A Public Service Broadcast

 

My American friends will probably not have heard of the BB’s annual Reith Lectures, named after John Reith, founder of the BBC. These are given annually by a distinguished figure and broadcast on Radio 4. This year’s lecturer is a Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman.

 

The BBC describes Bregman’s lectures thus:

“Titled Moral Revolution, the lectures will delve into the current 'age of immorality', explore a growing trend for unseriousness among elites, and ask how we can follow history’s example and assemble small, committed groups to spark positive change.

Bregman's 2025 Reith Lectures will reflect on moments in history, including the likes of the suffragette and abolitionist movements, which have sparked transformative moral revolutions, offering hope for a new wave of progressive change. Across four lectures, he will also consider the explosive technological progress of recent years - placing us at a moment of immense risk and possibility, and will look ahead to how we might shape the future.”

 

The lectures have been much in the news recently here in the UK because the BBC, on legal advice, has cut from one of his lectures Bregman’s description of Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” I do not approve of censorship and bullying of publications and media, so I am notifying my tiny audience of this cowardly censorship.

 

I only once consulted a libel lawyer in 40 years of publishing. The book concerned was the Truth and Reconciliation Report, produced by the South African government after the end of Apartheid. It provided the opportunity for those who had participated in violent repression, torture and murder to confess what they had done. The lawyer told me not to publish because it libelled many people as murderers and torturers, and thus destroyed their reputation. I argued that they had no reputation because they had confessed. My boss and I agreed that we could not libel thugs and criminals ignores the lawyer.

 

Is it possible to damage Mr. Trump’s reputation? Opinions welcome.

How to spot a Mexican by the way (s)he speaks

 

One of my reads on our last visit to Mexico trip was Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s Tirano Banderas: novela de Tierra Caliente. Valle-Inclán (1866-1936) was a Spanish poet, novelist, playwright, essayist and journalist. When I was a student, it was his poetic works, especially his sonatas, Primavera, Estío, Otoño and Invierno (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) rather than this novel that were in the curriculum.

 

However, he visited Mexico twice, in 1892-1893 during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, and in 1921 when the revolutionaries who had deposed Díaz had finally triumphed. He met Francisco I. Madero, the leader of the 2010 Revolution and the first revolutionary president. This must have been in 1892-1893, before Madero became an important opposition political figure, since he was assassinated in 1913. One of the characters of Tirano Banderas, don Roque Cepeda, a mystic and idealist, is clearly based on Madero. Various other figures clearly had Mexican originals, such as Doctor Atle, a reference to the artist and writer Gerardo Murillo, whose pseudonym was Dr. Atl (atl being the Nahuatl for water).  Tirano Banderas, the dictator of Santa Fe, is advised by científicos (followers of European knowledge and the philosophy of Auguste Comte) as was Porfirio Díaz. Valle-Inclán also became a friend of Álvaro Obregón, one of the most important revolutionary generals, and himself president of Mexico from 1920-1924.

 

The novel reflects aspects of the Mexico that Valle-Inclán knew, but the imagined country in which it is set, Santa Fe de Tierra Firme, is clearly not one hundred percent Mexico. The capital is a fetid port, a tropical hothouse, while Mexico City is set in a high, temperate mountain valley. The dictator chews coca, an addiction of the high Andes of South America, not Mexico.

 

Valle-Inclán was one of the Generation of ’98, a literary group that sought ways to respond to the shock of the Spanish-American war of 1898. In Tirano Banderas he sought a unity of Spain’s lost empire by creating a literary language that reflected the many kinds of Spanish spoken throughout the Hispanic world, of which Castilian was (and still is) a minority. My edition includes a 16-page glossary of non-Castilian vocabulary, including many Mexicanisms and Nahuatl terms, but also the Spanish of Argentina, Chile, words from the speech of gypsies and so on. This vocabulary does not make for an easy read.

 

In Mexico, people assume from my looks that, like most visitors from overseas (the majority being from the USA) I speak little or no Spanish and almost always with a heavy English accent. When I respond in Spanish they often try to guess where I am from, always without success. They are puzzled, because a lot of what I say sounds like them, but they can see that I most certainly am not Mexican.

 

My first education in how to speak Mexican was in the summer of 1972 at the daily tertulia (afternoon coffee gathering) of my landlady Consuelo Cevallos and a group of her neighbours. It took time to attune my ear to the chat, but once I could follow the conversation, I joined in. Although I was admitted to the tertulia, the ladies asked me “Why do you speak like that? Why don’t you speak like us?” Over that long summer, I discovered that life was much easier and more enjoyable if I spoke to the Mexicans I met in their own variety of Spanish. My spoken Spanish was further polished by many nights in the bar of the Camino Real hotel and at the subsequent poker games with a group of young students who befriended me. From them I learned a Mexican Spanish that was far less polite than that of Consuelo’s ladies.

 

Language, of course, is not just a mechanical means of communication, but a window into culture. For example, Mexicans tend to be more elaborately courteous than Spaniards. If you read early colonial Spanish documents, there is an elaborate emphasis on status and formal politeness. And the Indigenous societies that Spain now ruled were very hierarchical and emphasized courtesy and self-deprecation in their rhetoric. It is hardly surprising that Spanish and Indigenous forms should result in a Mexican emphasis on politesse and deference. For example, in Castilian, if I do not quite understand what somebody has said to me, I might respond “¿Qué me dijo?” (What did you say?) but in Mexico the phrase is “¿Mande usted?” (literally What are your orders?). I was once told in Valencia, when I used just that phrase, that I should not be so servile. Similarly, the Mexican “A sus órdenes” (At your orders) is rarely if ever heard in Spain.

 

Then there are the words that come from Nahuatl and other native languages. Chocolate (chocolatl) has passed to Mexican, Castilian and English speakers. Tomate and tomato are similarly of Nahuatl origin, but Mexicans retain jitomate, a word closer to the Nahuatl xitomatl; tomate means that green fruit with a thin brown husk that Americans call tomatillo. Nahuatl terms for everyday objects similarly passed into Mexican Spanish: huipil (Nahuatl huipilli) is a woman’s blouse. A petate (petatl)rather than an estera) is a mat, and a popote (not a pajita) is a drinking straw. . A young child might be referred to affectionately by a Mexican as an escuincle or escuintle. Similarly, a man might refer to a male friend as guëy (pronounced like weigh) from the Nahuatl huey (man). The Aztec emperor was known as the huey tlatoani (the man who speaks). Tlatoani passed into Mexican Spanish to denote an Indigenous chieftain. Terms also moved the other way. The Spanish mandón (bossy boots) in colonial Mexico meant a minor official, not a jumped-up bossy character.

 

And, of course, Spain was very remote from Mexico, so that the two varieties of Spanish developed differently over time, especially after independence in 1821. In essence, Mexican Spanish became a variant of 16^th/17^th-century Castilian. I once had to pacify a director of the Alhambra, who had been annoyed by the editing of his text. As soon as he heard my Spanish he commented “Oiga, habla usted el español de Cervantes” (“You speak the Spanish of Cervantes”). His irritation disappeared and we became friends.

 

A mannerism that is much more frequently used in Mexican Spanish than in Castilian is the frequent (even prolific) use of the diminutive. A Mexican would often ask for “un cafecito”, a Spaniard for “un café”; in Mexico “unas tortillitas”, in Spain “unas tortillas”, or please (“por favor”) might become “por favorcito” The overall effect in Mexican speech is to convey great pleasure and self-deprecation.

 

Some phrases tell you much about cultural differences between Mexico and Spain. In my experience, it is quite rare for a Spaniard to invite you to her/his home, preferring instead to host a meal in a restaurant. Mexicans, on the other hand, are proud to invite one to their home, especially a foreigner or a person of high status. The guest is welcomed with the phrase “Está usted en su casa”, “Aquí tiene su casa” (literally This is your home”) or something similar that expresses pride and pleasure in your visit.

 

The formal usted form of verbs has been almost completely abandoned in Spain; but in Mexico it is still regularly heard, even if I now hear some shocking uses of the informal tú. However, it will take a long time for Mexicans to abandon the prolific use of titles to address one: licenciado (a person with a first degree); arquitecto, ingeniero, or more simply jefe (boss).

 

Then there are the words that just mean something different. If you are told that a camión will take you to Oaxaca to visit that beautiful city you should expect a bus (autobús for a Spaniard for whom a camión is a lorry) and you should board it at the central camionera not the estación de autobuses. I recall once landing unexpectedly at JFK airport in New York because my plane had a fault that required a long runway (and waiting fire engines). A Puerto Rican employee of Eastern Airlines addressed us in an English which was almost entirely incomprehensible. A group of elegantly dressed Mexican businessmen asked her if “¿Nos van a llevar en camión?” (Will we be taken by bus?), to which the airline employee replied in appalling Spanish as if addressing peasants: “¿Un camión? Un camión es una trocka!”  

 

The verb chingar (never to be used in polite company), and its derivatives, is so rich a vein of Mexican slang that the Noble prize-winning poet Octavio Paz devoted a small essay to it in his book El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude). My Spanish dictionary cites five definitions:  rather demurely, to annoy; more frankly, to copulate; to steal, as in “me chingaron el dinero” (they stole my money); to kill, in my experience usually figuratively (“ya se me chingó el carro”: my car is done for); to finish something, as in “se chingaron todo el pastel” (they scoffed the whole cake). One could add several meanings and derivatives. A boastful Mexican might claim to be “el más chingón” (the very best; more politely he might be “el mero mero”, the bees knees). Another derivative, una chingadera means “a lot” or “ a ton of” (as in “gané una chingadera de dinero jugando poker”: I won a ton of money playing poker).

 

A word that trips up many Castilian speakers is the verb coger, for which my dictionary gives many meanings, of which the most common usage is to take, hold or catch: as in take an apple from the tree or money from a purse; hold a package; catch a bus; and so on. But in Mexico its meaning is invariably just one: the expletive equivalent of the English F word. The usual Mexican alternative is agarrar (defined as “to take or seize strongly, especially with the hand”); i.e. to grab. I was once severely chided for my use of agarrar instead of coger by a client in Barcelona, whose company distributed my reference books, and who moved in high social circles (he sailed with King Juan Carlos). He was greatly amused by the way I speak Spanish, but when, at the end of our lunch, I asked “Dónde puedo agarrar un taxi” (Where can I get a taxi?), he reprimanded me sternly: “Aquí no se agarran sino que se cogen” (Here we don’t grab them, we catch them”).

 

Finally, there are considerable differences of pronunciation and tone. The lisped Spanish ‘c’ before the vowels ‘e’ and ‘I’ and ‘z’ before all vowels, is always an ‘s’ in Mexico (consequently, Mexicans frequently misspell words: e.g. cocer (to cook) and coser (to sew) are commonly both spelled coser. In place names an ‘x’ is either a ‘sh’ or a guttural ‘ha’ (like the Spanish ‘j’): Xochimilco (Shochimilco) or Oaxaca (Wahaca). And the charming girl’s name Xochi (Nahuatl for flower) is Shochi. Vowels tend to be pronounced rather longer in Mexico than in Spain.

 

In tone, Mexican Spanish is much lighter, more musical on the tongue, and much less guttural than Castilian. To my ear, at least, Mexican speech has a musicality that Castilian lacks. And social interactions in Mexico are more formal (a Spaniard might say deferential) and elaborate. A speaker in a shop or restaurant in Spain who is more familiar with Mexican social norms may find Spaniards much more direct and forthright/brusque: the overall impression is that one is engaged in a business transaction which is to be briskly conducted; in Mexico, the interaction will be longer and more formally polite.

 

Lest my Castilian-speaking friends consider me unduly prejudiced against Iberian Spanish and Spanish society, we recently resumed our visits to Spain: a few days in Valencia and a delightful stay at the Voramar hotel on the beach in Benicassim lulled to sleep by the sound of waves of the Mediterranean are a great pleasure. But Mexico and its language has a special appeal which endures.

Colouring history in Puerto Vallarta

 

One of the not very useful facts that I know from my studies of Mexican history is that in 1582 cochineal was being produced in Chilapa in the mountains of Guerrero, and a few years later in Huamuxtitlán, Olinalá, Tlapa and Ahuacuotzingo. The little insect Dactylopius coccus was used to produce a dye much in demand in the textile workshops of Mexico City.

 

But while I had read about cochineal I had never seen it, and had no idea how the dye was made nor what colours it produced, until Jan and I paid our annual visit to a shop called Casa Oaxaca in Puerto Vallarta. The shop is the retail outlet of a cooperative of Indigenous textile workers in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, a drive of more than 1,300 kilometres so Google informs me.

 

In front of a loom were several baskets each containing different dyeing materials. There was indigo from plants of the Indigofera genus, pods of a shrub called huizache (Vachellia farnesiana) whose seeds produce blacks and greys; a mineral used to break down the lanolin of wool so that dyes can be absorbed.

 

And there was a basket of a shiny material that I took to be small stones, but was in fact the dried bodies of the cochinilla insect. It feeds on the sap of prickly pears, in three months growing to about one centimetre. These are voracious little creatures as our son Chris told me later: they ate the prickly pear in his garden in San Vicente in no time at all. But the textile workers of Teotitlán love them: they infect prickly pears with a male and female and wait for them to multiply and suck the plant dry.

 

The young man who served us gave me a demonstration. He crushed some cochineal in his hand, applied a few drops of lime juice; a red stain appeared on his hand. Then he added a little ground chalk to produce a different shade; next slaked lime for another shade. With judicious application of a variety of alkaloids, a range of reds can be produced. So here the historian who knew about the cultivation of cochineal almost 500 years ago was given a beginners class in how it is used to produce goods for tourists today.

 

These insects little have other uses. They are edible, but apparently have no great flavour. They can be used as a food colouring, and are added to mezcal.

A day at Vallarta Botanic Garden

Arriving for work with Chris

Chris's "office"

 

The orchid lab, where rare orchids are propagated and new varieties created.

A view from the orchid house.

Chris with the fruit of the cuastecomate tree. The fruit apparently has medicinal properties. The outer skin was used in ancient Mexico to make drinking vessels.

 

Orchids in the orchid house. Mexico has 3,000 varieties, of which the garden has 300.

 

The view from the restaurant of the Horcones River valley.

 

A hummingbird visited us for breakfast.

Lots of spiders hanging high up on their webs.

 

 

Lots of butterflies of all colours and caterpillars. We joined a presentation and walk by the local butterfly conservancy. Dulce, who led the presentation and walk, told us that this not very attractive caterpillar has a nasty sting.

A cacao tree. The whiteish pods contain the seeds from which the chocolate is made from and the small white flowers growing up the trunk will produce more pods.

 

 

 

“Gente importante”

 

After we had returned home from dinner with our friends Lupita and Eliseo, our son Chris received a message from Eliseo thanking us for inviting them to dinner, especially since the restaurant is a place where “important people” (gente importante) go.

 

You may recall from a blog item about two years ago that we last met Lupita and Eliseo for dinner with their teenage son Carlitos, who had both legs amputated because of cancer. Alas, Carlitos died of his cancer shortly before our visit to Puerto Vallarta last year. While we were visiting, Chris, his then boss Arturo and Eliseo spent a day at a local hospital offering to give blood to replace some of the blood given to Carlitos.

 

Both Eliseo and Lupita are blind. As they entered the restaurant with Chris “en tren” (“in train”) Lupita with her hand on Chris’s shoulder, Eliseo’s on her waist, they surprised their surviving son Eliseo who is a waiter at Campomar where we ate. Eliseo Jr.’s other given name, we learned is Charbel, after Charbel Makhlouf, a Lebanese saint known for uniting Christians, Muslims and Druze, and known as the Miracle Monk of Lebanon.

 

Some of you may recall that Eliseo has been blind from birth (he has no eyes) and Lupita from a later stage of life. Eliseo continues working as a physiotherapist at Pasitos de Luz, the children’s charity where Chris worked until recently. Lupita teaches braille at a government agency called DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia; Integral Family Development). Lately, she has devoted more of her time to providing social interaction for elderly people who are losing their sight and who lack the skills and confidence to leave their homes. She organizes gatherings to enjoy music and dancing.

 

Both Lupita and Eliseo are involved in a theatrical event, a production about a famous figure in Mexican history, La Malinche. Malinche was an indigenous noblewoman from south-eastern Mexico who had learned Spanish from a shipwrecked Spanish sailor. She played an important role in the Spanish invasion of Mexico as an interpreter who enabled Cortés to negotiate alliances with enemies of the Aztecs. She also became his lover and mother of his son Martín Cortés, and has an ambiguous role in Mexican history as a capable indigenous woman. But many Mexicans consider her a traitor who betrayed their motherland. The play is to be performed entirely by blind actors. The director is a professor who is losing his sight. The audience will wear blindfolds so that, as Eliseo put it, they will experience the sounds and smells of the production.

 

When we meet Lupita and Eliseo we are acutely aware of the importance of their non-visual senses. For example, Lupita commented to Jan that she sensed that the restaurant was very busy, although of course she could not see the customers, nor distinguish between the talk of staff and customers. Then there were the screens showing American football games and their associated commentary, and the clatter of knives and forks on plates. As for smells, the food provided plenty to assail the senses.

 

I reflected on Eliseo’s comment that our fellow diners were important people. In the sense that they had the money to arrive in nice cars, have someone park it for them, and order food that was beyond the means of our guests, they are no doubt important. But in the Bahía de Banderas area there are really only two ways to make money, tourism (hotels, restaurants, and tours/events) and real estate. Success in these businesses can require permits to build perhaps where permission should not be given, or building on a scale that should not be allowed; ignoring ecological damage to flora and fauna (turtle nesting on the beaches, for example, are vulnerable to development); and so on.

 

I think I much prefer the company of Lupita and Eliseo to the “important people” of Campomar.

Footsteps of history in Mexico

  

Among the pleasures of exploring Mexico City are the unexpected traces of history one encounters. As we strolled along the grandly named Triunfo de la Libertad (Triumph of Liberty), a narrow street typical of central Tlalpan in Mexico City, a sign on an otherwise unprepossessing wall caught my eye. It informed me that on that location once stood the Hospicio de San Antonio de los Padres Dieguinos de las Filipinas, a residence for missionaries en route from Spain to the Philippines. The hospicio was donated to the order in 1580 by a certain Beatriz de Miranda, together with 15,120 varas (almost 19,000 hectares) of land, including an orchard and vegetable garden.

Here the missionaries could recover from a long, arduous, and sometimes dangerous, journey from Seville to Veracruz, and then on horse or mule back through the mountains to Mexico City. They then faced a journey of thirteen to sixteen days to Acapulco, through mountains, crossing the Balsas river, one of Mexico’s largest, on wooden rafts, staying overnight in remote wayside inns, and braving mosquitos. Fray Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, bishop of Tlaxcala, commented on the arduous terrain during his visit to parishes in the mountains of eastern Guerrero in 1610-1611. On one occasion, he complained he had travelled “an appalling” 28 kilometres of “foul” tracks. In the 16^th century, Acapulco was not the luxury tourist resort it became in the last century; rather it was a small, hot and humid tropical settlement with few buildings of substance. But, despite its lack of facilities, it was the Spanish empire’s only authorized gateway to all of Asia.

The friars occupied the property in Tlalpan until 1827 when it was expropriated by the governor of the state of Mexico, one Lorenzo de Zavala, a prominent Liberal politician. Zavala was a prominent figure in independent Mexico: he helped to draft the constitution of Mexico’s first Liberal Republic in 1824; was minister of finance and ambassador to France, and travelled widely in Europe. In 1835 he fled to the state of Texas from one of the many coups of the grandly named Conservative General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, more conveniently known plain Santa Anna. Zavala then became an advocate of the independence of Texas and signed its Declaration of Independence in 1836. Consequently, Zavala is reviled in Mexican history books as a national traitor, but praised as a hero in Texas where a town and a county are named after him. However, the town (Zavalla, in Angelina County) named in his honour could not get the spelling quite right and had only 603 residents to remember him in 2020. Zavala, in Jasper County, got the spelling right, but was abandoned in the second half of the 19^th century. Those who named Zavala County (in southern Texas) in Lorenzo’s honour in 1858, also mangled his spelling, and only removed the surplus in 1929. Only a cemetery honours Lorenzo today.  Zavala’s nemesis, Santa Anna, on the other hand is persona non grata in both Mexico (for losing Texas) and in Texas (as the besieger of the Álamo).

By mid-century, the former hospicio was the site of the betting tables during Tlalpan’s fair. In 1847 the invading forces of the USA occupied the property, after which it was abandoned and the land divided. In 1978 Carlos Hank González, former governor of the state of Mexico purchased the site and donated it to form the Literary Institute of the Autonomus University of the State of Mexico; it is now the cultural centre of the university. Hank González, by the way, was famous, among other disreputable things, for the motto “A poor politician is a poor politician.” He was certainly not a poor politician.

The façade of the Viceroy Mendoza house in Tlalpan.

A few minutes around the corner from the former site of the hospicio is a building said to have been a residence of the first Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, who ruled the future Mexico from 1535-1550. It is thought that Mendoza lived there during the annual Easter festival of the Holy Spirit in Tlalpan’s church of San Agustín de las Cuevas.  In 2007 a citizen-led campaign saved the building from demolition. A modern visitor sees little of Mendoza’s country residence, now much modernized as a community educational centre, other than its 16^th-century style façade, and, like other properties in central Tlalpan, a garden of surprising and impressive size in modern super-crowded Mexico City. The garden is now a wild place, but stone remains of former structures, prickly pears and trees hint at a once larger residence and a substantial kitchen garden and orchard.

The modernized interior of the Mendoza house.

The Mendoza house garden, partial view.

 

The church where Mendoza celebrated Easter was built in 1532. Now much remodelled inside, it retains its façade, a bell tower, the ringers’ ropes attached from the garden below (nobody climbs the tower to ring), and a two-storey cloister where friars once lived. In front is a sizeable garden. These large open spaces of early Mexican churches were used to minister to the indigenous people, then far too numerous to be accommodated inside the church itself.

San Agustín de las Cuevas, Tlalpan

 

Jan and I have become fond of Tlalpan after two visits. Here we can sense a Mexico of the past, and of the modern city where parents walk children to school, deal with official matters in the town hall on the main plaza, and dine in restaurants where pale-skinned visitors like us are a comparative rarity, and welcomed with courtesy and pleasure.

In another colonial-era district of Mexico City, the Plaza San Jacinto in San Ángel, a statue commemorates Comandante John Riley. Riley was an officer in the US army ordered by President James Polk to invade Mexico in 1846-1848. The army included a battalion of men of Irish origins, known in Mexico as the Heróico Batallón de San Patricio (The Heroic Battalion of Saint Patrick). Polk’s invasion was essentially a land grab – Mexico was obliged by military force to ”cede” to the USA California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Texas, about half the national territory). The Irish soldiers evidently understood exactly why they had been sent into Mexico, and true to Irish traditions of anti-colonialism, decided to fight for Mexico’s territorial integrity.  Alas, Mexico was soundly defeated, the Irish soldiers killed or captured, and most of the prisoners were tortured and hung, many of them in Plaza San Jacinto.

Bust of John Riley, Plaza San Jacinto, San Ángel, Mexico City.

The day between our visit to Plaza San Jacinto and Tlalpan, we had taken our son David to see the Trotsky House in Coyoacán. Trotsky arrived in Mexico after a long peregrination seeking asylum in several countries. Finally, in the 1930s President Lázaro Cárdenas, who had admitted many Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War, offered Trotsky asylum. His admirers, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo became friends (Kahlo slightly more than friends) and visited him regularly in what was then a country house (now a multi-lane highway runs past the door). Guarded by young acolytes from the USA, Trotsky, his wife and their youngest son survived an armed assault led by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros; the only casualty was the son who was lightly wounded. Watchtowers on the walls testify to the threats under which the family lived. After the attack, Trotsky’s office was fortified with heavy cast iron shutters and doors. In the end, of course, it was not a gun that killed Trotsky, but an ice axe wielded by a Catalan Communist infiltrator, trained in Russia. Gory black and white photos record the deed. Trotsky and his wife are buried in the garden where he once tended his rabbits and chickens.

The burial place of Trotsky, his wife Natalia Sedova Kolchvsky, and their grandson Estéban Volkov Bronstein and a partial view of the Trotsky house. Note the guard post top right.

 

 

Romance Vallarta Style

 

After we arrived at our apartment on Playa Amapas yesterday I went down to the beach. At one end, a small white tepee stood was decorated with electric candles, red roses, and illuminated letters spelling T E A M O (I love you). Two sunshades provided shelter from the sun. Later a couple of young women lay among the roses and embraced on. Our son Chris tells us this ia a favourite LGBTQ+ beach.

 

This morning, as we prepared breakfast the sound of a trumpet drew our attention. About where the two young ladies had embraced yesterday, a heart-shaped display of false red roses had been erected. In its centre was an illuminated sign asking “Will you marry me?”. A red carpet was lined by electric candles and red roses. Two displays of roses stood either side of the arch and behind on the beach more electric candles. A bouquet of red roses was strategically placed on the red carpet just in front of the heart.

 

 

A glamorous young woman in an elegant trouser outfit and beach sandals was busy on a mobile phone, while a young man dressed in black with a pony tail was busy setting his camera for the event. The trumpet player was a member of a mariachi that was gathering and preparing its instruments.

And then the couple arrived. We felt a certain sympathetic tension. Would she say yes, or no? The girl wore a fetching long dress, her beau some not so elegant shorts and a black shirt. The mariachi played. He fell to his knees, produced and fitted on her finger a ring.

 

What next? The suspense rose.

 

The beau stood up; the girl embraced. They kissed. The answer was clearly YES. The bouquet was presented. There followed many photos and videos. No doubt the young couple are now on Snapchat or Tiktok.

Given the elaborate arrangements, we assumed that the Yes was a foregone conclusion.