EDD Check: $250 per week ($750 balance left in award)
Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $1,300 (only $100 left to reach our goal)
Mexican Interlude Part II:
Theft is the product of desire. As in you have something I want, not necessarily need but want, and I either don't have the means to obtain it or the willpower to avoid the desire. Theft isn't easy to explain. Some people steal glasses from bars, even when they can afford to buy them, their judgement ruined by desire.
But there is also this element of dangling carrots in people's faces, the "haves" creating desire in the "have-nots." In cities like my hometown of Fresno, the carrots are separated from the carrot-less by distance and main thoroughfares––Herndon, Belmont, Hwy 99––and neighborhoods are mostly segregated by de facto. That's why major cities, such as New York, are shocking to me: the people with the most carrots live very near those with the least, though border streets keep them semi-separated (e.g. 110th in Manhattan).
With a large American and Canadian ex-pat population (10-12%), San Miguel de Allende is an anomaly in Mexico. While many parts of the country have descended into a drug war hell of deaths and decapitations, San Miguel remains blissfully high in the central desert. It's retained its colonial luster, and gringo dollars keep the economy moving, beer prices high, and the streets relatively safe. But the strange thing about this town is that while there are "good" and "bad" neighborhoods, many people have built mansions in the midst of poor neighborhoods, ignoring the common courtesy of unspoken segregation. Sure, from the outside many of these palatial spreads look inconspicuous behind their ten-foot high walls and spiked gates, but like tinted windows, we know who's inside: someone with lots of carrots.
Under unfortunate circumstances that I don't want to get into, I end up staying in a beautiful studio apartment in a section of nice San Miguel houses bordering the poor neighborhood of San Antonio, where crime is on the rise.
The first night after being out, I arrive back at around 3:30 a.m. (bars don't seem to have official closing times and it's easy to lose track of time). I take my bar smoked T-shirt off and hang it outside to air out, then sit down at the computer. Though I've heard the story of how a local man mixed up in drugs was recently decapitated (he was the exception not the rule), how a newspaper baron and his wife were kidnapped from here three years ago and he was held for ransom (dangled too many carrots), and how four years ago a serial rapist targeted foreign women (Americans), I feel relatively safe.
That's why when I hear the gate downstairs open and footsteps on the stairs, I think nothing of it. The neighbors must have been out late. And since they stopped and jangled my doorknob, they must also be drunk.
I look out the door window and only see a pair of white Adidas ascending to the third floor (I'm on the second), and my suspicions are confirmed: drunk neighbor. I return to the computer, but then I hear the footsteps descending the stairs. I meet them by my door, and just before I peer out, the metal screen on the window next to the door gets punched in: Boom!
Holy shit! I think, someone's coming inside. I yell, "Órale, vato," and slam the door-like window shut, hoping I crush hands or smash a face.
I hear the white Adidas scramble down the stairs and out the gate while I run to the kitchen window facing the alley and yell, "Policía, policía!" In two seconds, I no longer hear the Adidas slapping the cobblestone rocks of the streets. I grab a full tequila bottle the previous occupant left, and open the front door, looking to smack a head if he returns. I'm too scared to descend the stairs into the darkness and make sure the gate is secure.
I pace and then sit, shaking and unable to calm down. A friend from my school days, a lawyer living in Thousand Oaks, California, reads my distress on facebook, and talks to me through the instant messenger "Chat function" until I can sleep.
Tomorrow night will be worse, as I will anticipate a second attempt and awake every half hour. I will try sleeping with the TV and lights on. I will place a steak knife on the nightstand––to what? Commit murder in Mexico? I speculate on whom the robber was: probably the poor teenager around the corner who watched me move in with my oversized hiking backpack and laptop carrying case.
I grow skittish, and the next day, while I'm reading in the Jardín, a teenager and his friend, wearing white Adidas, will sit down next to me, and I'll want to confront them. Like a missing lunch in a classroom, everyone is now suspect. But white Adidas are just popular shoes right now, because there will be more kids and more Adidas in the Jardín, and any pair could belong to the mid-morning marauder just as easily as they could not.
And this paranoia, this sense that I'm no longer safe, is the price we pay, the carrot holders, the danglers.
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