The New Palapa in Arroyo Seco

(Click on photos to enlarge)

The tile maestro and his son were putting the last touches on the showers as my sister Sylvia and I sat in the heat of the Mexican day under the shade of her just-completed Palapa. The plumbing maestro was mounting the sink into the newly-tiled counter. The electrical maestro was grinding out channels for wiring. By mañana, whenever that occurred, there would be all of the plumbing facilities needed for the first of Sylvia and Michael’s invited Northern guests. All these maestros made me feel as if I were sitting in the midst of a tradesman's symphony orchestra.

It appeared that they would now be ready for the first of the winter’s visitors to the rural village of Arroyo Seco in which they had entered as the sole gringos. Sylvia and Michael have a evolving vision – in no way a plan - for an open-air garden for friends to stay, to spend their money in the poor village, and perhaps take an appreciative interest in the people. They had no interest in “bettering” the village – only in learning from living there among them. But their presence, their US dollars, and their respectful interest is bettering the place without inadvertently damaging the local culture. Dust is a big problem there – Michael had just come down with dust pneumonia, from which many died in the US dust bowl. Without modern antibiotics, it well could have killed him.

“Improving” a place, as I learned from Ivan Illich, is dangerous business. How to help without ruining things is often a puzzle. I wondered if maybe giving the village enough money to have a local man spray water on the road once or twice day could be a contribution without cultural toxicity. Michael pointed out why this would be far from innocuous. Every morning, he explained, a man turns on the village water for an hour to fill everyone’s cisterns. He rides though the town on a motorcycle, calling out that the water is on. While their cisterns fill, everyone goes out on the street in front of their house with a hose and sprinkles the street. “The 92-year-old grandma across the street waters the street every morning. It is the sole think that she can do anymore. If we sprinkled the street, what would she do?” Michael asked.

Almost no-one ever asks such a question. I am in admiration of their care for this place.

In La Manzanilla, where I am staying with Nate and Beth in Sylvia and Michael’s old rental house, Beth and Nate were roused the late evening before I arrived by a woman, her young daughter, and the daughter’s sick baby – Sylvia’s goddaughter. The local “doc” at the pharmacia had told them to take the baby to the doctor in the nearest town that had a clinic. Since Sylvia and Michael were in Arroyo Seco, they just came to their old house, where they knew her relatives were. So Beth and Nate put them in the car, took them to the doctor, paid for the doctor and the medicine, and brought them back. To become someone’s godparent here doesn’t mean attending a baptism and friendly interest – it entails an obligation to care for the child for life, including paying for the child’s needs. Apparently this extends to the godparent’s family when needed.

This lovely cultural tradition is as natural as the obligation to serve the maestros dinner at the completion of the job, as placing payment for a meal directly into the hand of the waitress, and not on the table, as is the invariable precedence of family matters over business ones. If the plumbing maestro’s family needs him, there will be no plumbing done that day. It will be done mañana.

La Manzanilla, where there are restaurants, is in that happy phase of cultural symbiosis in which all benefit. The local poor village welcomes tourists drawn to the village by their magnificent bayside setting and the beautiful local culture. Sooner or later the symbiosis turns parasitic, as the vernacular economy is monetarized. But for now, it is the best of both worlds.

Having had my cup of coffee at the gringo café, Nate and I are off to Arroyo Seco to body surf the beach, snorkel the lagoon, and sit under the palapa and listen to the maestros play.

Visitors to Sylvia and Michael’s little place will catch the rhythms of Mexican rural village life as surely as catching the waves on their beach. In these rhythms, there is an opportunity to learn how people can live together. We're learning ourselves.