This is Mexico?
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union THIS IS MEXICO? BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS COZUMEL Diane and I arrived on this battered Caribbean island yesterday, 470 springs after Hemán Cortés dropped by on his way...
...Our two hotel breakfasts this morning — orange juice, coffee and a stale muffin—cost 37,000 pesos, which is not as much as it sounds but no bargain at $8 apiece...
...The bearded father carries a little girl...
...Soon I am joined by two compatriots, a mother and a daughter wearing bright-hued slacks and straw sombreros...
...Then FONATUR, the agency charged with improving Mexico's tourist business, chose Cancun as its first multimilliondollar experiment in resort development...
...she rolls her eyes heavenward...
...How can you give a customer a heap like this...
...She starts to move off but her mother stays put...
...It just is, that's all,' she says...
...Now the daughter taps her foot and looks my way for sympathy...
...I snort...
...With towels beneath our heads we rechne, sighing in the sun, expelling the chilly northland winds we brought with us, digging our fingers into the warm sands...
...It seems a form of oceanic tofu...
...She keeps on rattling the lock...
...Cozumel prices are only slightly less outrageous than those charged in Cancun, the Honolulu-like tourist trap about 10 miles to the northwest, on the coast of Quintana Roo, that has made all the profiteering possible...
...he asks...
...The first bank is very crowded...
...As I leave the gazebo, I glance at the man who has been standing next to me all this time...
...Those are the Mona Tunas, lconsider telling her, but don't...
...My explanation seems to satisfy her...
...They liked to eat the children's hearts...
...No, no," says Diane...
...The sun is shining but it has started to rain, the gift of a single small cloud directly overhead...
...How can that be...
...nor did it damage the modest white campanile that stands in one corner—unless it was the winds that snuffed out the tower's clocks, both of which are stuck at 9:38...
...America is not a bad country either...
...Monday...
...A tourist without a travel guide, Cortes was hunting for gold, slaves and mainly fame in Spain, and he would find all three well inland, where Montezuma and the Aztecs held sway...
...This is the shrine where the priests sacrificed little children, " she tells him...
...I stand in line for an hour, only to be told by a teller that I have missed "the morning exchange hours...
...All manner of translucent creatures glide past my goggled eyes—pink, gold, orange, purple, and colors with no earthly names...
...He has heard it all before...
...Last November a devastating Caribbean hurricane, el cyclone, hit both Cozumel and the Quintana Roo coast, uprooting trees, flattening thousands of thatched dwellings and even knocking down some of the new, sturdy-looking hotels...
...Back at the hotel we deliver our Jeep to Ramon, the careworn hotel travel agent who brokers all rentals...
...Dozing...
...The mangrove jungle-garden is much the worse for wear, courtesy of el cyclone, but there is a deep lagoon intact, so pure that we can gaze down and watch the tropical fish winking at us...
...At the crest rise the remnants of a stone castle, once a sacred site where ritual sacrifices were made...
...After lunch we drive in our rented topless Jeep five miles down the coast to Chancanab National Park, a gorgeous beach with a snorkeling playground offshore and a botanical garden at oui backs...
...But Ramon is busy filling out my credit card receipt...
...They drift out of earshot...
...A small commercial plane this morning carried us across the waters to the village of Playa de Carmen, whence we drove to Tulum in a rented VW Beetle, the kind no longer sold in the U. S. Tulum is the site of an ancient coastal city the Mayans called Zama, or"dawn...
...On Cozumel the rubble is all around us and many hotels along San Juan Beach remain closed, their sandy shores washed away, their skeletal frames bereft of windowpanes...
...The lights don't go on...
...most of the tour groups have departed and we have the place pretty muchtoourselves...
...Wednesday...
...Among other things, they had forsaken their kinder, gentler ways in favor of human sacrifice, sometimes of children, on whose hearts the executioners ceremoniously feasted...
...So wedon'tbuyany new Jeeps...
...What we are mainly hunting for here on Cozumel is peace and quiet...
...This Jeep is in terrible shape," I tell him, hoping for a refund...
...Halfway through the pile on her plate Diane stops eating...
...We douse each other with a thick cream guaranteed to discourage melanomas...
...The annual rate is 23 per cent, compared with the 1986 spiral of 276 per cent...
...Come on...
...A handsome American family has arrived in our wake...
...She gives me a "taste," if that word can apply...
...The second bank has a sign in the window announcing its hours: From 10 to noon and from three to seven...
...Ugh...
...I stay underwater until bested by an illusion of drowning...
...We sit up...
...Itismidafternoon...
...Electronic noise shatters our dreams...
...That kid is going to have nightmares tonight," I tell Diane...
...She gazes at the ocean and smiles at Diane...
...It faces the east...
...Ramon shrugs...
...Oh," she says, "I see...
...Once a sleepy Mayan village, it could not even be found on Mexican road maps as late as 1970...
...Diane is already out there somewhere praising the fish for their silent music...
...Madam," I say to the mother, "this is Mexico...
...He does not respond to stupid questions...
...There," she says...
...We humans, huge as we loom, do not seem to disturb the fish, possibly because we are so colorless...
...My ans wer endangers nearly 35 years of relative marital harmony: "Let your conch be your guide...
...From a short string in his right hand dangles a very large pink fish, quite dead...
...TheMexicans look attentive but puzzled...
...Nine ports in seven days," said the driver...
...There is the beautiful music' Now the girl understands...
...Now Chrysler makes them in your country, and the import tax is not good for the price...
...They are very expensive here...
...he asks...
...Tuesday...
...There seems to be a language gap here...
...They are searching for Miami money to rebuild...
...We are running out of cash, so in the morning I take a taxi downtown to the Plaza, where there are rumored to be two banks...
...I note that it is not smiling...
...At this point I intervene...
...With only a grain or two of self-consciousness, the five of us stand there listening to the surf...
...The boy, about eight, stays with his mother, who reads to him from a guidebook...
...Why do they say one thing and do another...
...I can't decide," she says, "whether to ask for a doggie bag or just forget the whole thing...
...She goes to the box and turns it of f. Then she points to the surf, which is making a soft, persistent washing sound: Oshunoshunoshun...
...Would they eat mine...
...We climb the stone steps to the top and are rewarded with a sweeping view of the Caribbean, its white waves crashing against the rocks below, and of a meandering wall that circles the city...
...It's locked," she says unbelievingly...
...The daughter seems bored...
...Cortes' system of ethics permitted butchery but drew the line at sacrifice...
...She sighs...
...Friday...
...Please," she says to the kids, "turnoffthetape...
...I feel more comfortable looking up words than looking up fish, but at Chancanab what choice does a bookworm have...
...Now it is a gaudy metropolis of 190,000 with hundredsof hotels, restaurants and car rental agencies strung along its two slender sand spits...
...Oh, yes...
...Being an American, I believe in printed messages...
...It is an unwritten rule in our family that when punk rock breaks out, Diane springs into action...
...It's just a literal-minded one...
...Hoping to eat as the Cozumelians do, Diane orders the conch salad...
...The hurricane uprooted many of the small, beech-like trees, but it did not disfigure two obligatory busts of Benito Pablo Juarez (1806-72), the revolutionary who became Mexico's George Washington...
...How was it...
...Unfairly perhaps, to an American ear "Miami money" sounds remarkably like Miami vice...
...Reluctantly I rent a mask, attach it to my face and ease myself into the shiny sea...
...One of the boys is fiddling with an enormous squawk box...
...Three attractive college-age Mexicans, two boys and agirl, have made camp beneath a nearby umbrella...
...We do the best we can with the ones we have...
...The older woman tries to open the door...
...From my protected perch I survey the Plaza, a pleasant square surrounded by cafes and shops...
...BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS COZUMEL Diane and I arrived on this battered Caribbean island yesterday, 470 springs after Hemán Cortés dropped by on his way to the Mayan mainland...
...We used to make Jeeps in Mexico," heexplains...
...The Mexican government these days has inflation relatively under control...
...I have been reading Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo, and now, as I watch mother and daughter disappear around a corner, something a minor character says in that novel springs to mind: "Mexico is not a bad country...
...We lunch at El Acuario, an elegant seafood restaurant featuring an eye-catching tankfulof tropical fish...
...It is 11:45, but the bank is closed...
...The odometer is dead, and so is the gas gauge...
...The horn doesn't work...
...So this is Mexico," I mutter...
...Yours might be very tasty...
...They are the ones who had no insurance," a taxi driver explains to us...
...I linger in front of the window, trying to reconcile the discrepancy between the sign and the locked door...
...We wander from one stone ruin to the next—forts, temples, palaces—trying to imagine the lives that once filled this silent ghost town...
...It turns out to be quite a show...
...You can do that when you're not snorkeling...
...I don't understand," she says...
...Emerging, I hear a fellow snorkeler remark to her friend that some of the fish "are sort of smiling...
...Cortes in any case was unimpressed with the coastal Mayans, whose civilization, say our archeologists, had already soured...
...This is Mexico...
...They are probably fresh off the cruise ship Adventure, a graceful, allwhite extravaganza that I saw anchored in the harbor through my taxi window...
...Diane has commandeered an umbrella and two beach chairs (plastic contraptions shaped to the contours of no known species...
...Whatever happened to free trade...
...You never know," she says...
...Diane smiles back...
...Schnorchel is Middle High German for snore or snort, neither of which is feasible with one's nose stuffed inside an airtight snorkeler's mask...
...With others I take shelter beneath the thatched roof of the Plaza gazebo, where dark-skinned women are trying to sell secondhand books spread out on tables...
...Cancun was no accident...
...The boy shows only curiosity...
...He is a practical man...
...The city was built on a hill...
...Some of the gold that Cortés pilfered is returning to the Mayans in the form of American tourist dollars...
...It's just a different country...
...One of the boys makes the music louder and looks at us questioningly...
...It has stopped raining...
Vol. 72 • May 1989 • No. 8
