A Letter From Mexico

By Jerry Davis

Part 2

There is Jamaica water made from a hibiscus flower. Think cold, sweetened red zinger tea.

My favorite is horchata, rice flour, cinnamon, and sugar.

I suspect that the green jar is kool aid and the last one lemonade.

Mexican society is divided into classes but at these affairs, class boundaries evaporate like mescal in a thirsty crowd. We sit across from two ladies, one born in Mexico City, an escapee to country life, and the other a life-long resident.

But that information is the extent of our conversation because the band drowns every word out.

Thanks to modern technology I can google a map of New York state on my cellphone and show the ladies the location of my own hamlet, Unadilla Forks, right in the center of the state.

It is the first time that I have not had to convince folks that New York is also the name of a state.

We don’t stay for the cake. It is a beautiful party, very different from San Miguel whose lights blink a few miles away on the edge of the blackness that is the dry reservoir.

Refreshingly there is no pretention; there is a tiny store in San José but no boutique.

We are dressed differently but nobody stares. (The last time I walked into the diner in my hometown all conversation stopped, all heads turned, and in a few moments whispered conversations started.)

We talk strange, cannot eat a meal using a tortilla instead of a spoon, can barely tell a mesquite from a huizache but are accepted.

We are in the middle of the Mexico that occupies the greater part of the land, far from the glitz of Cancun, light years away from the billionaire Carlos Slim’s pretentious museums in Mexico City and thankfully far from the drug cartels and their violence.

Donald Trump is a vague rumor, the Ukraine is “over there”, and the big news is that Juana’s setting hen hatched a baby chick with three legs. ...