Hans Zimmer & Richard Harvey, Le Petit Prince

Zig-zagging on my car towards Colorines was fun, I thought it was a good option for getting food instead of going to Valle de Bravo’s market. On the way there, I recognised the dam I usually jog towards, some cyclists were moving slow, patiently waiting for another that was left behind.

Some cars ahead slowed down, a little boy was helping his father to patch the barely paved road, so he had his extended arm towards the passing cars with a plastic cup. Dry patches of land, bare concrete houses and small lakes were silently devoured by water lilies. 

This community is the one that helps Valle de Bravo be what it is. Most of the people that live here, go every day to work on hotels, houses and stores. Eighteen pesos takes you to Colorines on a cab shared by 4 people plus the driver.

Tortillas made by hand, said a sign, coal by the pound said another. A small dog was furiously barking and running towards some cars. A little girl squatting on the floor was licking a lollipop. An old woman was selling cilantro over a small wooden table.

Once I got there, the tianguis or market was busting with life. Colorful, ripe fruit was carefully placed on the stands, some cut open for you to try it. “Pasele, güerita, que le damos?”, meaning “Hello blondie, what can we provide you with?” said one man selling chicharrón or fried pork skin. “I was looking for the cecina (thin meat)”, I asked. “Ah”, he replied, “right there by the corner”. 

A clown was dancing cumbia with some kids.

I usually forget what I look like, and people usually think I’m not Mexican so they always laugh when I do answer them back in Spanish with some kind of joke. I can’t stand stuck up people and maybe they might think I could be so, being a “güerita” but what I do know, from my long experience of Deep Mexico, I hold the highest respect and fascination for other people’s lives. Maybe that does translate in the way I engage everyone but by the time I bought some card tricks for my nieces, I was lucky to know so much from the man that was selling them. He had been stabbed by a joto or gay man when he was coming out of a bar late one night. “That is when I stopped drinking, I was 25 and when I got a bit better, left the hospital, went to church immediately to swear myself off booze and women, and finally I joined double A, been clean ever since”.

I wish I could write about everything I saw. People dressed in black sitting outside a house with a casket surrounded by candles, a compadre pouring hard alcohol in their plastic cups. Neighbours that passed by came by the widow, shook her hand dryly and paid some kind of respect towards the deceased.

Imagining my life on a small town like this, quickly faded away. Some municipal officers walked by with their old rifles, dirty looks and crooked grins.

A little girl inside a plastic bin, slept serenely. On a bin to her right, some mangoes were half price. On a bin on her left, tall, handsome corn cobs stood proudly. “How much for the kid?” I asked. Her mom smiled at me, laughed for a bit.

How is it that someone dares to take the money away from these people and build White Houses, make decadent trips and shallow shopping in Paris? Why is that this has been done by every head of any municipality, every governor of each state and every president in our country? They took money for their bare necessities, drainage, health, shoes. Even without any of these basic human rights, people still smile warmly, hold their dearest close on a motorcycle ride, make a long line at the candy store with 10 pesos on their hands because it’s Children’s Day. Resilience might look a bit different in other places, but in Deep Mexico, some people just never had another way of understanding life.