The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Exotic Mexico looms on Tucson’s southern horizon: its mountains, what we imagine about it, the stories that are told about it.
“Exotic” — as if what lies beyond the border is inherently, even to those who live there, both strange and intriguing, compared with our own bland country.
What is Mexico really? The cliché of long-suffering people, but with cheerful DNA, often praised by tourists, or the “murderers and rapists” of Donald Trump’s infamous characterization?
Whose version are you going to buy? The travel brochure extolling the pleasures of the country’s vacation playgrounds. Or the Mexico of Don Winslow’s “The Cartels”?
The mystery extends even to the practical question of whether it’s safe to drive there.
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A lot of our take on exotic Mexico has been created by non-Mexican writers and filmmakers for whom Mexico has long served as a Rorschach test.
For William Prescott, who wrote an early history of the Spanish conquest, pre-conquest Mexico was soft and effeminate, no match for Cortez and his handful of macho stalwarts.
D.H. Lawrence, on the other hand, in “The Plumed Serpent,” saw pre-conquest Mexico with its dark and often bloody gods as offering a bracing antidote to the soulless, asexual modern European male—a version of what her sexy gardener offered Lady Chatterley.
In Kerouac’s “On the Road” the end of the road, the farthest-out part of the journey, is the farthest south, a plunge into exotic, chaotic Mexico.
In McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove,” otherwise honorable former Texas Rangers don’t think twice about dropping south of the border to rustle up a herd of cattle to drive north.
Paul Theroux’s recent “On the Plain of Snakes,” an account of his road trip along the border and then all the way to Chiapas, makes a serious attempt to get to the real Mexico behind other writers’ versions. It is a discouraging version of contemporary Mexican life that tells much the same story as the film “The Magnificent Seven”: masses of poor Mexicans, victims with hearts of gold badly in need of rescuing (in the movie, by macho heroes from Hollywood, in Theroux, the Zapatistas of Chiapas.)
Those of us of a certain age learned a lot of our Mexico from Hollywood Westerns, whose plot lines so often involved the possibility of heading to the exotic, violent country south of the border to escape the presumably more lawful and civilized West (when all movies were about the civilizing of the West). As if the phrase “going south” was actually derived from that scenario. (From what I see online, it wasn’t.)
The most quoted character of the famous film of B. Traven’s ”Treasure of Sierra Madre” is a treacherous bandito. (“We don’t need no stinkin’ batches.”)
In the great noir film, “Touch of Evil,” the evil in question is all south of the border.
In McMurtry’s “Last Picture Show” and McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses,” dipping into the sexy exoticism of Mexico is a right of passage for teenage boys.
One of the biggest mysteries for those of us who, living so close to the border, feel the urge to explore beyond it: Is it safe to drive in Mexico?
A guide to road travel within Mexico is titled “Don’t Go there. It’s not safe. You’ll Die.” It mocks an attitude so common that the authors can’t resist using it as a lure, while not saying anything in the book to prove that you won’t die there.
Theroux recounts being shaken down by police for hundreds of dollars at least two times. In broad daylight. He implies that it’s a normal and predictable part of life there. On the other hand, my brother-in-law has driven all around the country and reports that he has never had a problem.
Staying in Oaxaca a few years ago, my wife and I overcame our timidity and drove over the mountains to the Oaxacan Pacific without incident.
Last year we made a five-hour foray south of Nogales to a small village on the Sea of Cortez, also with no problem.
It was a considerable relief to overcome our kneejerk fear of Mexican driving. It added a dimension to our life in Tucson to feel safe getting to know the part of our Sonoran Desert artificially separated from us by the borderline.
But after reading Theroux, we wonder if we were just lucky.
Both trips we were careful to confine our driving to daylight, a standard caution that has the effect of making Mexican driving more dangerous, since one hears no cautions of that sort in the U.S.
When you google “driving in Mexico” or some specific trip, there is considerable discussion, much of it attempting to be reassuring. But the very fact that you are looking it up makes driving in Mexico feel dangerous, despite the disclaimers. If you have to ask, it must not be safe, goes the thinking. You wouldn’t — and I imagine neither would a Mexican contemplating a drive North — be googling the dangers of a trip to San Diego or Denver.
Most of the Tucsonans I’ve asked think it would be crazy to drive your car into the exotic mystery on the horizon — at least farther than their irresistibly priced Nogales dentist.
Brent Harold is a former English professor and writer. He lives in Tucson. Email him at kinnacum@gmail.com.
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September 25, 2022 at 08:00PM
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