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Ghosts at the Hotel Isabel: Saludos de John Ross

December 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

by Felisa Churpa Rosa Rogers

Hotel Isabel--photo by Chelsea Mcalister

The pretty teenage receptionist at the front desk of the Hotel Isabel is miffed that I don’t have a  reservation and we spend the next 20 minutes negotiating my room, wake-up call, and tomorrow’s 5 AM taxi to the airport, all of which entails filling out paperwork in triplicate, as per the Mexican custom. “The electricity is out and so is the water,” she mentions blandly as she hands me my room key.  “The elevator and television and Internet don’t work either,” she says. “Do you still want to stay?”

When I question her further, she is typically vague about the reason for the outage: “they’re doing something to the street”, and alarmingly definitive about the likelihood of the power and water coming back on anytime soon: “en realidad, no”.  In the land of mañana and mas tarde and ahorita, being told a definite” no” is almost startling.

This is a testament to my devotion to the Hotel Isabel, I think as I drag my heavy hard-shell suitcases up the first flight of stairs. I never thought I’d miss the Isabel’s tiny deathtrap of an elevator, but ascending six flights of stairs in complete darkness makes the claustrophobia of the lurching tin box seem positively civilized by comparison. As I peer down the hotel’s spectral Colonial hallways looking for room 306, I question my own sanity. A rational person, I think, would have hailed another taxi instead of paying full price for a parched, pitch-black hotel room. As I squint at the dark numbers at the tops of the 14-foot wooden doorways, I curse the teenage receptionist. She could at least have given me a candle.

But when dropping into The Big Enchilada, a home away from home is indispensable. Besides, there’s just something about the Isabel. When I finally find my room and unlock the door, I’m glad I didn’t get back in the taxi. The familiar pink 1980s bedroom set looks strangely beautiful in the ancient room with its 16-foot ceilings and rickety wardrobe. A narrow window looks out on the roof of the former National Library. Like most of the buildings in Mexico City’s Centro Historico, the stone-scrolled fortress looks like it has provided the backdrop for at least one tragic conspiracy, three or four wars, and a handful of long-forgotten crimes of passion.

Speaking of which, the Hotel Isabel has been in operation as a hotel for over 100 years, and the institution gives new meaning to the term “storied”. I’ve loved the Isabel for more than a decade, and beat poet John Ross  has been confirming my sense that the former Colonial mansion is a world unto itself. Ross moved to Mexico in 1957 and spent the last 25 years of his life at the Isabel, during which time he kept his ears to the ground and his fingers tapped on the pulse of the most improbable city on earth. My nonfiction read for this trip is El Monstruo:  Dread and Redemption in Mexico City, Ross’s gutsy ode to the city he knew best. Drawing from street gossip, interviews with local characters, dusty news archives, and the writings of some of the city’s finest scholars and troublemakers, Ross has created a masterwork that is at once a colorful leftwing diatribe, a serious work of scholarship, and a hell of a story.

As I breath the familiar smell of diesel exhaust  and tacos that wafts up from Isabel la Catolica street along with a cacophony of horns, mufflerless VW bugs, and the vehement whistling of traffic cops, I contemplate a few of Ross’s stories: D.H. Lawrence drinking at the bar Isabel; Lawrence’s acquaintance, the British writer Wilfred Ewert, who was shot on an Isabel balcony on New Year’s Eve 1923; and Ross himself, who entangled himself in the city’s violent political struggles, marched with the Zapatistas, and died here in Mexico on January 17, 2011.

After freshening up as best I can with a bottle of drinking water, I go out for tacos al pastor and a Victoria at La Bota, a local bar that’s like a living work of folk art. It’s Friday night and the neighborhood buzzes with life, but I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning, so I return to the Isabel to settle down for my last night in Mexico. Much to my amazement, the lights are back on. This is a very good thing: Not only is the Isabel way less creepy by lamplight, but El Monstruo awaits.

After reading through the Aztec bloodbaths and the era of the great Zapata and the colorful years when Che and Frida and Trotsky crossed paths, I’ve reached the modern era. Ross was personally involved in the political turmoil of the 80s and 90s, and the latter half of the book is a dissection of modern Mexican politics, marked by a level of detail and nuance that is exceptional, particularly for an English-language publication. Ross’s voice is scathing and deeply opinionated—his sympathies emerge only in his coverage of everyday people: the 70-year-old former boxer who hauls suitcases at the Isabel, a friendly local fence, the activist mother of a student activist who disappeared in ’68, a street musician called “El Vampiro”, and the hundreds of downtown residents who dug their neighbors out of the rubble when the government failed to respond to the great earthquake of ‘85. Ross’s palpable love for Mexico and Mexicans gives life to the book. Like the Hotel Isabel, El Monstruo is a monument to the perverse, splendid, and bad ass spirit of Mexico.

 

Churpa’s Dispatch from San Miguel #1

December 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment

By Churpa Rosa Rogers

photo by Chelsea Mcalister

When it comes to Mexico, I tend to experience one-sided culture shock: I am shocked by my inevitable and unwilling return to the United States, but rarely shocked to find myself down south. Even if it’s been a year or more, a return to Mexico always feels as natural as slipping into a warm bath. That said, I always experience a few days of jubilation at all the tiny Mexican details that make me feel so at home: the smell of cement dust and Mexican laundry detergent and tortillas;  dueling banda, corridos, and hip-hop blasting from the ranchitos that spot the seemingly peaceful countryside; the array of sagging cement balconies, unmarked construction holes in the middle of pedestrian thoroughfares, and other minor dangers that give a middle finger to our American culture of litigation.

Like the delicious smell of tacos al pastor or the late afternoon light saturating the Colonial facades of San Miguel de Allende, the constant murmur of Spanish soothes a soul battered by an overly long stay in the el norte.

photo by Chelsea Mcalister

Speaking of which, my friend Chelsea and I met a  kindly gentleman in Mexico City who offered to tell us about the nuances in Diego Rivera’s murals in the Palacio Nacional. As Angel showed us the panel that illustrates the Colombian exchange and the importance of American native plants, Chelsea and I exclaimed “Muy interesante!”. When Angel expounded on dogs as an Aztec delicacy and drew our attention to the various fat canines in Rivera’s murals, Chelsea and I exclaimed “Muy interesante!”. When Angel pointed out the image of a Spaniard branding an Indian slave, Chelsea and I exclaimed…well you get the drift. Sluggish from a long damp autumn in Oregon, my brain seems incapable of generating appropriate adjectives. Which brings me back to my annual realization: I don’t so much need to expand my vocabulary as I need to bring words that I already know into circulation. To brush up, I’ve been eavesdropping, reading Mexican Glamour,  and perusing the glossaries of two of my favorite books on Mexico:  El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City by John Ross and, of course, The People’s Guide.  Here’s some words I hope I’ll be using on this trip:

compinche—buddy

beso—smooth

neta—the coolest

zafarrancho–ruckus

banquetazo—big meal

fritanga—greasy fried snack

chelas—beers

Here’s some words I hope won’t be needing:

bruja—broke, poor

aguacero—downpour

caco–thief

bronca—brawl

fracaso—bungled mess, failure

foco—guerilla grouplet

vacunacion de rabia—rabies vaccination

 

 

 

 

 

Safety Update from Mexico City

December 7, 2011 | 1 Comment

By Felisa Churpa Rosa Rogers

Flying into Mexico City always feels like descending into the coliseum. You never know what’ll be coming at you, or whether you’re a spectator or part of the show. This trip I was particularly wary, as I haven’t been to the Big Enchilada since the escalation of the drug wars.

When I was a kid my parents used to take me on buying trips to the capitol. We’d hit up the labyrinthine markets for Guerrero masks, and stay at our favorite hotel right off of Garibaldi square. These trips were exciting, but beset with haggling and harassment, from shady cab drivers to gropers in the subway.

It may be my imagination, but Mexico City has a different tenor these days. I’m not claiming it’s safe, but El Monstruo is definitely well-organized and easy to deal with, as far as metropolises go. Official cab stands at the airport ensure that you’ll get a fair price, traffic signals are functional, the subway is efficient, and, on the whole, people are polite, if disinterested. In the past ten years I’ve noticed that D.F. is the one place in Mexico where you are almost guaranteed anonymity—no one seems impressed or interested in gringo cachet; the hiss of “Guerra!” doesn’t accompany my every footfall. That said, when I made a point to engage with people, I found them to be totally polite and bien chido. Another plus: as my friend Chelsea marveled, no one tried to sell us anything the entire time we were there.

photo by Chelsea Mcalister

The steps the government has taken to make the city easy for foreigners and the general courtesy of the populace do nothing to mar the fantastically crazy spectacle that makes the city well worth your visit: a day in El Centro Historico offers a thousand marvels. Baroque stonework drips from every artifice, yet the street level is a glorious Mexican mishmash: smoky taquerias with sizzling spits of delectable carne al pastor rub shoulders with fancy department stores and old world gentlemen’s clubs. And of course that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

I detected no signs of violence, but the police presence was intense: I probably saw a hundred cops on my first day in town, and security is rigorous at bus stations and federal buildings. That said, la policia seemed fairly relaxed. Wandering the Alameda, Chelsea and I encountered a line of cops in full riot gear standing guard at the east end of the park. Despite their outfits, they seemed blasé: they stood about chatting with shields down and didn’t give us, or anyone else, a second glance. Meanwhile the denizens of El Monstruo ignored the police presence and went about their business: hawking and buying tacos, jugos, and refrescos; reading in the patchy grass; necking passionately on park benches.

While the police population is significantly larger than I remembered, the gringo population has dwindled to an anemic trickle of backpackers, students, and expats. Most of the tourists at our hotel were Mexican, and we saw only a few Americans and Canadians in the cafes and bars. Granted, I try to stay off the beaten part of the gringo path, but I’m usually not quite that successful! While catching a ride out of La Condesa, I chatted with a portly cab driver. “People are scared to come to Mexico City, but it’s not dangerous,” he said, narrowly missing a motorcycle and cheerfully laying on the horn. I told him I’d pass that on to my gringo friends. “Yes,” he said with enthusiasm, “Tell them Mexico City is bien padre y muy chingon!”




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