A Courteous Genocide
I wonder if his army made fun of this ironic name incongruity behind his back? And while we are on the subject of English Translations, Cuerna-vaca means Horn of The Cow.
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| Generic Photo from wiki. Currently there are 2 large earthquake-caused cracks in the front that were repaired. |
Let me tell you about Cuernavaca, Mexico in the month of August in the year of our lord 2023. As is my tradition when I reach a town I ask the nearest person "Is this Cuernavaca??" which I know must be a treat for the locals...sort of like asking someone "What year is it?" But my objective is to ask someone to guide me without asking them to guide me. This worked perfectly on my arrival in Cuernavaca, a place I had only been to for 2 minutes years ago to get money from an ATM machine to give to the Federal Police who extorted it all from me a few hours later. The passenger told me exactly where the Zocalo is, which is key to understanding the downtown, which is also key to visualizing the entire city structure. Good ol' Mr. Courteous had chosen this area to build his palace because there was a native temple that could provide the blocks. My guess is that what you see today is the second or third attempt to protect what was underneath, but let me save those details for later.
I hunted for a reasonable hotel, walking in circles and eventually finding the Red Line bus that has service to Tepoztlan, a pueblo magico way up in the cloud forest that I had heard about. I made a mental note of where this bus terminal is because it wasn't the same terminal that I arrived at. Then I walked back to the town and managed to find all the streets that lacked a hotel until I finally discovered a line of crummy looking hotels.
Now, the savvy traveler in Mexico knows that the hookers are easily identified not by their clothing, although they do manage to stuff themselves into jeans 3 sizes too small and tops that would make Taylor Swift blush in shame, but by their stationary state. Yes, hookers are THE ONE person in Mexico who simply stands in one place for longer than 2 seconds. NOBODY LOITERS IN MEXICO. Nobody, except hookers and despondent gringo plumbers like me. Hookers loiter and it's very striking how different it looks for a Mexican woman to not be hustling down the sidewalk as fast as they can walk. I saw two such women on this block with hotels and my heart sank because that means these were hooker hotels and I seem to be cursed to only stumble on hooker hotels. A hooker hotel will not only have two or three middle aged women loitering on the sidewalk in front of the hotel but they will charge by the hour, or if the Viagra is really fresh then by the 3 hour fraction. This is the lowest of the low quality hotels. This is a hotel that you will get HIV washing your hands in. Even the old, wise cockroaches avoid these hotels. But I was tired of walking in circles so I approached the first one, something called Hotel Amor or something like that. Hookers in Mexico might give you a come hither glance or "you want girlfriend?" query, to which I reply, "Sure, I need a reminder why I'm single." but these particular hookers ignored me as I walked into the Hotel Amor, which alarmingly shared its courtyard with a motorcycle repair garage.
Immediately, all the red flags were flying as the attendant greeted me with pure suspicion and lack of alacrity, neighboring on instant disdain. I asked if there were sheets and she lied and said there were sheets. I asked if it was private and she lied and said it was private. I asked if there was hot water and she lied and said there was hot water. I asked if there was a television and she lied and said there was a television. Free coffee? Of Course! How much? $6 for 3 hours. How much for a whole night? She told the truth because there was a big sign that confirmed it: $12.
I paid her the money and went and checked my room. No sheets. As private as a public Roman steam bath. No television. A huge gap where the fabricated wall did not block rain water from pouring on the bed. A wobbly fan. Shower water as cold as the Arctic Ocean. I could live with everything but the lack of sheets because the abundant bed bugs had erected a sign on the whore-stained mattress that said "Abandon hope all ye who lay here". I also had no key...it was just a door with a lock but I had no key to lock it...so...what could I do to lock the door? I went back down and lobbied my complaints and she said she would rectify everything to my satisfaction. So I left into the night for some roasted chicken and very deep thinking in front of Mr. Courteous's Majestic Palace.
Cuernavaca, on this particular night, was like July 4th combined with a town's farmer's market, plus additional bedlam provided by nearby discos. On the right of the palace there was a stage set up for a series of mariachi and cumbia bands who competed for hours with recorded music from a nightclub to the left of the palace. Children ran back and forth. Teenagers were smoking pot and kissing in the shadows. Stray dogs fought for scraps of chicken. Police watched the madness lit up by the strobes from their police cars. Water balloons were thrown by families. Many whirly gadgets spun in the air. Fireworks exploded in the starry sky. I asked several people if there were some special holiday in August on a Tuesday night but they did not seem to understand me. I think that was just an average night in Cuernavaca... a total family friendly party across all of downtown in which anyone was invited, most streets were diverted for pedestrian traffic, and everyone attended in good spirit and on their best behavior.
Grey haired Americans I have met in Mexico routinely say that Mexico reminds them of America in 1957. Unsafe Fireworks. Youth Bands. Clumsy Parades. Car shows. Unlocked doors. Church. General Joyousness. Full community participation. Baked goods. Picnics. Markets. Noise. Celebration for the sake of celebrating. I vaguely remember 1976 and the festivities that surrounded the bicentennial but only associate 1957 with the worst kind of Eisenhower fetishists. Nostalgia for Nixonian oppression and buzz cut, cold-war political indoctrination that included periodic party mandated celebrations in the town square. But I must admit the Cuernavaca vibe was participatory, inclusive, and joyous with no particular event to celebrate. It simply was a Tuesday night community festival because the community wanted to have one.
Of course on my return to my hotel there was no change in status except the 2 hookers loitering in front of the gate were different. A new boyishly gender fluid attendant with bleached blond hair also mumbled he would alleviate all my concerns...but never did, so I wrapped myself up in pillow cases and towels as the night rain poured into my room and the fan spun precariously over my head.
All nights end. The dawn can not be avoided. Time solves all troubles. Amazingly, I slept very well, a deep sleep helped by draping dirty socks over my eyes to keep the bright strobe lights from the nearby disco from disturbing my slumber. My ever-present ear plugs kept the sounds of the orgy in room 21 from disturbing me, as well as blocking the motorcycle muffler rumbling out of my tinnitus ravaged ears. I dreamed of the many Cortez slaves who had been buried beneath his palace for unsatisfactory work, perhaps buried beneath the very whore hotel I slept in. Is this horrible customer service not retribution for that injustice? To ignore the entitled gringo in his bright white Jesus garb who so callously enters the hooker hotel with demands of sheets and private keys to the door? Perhaps?
I got up and splashed some freezing water on my face. Then I returned my towel and noted how no one offered me free coffee and blundered into the steady stream of thundering humanity that occupies every city street in Mexico from dawn to dusk. The hookers blinked at me through over brushed lashes...dark brown eyes, visions of Toltec ancestry, Mestizo blood coursing through their veins, relatives of Cortez and Monctezuma, royalty offering their bodies for a few pesos. Then they turned their eyes back to their smart phones and pulled their too tight blouses over their rolls of stomach fat as I tripped on the uneven sidewalk.
I visited a cathedral that is similar to every cathedral in Mexico, domed, ornate, stone, under renovation, filled with overweight tourists and kneeling indigenous repenting for non-existent sins. Sins?? What does this old woman in tattered hand-spun fabric dress know about sin? The earth fairly shook and lightning struck as I shuffled deliriously into the sacred hall with my mocha frappe and fresh mango breakfast, my mangled intestines, throbbing prostate, lascivious nature. The devout thought I looked like Jesus if he had avoided the nails and cross for another 20 years, but was I not more like Judas or Lucifer? Was I not the greatest sinner among the gathered? Would God ever forgive me? Would I forgive myself? No. Never. The aged, cracked murals of the nameless martyrs and the sacred saints gazed on my repulsive countenance with no judgement, only pity. Pity for my gluttony and my sloth, my pride and my wrath, my envy and my greed and my awful lust. Oh, the lust? Hadn't I been drifting further into a fantasy of ghost lust for imaginary hookers? Yes. Those sirens of my past still haunted me with their perfumed hair and false moans. Wasn't I flirting with corruption by consorting with pimps and pushers on the streets of sin? Yes. Would God forgive such a worthless sinner as me? No. I knelt on a prayer bench and asked forgiveness but only the gawking Japanese tourists behind me responded with revulsion and curiosity, snapping heathen photos for their instagram page. My mocha frappe may as well have been the sacrificial blood of a hundred native Tlaxcalan Indians bubbling from a fountain of bile beneath the very cursed soil we walked on. My fruit salad may as well have been the Frida Kahlo-inspired hearts of the Toltec victims who fell beneath Cortez's sword, Mr. Courteous. Feverishly, I begged forgiveness, pleaded for relief. Drop 1000 tons of pre-hispanic rock on my head, I asked, release me, punish me, deliver me. God sacrificed his son out of love, but what about Oggy? I asked the muted Saint murals and gold encrusted baubles. I invoked the name of all holy relics to save me. But Oggy remains awash in sin, adrift, a monument to self-immolation, reflective self-cannibalism. The prayer benches creaked with indifference. It was all just rock and wood. Rock pulled from the soil by slaves and wood chopped down with birds nests dropping corpses into the trampled soil, tree trunks and branches carved into platforms for the devout. So much blood, rivers of blood drained by Cortez into the soil. Enough blood to drown humanity. Corpses piled as high as a pyramid. Suits of armor sunken to the bottom of a now-forgotten lake, rotting and rusted. Knives, swords, cannons, muskets, chain mail, a woman's femur, stacks of skulls, a child's fingers, a man's rib cage, the crushed vertebrae of infants who had been abandoned as their parents were slaughtered by the villainy unleashed by Cortez. All before the eyes of God, in the name of god and gold and glory. The same indifferent eyes that gazed down on my loathsomeness, my rhetoric, my vitriol, my selfishness as I kneeled in the holy cathedral of Cuernavaca surrendering my soul to God in stony shadows of ancient rubble, head bowed, knees bleeding, arthritic feet, swollen organs, heart choked, wounded, aged, diseased. Was there divine love for one like Oggy? I don't know.
I fled the cathedral past the cripples and the eternal men sweeping leaves off the cobblestone into the harsh morning light. There was an outside area that I imagined was the original area to gather before the cathedral was built by the enslaved population. I stepped around the toiling ghosts of those humble victims of Mr. Courteous. The courtyard was full of ghosts, the lush gardens were full of pre-hispanic birds, now extinct because their feathers were currency. Jaguars growled in distant groves, guarding a quarry of bone. A stone cross stood in a location where once the faithful entered the area but it was a locked gate now so the location made no sense. A tour guide was narrating the history of the damage caused by the original 1810 revolution. More blood shed. More artillery shot at the stone walls. Animals fled. Confusion. Piles of corpses. Silence around the ruined humanity, dreams transformed to smoke, then the 1912 revolution. Zapata. Diaz. Santa Ana. Villa. Corpses and blood. Stones crumbling. Roof caves in. Still the cathedral remains. An Earthquake causes a statue of a saint to be decapitated, symbolizing the loss of humanity.
The whole city of Cuernavaca is built on the rubble of the preceding culture. The devout come and go in the shadow of a palace built on the destroyed pyramid of the Tlahuican culture to honor the sun and sacrifice humans to aid the harvest. Isn't it true that we are all sacrificed to the same sun eventually? All our bones are destined for the same furnace, are they not? The same drama and combat and sex and birth and death is constantly being replayed on slightly different sets with different props and different names, different languages, different villains and different heroes, recycled stories with no ending but a different segue into the next act under the same indifferent sun.
These ruminations were a perfect starting point to visit the Palace of Mr. Courteous itself, which is a museum now. I found a tour bus outside the museum called Cuernabus...that would give me a larger driving tour of the battleground known as Curenavaca, complete with a stop at a deli where a young couple sold muffins and juice to entitled Mexican children and the plastic seats of the double decker bus were exposed to the indifferent but burning sunlight so long that they melted the skin on the back of my leg.
I walked past the modern era statue of Mr. Courteous himself and entered the museum after I had inhaled the fruit salad and the mocha latte. I saw sections of the palace that indeed looked original from 1526 and since they look very different from the rock facade that we now see from the central plaza I must conclude that many attempts have been made to stabilize the building and add stone to the outside of original stone so that it is not the building that Mr. Courteous and his harem of wives looked at so long ago. To walk into the building you must walk past the grave of a 30-40 year old woman who died in the 16th century and was buried on this spot. One of how many? Millions? Maybe she was royalty? Maybe she was a saint? Maybe she was sacrificed to the sun? Maybe she was a wandering shaman? Recorded History gives us no details on the nature of her life so the artist must create it. All that remains are her bones, skull, spine, hips and detached feet laying exactly where they were buried so many centuries ago, under a plexi-glass heaven, her spirit hopefully long ago flown to more pleasant pastures.
The museum was once the seat of the State of Morelos. I've had a hard time remembering which state is Morelos and which state is Hidalgo. Hidalgo state is just north of the state of Mexico, in which the state of Districto Federal is trapped. The state of Morelos is south of the state of Mexico and I vividly remember the federal police asking for "More" money when they were extorting my pesos from me nearby. More! More! Morelos! That is how I remember Morelos is south of Mexico.
The ancient pre-hispanic pottery was on display. The open atrium where I think there was a bathroom was open to view although a netting had been placed over the roof so no birds could get in. No more skulls and bones were on display but there are sections of the original building protected from traffic. The north half of the building is actually another active church where a service was underway with a pastor fervently delivering the message to the devout, his voice echoing through the other parts of the palace, demanding surrender, offering eternal salvation.
Upstairs offered a pretty balcony with a photo taken from on top of the Palace in the early part of the 20th century so one can see how the downtown has been transformed. The central zocalo is still where it was in 1900 but there have been some streets rearranged and not a single horse-drawn carriage was visible when I stood on the same balcony of all the statesmen of Morelos once stood on their way to debate legislation of the state.
The grandest surprise for me awaited around one corner because having done no research on the palace I did not know that there were two huge art projects that are a permanent part of the walls of this palace. One of the art projects is on the walls and ceilings of the interior state congress hall. I took poor notes as I walked but the person who adorned the interior of the hall of the state congress allegedly worked for 30 years to do it so those are worth looking at since they have been off limit behind doors for 50 years. The internet has provided only one clue as to who gets credit, an artist named Salvador Tarazona Perez. Mr. Perez had the great patience to work lying on his back on scaffolds a foot away from the ceiling for 30 years so the least we can do is appreciate his effort.
But as I walked down a nearby hallway there was an interpretive sign explaining the work to restore some plaster fresco artwork on a wall damaged by an earthquake and the artwork was NOT the same artwork that was inside the hall of congress. No, I could tell by the distinct feet of the women
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| No one but Rivera paints feet like this |
that the artwork was by none other than Diego Rivera and part of my bucket list in this visit to Mexico was to see a Diego Rivera fresco and allegedly this building had one but when I went back into the congress hall I could not find the artwork. I only found reference to Perez.
So I went outside to the East Terrace and that was where I found the Rivera fresco exposed to the elements on an east facing balcony in all its glory. It's possible that this long terrace served a more important function in the 1930s when the building was utilized by the government. The lower sections of the art were simply pencil sketches which puzzled me enough that I examined it as close as I could and decided Rivera had actually engraved the outline with a chisel and then filled in the channel with pencil marks. The attendant contradicted this and said it was just pencil with a shadow but I maintain the pencil is in a tiny scratch on the surface of the wall but I could not confirm this by touching the surface of the wall. I believe that because the lower section is exposed to the sunlight of the morning that Rivera decided the fresco would never survive so he simply used pencil with the agreement the pencil would be traced in the future to refresh it. And since the upper portion was quickly in shade he painted fresh plaster as it was applied, like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
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| You can not only see the feet Rivera worked on but also the pencil sketch in the lower sections. It looks unfinished but old photos confirm that was how Rivera left it. |
This work is amazing in the spirit of violence, torture, religious hysteria, destruction, subjugation, slavery. The color and detail and embrace of jungle ethics is gripping. There is even a portion showing slaves building the very building that I was standing in although I still maintain that the current exterior wall with the small rocks in the mortar is NOT how this building looked in 1540 when Cortes lived here. I was humbled before the magnitude of 400 years of plundering bedlam. The work is chronological so it is supposed to be viewed starting from the north end and working toward the south where the final section shows Emiliano Zapata during the 1910 revolution, which was barely 20 years prior to Rivera starting the actual artwork.
What gripped me most about the work and is related to my visit to the Anthropology Museum, is the initial attempts at peace between the Aztecs and the Spanish. This only lasted a few months and was futile but one section of the Rivera fresco is devoted to this attempt at diplomacy. It was Montezuma who eventually perished defending his culture, but his emissaries are the ones shown by Rivera, humbled, guarded by warriors dressed as jaguars, Cortes is guarded by his armored knights. That section actually was supposed to go on the engine doghouse of my Econoline van but I could not find an airbrush painter willing to attempt it. It was supposed to be a meeting of the two cultures, El Conquistador Meets the Indigenous population.
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| Another successful day of diplomacy from Mr. Courteous! |
The anthropology museum divides pre-hispanic cultures into those like the Aztecs who were devoted to combat, and perhaps the Oaxacans. I'm inclined to believe this slavish devotion to warfare is a tradition America has completely embraced.
After absorbing as much as my saturated brain could of Rivera's work I left to meet my bus for the trip around the city where I could see more cathedrals and guitar shops and trees and a river ravine and winding stone streets and a pre-hispanic pyramid that survived the conquest of Mr. Courteous.
When the tour was over I immediately walked to the Linea Roja bus line and got on a bus for Tepoztlan. This Pueblo Magico is situated high in the cloud forest above Cuernavaca, about 1 hour on the way back to Mexico City and has some remnants of its long period of quaint pre-hispanic vibe. But today Tepoztlan is mostly a trinket and pulque (antique grain alcohol) haven that looks like your local seaside resort has spilled onto the streets. How many colorful refrigerator magnets can you sell? Many. I did tour the streets with the throngs of day-trippers drinking cheap pulque on a booze walk into the jungle and I'm sure a few blocks off the main market area the town breathes with the warmth of 1809 but one has to search for the heart of Tepoztlan now. What is presented at first to the lazy traveler is cheap booze and Chinese bracelets. Instead of venturing far from the town (I'm sick of walking everywhere), I sought out Cuban Mojitos from a helpful Cuban transplant to the area who could tell I needed a double shot of Cuban rum. The first drink went down very easy, surprisingly easy, and the town started to glow with hospitality and joy. The clock tower chimed with musical harmony even though it was a recorded and amplified chime since the real bell had long broken or been sold for scrap. The second Mojito had so much sugar that I had to chew it and the mint leaves. I was cheerful and smiling. Toasting the warmth of the village of welcoming people. I loved everyone. I called everyone a friend. I don't even remember how the third Mojito came to be in my drink but it tasted wonderful. I didn't even spit out the mint leaves. It was sugary sweet and left my mouth feeling completely coated with slimy sugar like thick mucus but I did not care. I loved all of humanity and wished everyone the best in life. What did I care that wildfires were burning all of America? These things were unavoidable. Right? Politics come and go. Lords and Gods rise and fall. The path of justice was mere bubbles in the brook of time. Why get upset. Have a mojito and all your troubles will dissolve like so much mystic smoke through the shaman tent. Were bodies hung and tortured nearby to rid them of evil spirits and entice the locals to embrace a corpse nailed to a dead tree? Yes, most likely. So what? Mojito! Un Mojito mas! Gracias Caballero. the old Mexican hospitality was back as the underage boy bartender asked me to taste the mojito to make sure it was to my satisfaction. Satisfaction? Of course I was satisfied. Let me buy a drink for everyone! I was embraced by the locals. Elected to city council. While the hooker hotel in Cuernavaca could not even give me a key to my own room, Tepoztlan gave me a key to the city. I was a brother. I fixed all their plumbing problems for free. I had statues erected to me. I had a street named after me. The sun fell behind the jagged mountains early where the town is located. Had Cortez walked these same streets and enjoyed the same pulque? Probably. Ah, Mexico! The toil and the sweat, the throngs of underemployed scratching out a living selling refrigerator magnets identical to the ones for sale ten feet away. Gum. Audio phones. Cases for gadgets. painted hats. bad pizza. delicious Mojitos. It's a stew of humanity thriving in the post revolution, celebrating multiple eras of widespread combat, not celebrating combat but perhaps raising a mojito in celebration of survival. Where the bones of the victims Cortez left beneath the rubble of his palace lie on full display mere meters from the Cumbia dance stage. Where the torture chambers of this palace stand with water balloon distance of a shaved ice food cart. Sing, don't cry, is the motto here. The mojito evening progressed aimlessly and shamelessly into night.
I stumbled back to my hotel room that was twice as expensive as the hooker hotel but about 100 times more luxurious. Plenty of sheets. A towel! A blanket! A key! These were unheard of amenities in the Cuernavaca hooker hotel. It even had a pretty rooftop area where I kissed imaginary travel companions who were equally drunk on travel drinks and lush greenery, drunk enough to ignore my foul breath and groping hands. In a land of ghosts and dreams the romance of the air made flesh and blood lovers irrelevant. My dream arms held memories as tight as the living. My ghost lovers are beloved as the real ones when you consider the endless river of time. All the dead and the living blend into one river of pulque and mojito madness flowing toward a vast mestizo ocean. The graves of the past come alive with drops of Oaxacan blood and Cuban rum on rooftops under Mexican stars. So many roasted chicken legs discarded with the bones of the Aztec warriors in their jaguar armor. No sounds of motorcycles penetrated my lair. No belching bus traffic awoke me. Only mojitos and pulque dreams surrounded my sleep and a pyramid far above the plateau on the cusp of the ridge between the valley of Cuernavaca and the northern valley of Mexico City. I could see the stone levels outlined against the sky far above the ragged landscape and imagined the toil and sweat of the ancient ones as they dragged stones up the ravine as the bugs and the sun and the whips of their sun lords punished them, men clamoring up the steep slope with unbearable burdens of stone. I stumbled into bed, feverish, spinning from Mojito Magic, Pulque Sweats. Sleep and silence embraced me.
My bowels have gone on strike since my terrible illness of last month. The food poisoning caused my intestines to temporarily shut down so I can not eat as much without feelings of slowly stuffing myself with undigested meat and corn. Still, I awoke hours later as the stars made their way across the heavens and tried to find something to eat but only managed to find a bag of potato chips. The village without the activity of the trinket salesmen was more quaint, more magical, the pulque vomit on the cobblestone streets was not out of place. It all belonged. I belonged. Humanity was where it belonged.
The morning found me hungover and with an appetite fit for an Aztec emperor. I had scrambled eggs and coffee with what Mexicans call a "panque"...but what I call an under-cooked and tasteless and way too dense corn muffin that required being cut with a knife and soaked in coffee to eat. Like Mexican pizza, these imported delicacies always disappointed me once I ate them.
I like finding things out the hard way so I have spent far too much
time backtracking my own footsteps and shrugging my shoulders
when I reach a destination only to find there is nothing there that will help me.
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