the bottom, then a second balloon about 10 feet and finally the top balloon was just wide enough for two children to climb up and lay down. The whole thing would bounce around as the kids were climbing and then at the top, they enjoyed more bouncing. Even if they fell from the top, they would land on the second tier, maybe three feet. But what they really did was just slide down the sides.

Another toy was a 10x10 shallow pool of water which was covered by a loose sheet of clear plastic. The kids were enjoying "swimming" without getting wet. Many other similar items including a cloth "tunnel" with a helical coil structure, about 15 feet in length and two feet in width, so the kids could crawl in at one end and end up at the other. But with equal enjoyment the "tunnel" could roll around and be bent back on itself so the children could manipulate things. There were also areas where the children could paint with washable colors, fold papers (origami) etc.

It was all presided over by two women who seemed to have a special touch with the kids. Meanwhile the mommies could sit at a counter right around the perimeter and watch their children play while they drank cokes or horchata (A wonderful Mexican drink) or even eat lunch.

Hurray for whoever created this playground.

By the way. I could have found a much better hamburger up there in the food court, or gone for a salad. Several nice fast food options. Maybe it is my limited life experience, but I've never found a real fast food salad place in the US. Yes, MacDonald's and BurgerKing will serve a premade dried up salad in most of their outlets. For a while Wendys had a salad bar. Today, Carl's Junior seems to be the only one left and even it is pretty limited.

I returned to the downtown area and, in the taxi, had a small personal triumph. The driver was explaining how driving was easy yesterday, but today the traffic was bad due to the El Grito holiday. (If you try to Google it, you will notice that Google is honoring Mexican Independence Day with their logo.) I remembered the quotation, "Some days you eat the tiger, some days the tiger eats you." (No, I don't remember from where that comes, and it might have been a bear. LOL). So I did a quick translation and shared it with him. He got it and laughed so hard, I was afraid he would lose control of the car.

I should explain that my Spanish is pretty lame. I studied for six months in Mazatlan, then for another six weeks the next year, in Cuernavaca. But I really don't have much self-confidence in my Spanish. Moreover, I almost never use it while in the US. When I come to Mexico (Almost annually) for vacation, it takes me a couple days to really get some confidence back and begin to understand even minimally. So the tiger was a good thing.

By seven, I was again hungry but just a bit. Decided to eat a small bowl of tortilla soup at this little health restaurant. As I walked to it, I noticed the many police and soldiers on the streets. Their numbers increased as I sat eating. They had several varieties of police, city, state, forest rangers, and military as well, marines, army, even navy (Even though GDL is a long way from the sea ;-) It was good to see them taking security seriously. Not the 20,000 that were deployed in Mexico City, but a reassuring presence here in Mazatlan.

I was hoping to get to the central square for the fireworks and to hear the big proclamation--I will explain this later in this blog. Unfortunately, as I exited the restaurant, a few sprinkles of rain began. Not bad, but I made my way back to the hostel under the overhangs and awnings. By the time I got to the door of the hostel, it was beginning to be minor but serious rain. Assuming it would let up soon, I prepared to go out again. About 15 minutes later (8pm or so) the rain was coming down in sheets, the street was flowing, the few cars going past the window looked like they were swimming. Then the lightening started and continued.

I had not come prepared for rain so I just decided to view the celebration, if there would still be one, on line and just gave it up for the night.

A word about El Grito for those who don't know the Mexican history. In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest in the small town of Dolores, had the church bells rung and gathered the people to pronounce the beginning of the war of independence from Spain. 

Usually called "El Grito de Dolores" or "El Grito de la Independencia". The exact words appear to be lost in history, but one source quotes "The essential spirit of the message is...'My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!" (Gachupines means the Spanish conquerors and their lackeys.)

Mexico is a great nation. Many in the US tend to think of it as backward, poor and the home of all those drug cartels, when they think of it at all. Oh, and the source of tens of millions of "illegal aliens." (I wont go into the reasons for the quotation marks here, but the term is wrong on many levels.) But actually Mexico was far ahead of any other country in the Western Hemisphere in freeing slaves and restoring to the proper indigenous people, the land that had been stolen by the conquering Spaniards.

Mexico freed all slaves in 1828. This was a corollary of the Chilpancingo Constitution of 1814 where it was the world's first country to recognize all persons as equal regardless of race.

Growing up in Texas, I learned a lot about Texas history. Some of it was magnificent. But the freeing of the slaves was a good part of the motive for the Texas war with Mexico. The immigrants from the US who came to Tejas, needed to have slaves to work in the fields of cotton and onions. When Mexico freed all slaves, that began the planning for the Texas Republic which was formed in 1836. Now I won't pretend that it was the only reason, but it was a big reason. Texas quickly gave up its status as an independent nation to join the US as a slave state.

If you have any interest in Mexican history. Well...even if you don't, let me recommend a history book that is exciting and worthwhile even for those who slept through high school history class. (I confess). Pick up a copy of Gods, Gachupines and Gringos: A People's History of Mexico. The author is Richard Grabman and it is published by Editorial Mazatlan, run by my friend David Bodwell who has published a number of excellent works on Mexico.