We arrived in Pátzcuaro on January 1st after four days in the car. We had left a day early on the 28th because of an impending snow storm, which hit the southern part of New Mexico more heavily than the north. We spent the night in Carlsbad and left amid a slow, heavy fall of snow. We had made reservations at “pet hotels” and prepaid everything, so we managed to turn a three day drive into a never-ending series of short drives.
There was one very pleasant surprise, however. With all the news coverage of the violence along the border, one friend had promised to light candles for us while we were in Mexico. We worried about dodging bullets as we crossed into Mexico. Instead, we found easy passage, great toll roads (better in fact than many in New Mexico and certainly far, far and away better than the potholes of Costa Rica that are connected together by short stretches of asphalt), and a sense of normality. Mexico looked and felt modern and far more prosperous than I had expected, as I was still clinging to the images of a Mexico 30 years in the rearview mirror.
This, of course, is not to say that everything had changed. Along the modern toll roads, there were still families that came out of the desert to sell rattlesnake skins and captive birds, as there were some thirty years ago. There were still lands that see rain every few years, and people who survive in a land of dust.
But there are also the vast factories that build Chevrolets, Chryslers, Fords, coffee makers, pumps, soup, etc. And even more, there are the rich of Mexico. One of the jobs that I held when we lived in Mexico City was making economic studies of hotels, industrial plants, warehouses, and residential developments. The biggest need was for low-income housing. But as there were no mortgages (with the exception of 2 year mortgages at 85% a year interest), the housing market catered to the rich. It was easier and far more lucrative to sell housing with gold faucets than to sell basic housing with running water.
While the house we rented in Pátzcuaro doesn’t have faucets made of gold, it is a lovely home with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a formal dining room, several balconies, a covered portal, and a wonderful enclosed garden. A couple from the U.S. bought the house and spent a number of years and a lot of money remodeling it, only to divorce a few months after they moved here.
Pátzcuaro itself is a gem, a city of 80,000 people with a charm that attracted us not only to visit many times when we lived in Mexico but made us drag friends to Patzcuaro to enjoy the colonial flavor of the place. We used to take the train from Mexico City; it was a train built in the U.S. in the 1930s with a certain sense of luxury and leisure that is hard to find nowadays. One expected Lauren Bacall and Bogie to be on board.
