Los de Abajo: The Underdogs

Perhaps the most famous novel of the Mexican Revolution is Mariano Azuela’s Los de Abajo, usually translated as The Underdogs.

Los de Abajo, cover design

Underdogs are a frequent theme of Mexican arts. A famous director of early Mexican cinema is “El Indio” Fernández. His film La Perla (The Pearl) is a tale of love, poverty and greed, with the dénouement of one of the great operas. The action takes place on a tropical coast that could well have been the coast of Nayarit where we have been staying. A humble pearl fisher, married to a beautiful young woman, with a new-born baby, finds an enormous pearl, so valuable that it can transform the life of his family. As he puts it, his son would now learn to read and write.

The pearl fisher and his family

Alas, the local landowner is determined to own the marvellous pearl. The fisherman’s wife entreats him to give the pearl to the landowner to save the family, but her husband cannot abandon his dreams. They flee, clutching the precious pearl. They are pursued by the landowners’ armed thugs through mangrove swamps and tropical forests. The new-born baby succumbs to the hardship of the journey. Finally, the fisherman heeds his wife’s entreaties that their love is greater than riches and throws the pearl into the sea. He and his wife return to their home, poor but wiser and in love.

San Angel Inn gardens

In Mexico City we lunched one day at the San Angel Inn, a famous restaurant in the former home of a wealthy landowner, with carefully tended gardens and a large staff to pamper the diners. When one visits the baños, an attentive man in a white coat opens the cubicle door, later squeezes soap on to your hands and hands you a length of paper towel. In return he receives a modest tip. I find it hard to calculate his daily income, but his home life must be far away from that of the diners in San Angel. In contrast, the table next to ours was occupied by four young businessmen, probably in their early 30s. They ate heartily and consumed a number of rounds of tequila and sangrita, a traditional spicy tomato accompaniment sipped after each sip of tequila.

Main street, San Pancho

I am writing this in San Francisco (popularly known as San Pancho), in Nayarit state on the Pacific coast. Had we come here around 1940 we would have found a tiny remote settlement which formed part of an ejido (a collectively-owned farm) created by the government’s land reform programme. The peasants who farmed, tended cattle or fished here may have sent their children to one of the new state schools teaching the “socialist education” in vogue at the time. There may even have been one of the new government clinics, dispensing rudimentary healthcare. Urban services such as potable water or sewage would have been unthinkable: even today in tourist San Pancho water is delivered to homes by tanker trucks. San Pancho boomed briefly from 1970-1976 when President Luis Echeverría built a holiday home for his family there. He channelled money into the town. The government improved housing, established a school, a teaching hospital, an agricultural university, and a fruit-processing factory. However, after Echeverría left office funding stopped and some of the president's projects failed. The modern population of 1,600 souls lives almost entirely from tourism or associated trades, such as construction, taxi-driving and so on.

We arrived just before the tourist season gets into full swing. This part of the coast caters to visitors who escape the cold winters of North America or Europe, or who come from Mexico City or Guadalajara, who arrive at the airport of Puerto Vallarta, served by airlines from Alaska to Mexico City. We have seen a few visitors driving past our rented villa in golf buggies, favoured by the less mobile or those whose accommodation is in the golf club or polo resort just outside town. On the highway to San Pancho we had passed a rather less luxurious form of transportation, a cargo truck, typical of remoter parts of Mexico. The cargo area is enclosed by white wooden slats. Three men sat in the back nursing a trompa, a large doner kebab wrapped in sturdy plastic for a long, but perhaps not very hygienic, journey. As we ate lunch on Friday a similar truck carrying a large refrigerator parked across the street. The truck had no mechanical ramp or other lifting aids, so the driver and his mate lowered the refrigerator carefully from a height of some five or six feet, and carried it quite a distance along the street. The delivery was made in a very humid temperature of some 33^o. Given the distance they had travelled, the financials rewards for the men’s labours must have been very modest.

 

San Pancho beach

We had lunch the next day in a restaurant on the beach. We talked to one of the sellers of tourist goods. His was a story of how, at its best, the Mexican state protects the less privileged. He has a four year old daughter born five months prematurely. The little girl spent four months in intensive care and required intensive physiotherapy to learn to walk. She has now developed further mobility problems, but only private physiotherapy is available, which is far beyond the income of a beach salesman. Her father had heard of Pasitos de Luz, the charity where our son works, but had been unable to make contact. Fortunately, Chris was able to give him the contact details.

Taquería el Arbolito, kitchen

Our first night here we were caught in a violent tropical storm. The owner of a taco restaurant, Taquería el Arbolito, who had closed for the night, offered us shelter, refreshment and pleasant conversation as we watched water pour down the street. Pedro runs a sizeable business, where we had dinner the following night. He must be one of the more prosperous locals who cater to the tourist trade. Pedro’s wife runs the open air kitchen, assisted by two local ladies, one of whom makes the tortillas.

Taquería el Arbolito, living accommodation above

Two young men serve. A dinner of tacos, quesadillas, volcanes (an open taco on a crispy tortilla), or pellizcadas (a taco equivalent of an Italian calzone) filled with ingredients of our choice, additional flavours added at a sauce bar, washed down with cold drinks, costs about 200 -230 pesos (about £10) for three people. Pedro shuts his business for two weeks in August for a holiday in a larger Mexican resort. He makes most of his money from late October to early May and carefully husbands his cash for the rest of the year. The family lives in a modest structure above the restaurant. One of his sons works night shifts in the laundry of the town hospital.

San Pancho, hospital

San Pancho offers some essential facilities to its residents. There is a state pre-school a block from the beach and a hospital two or three blocks further. The centre of town has a variety of restaurants and cafés, a grocery store (tienda de abarrotes) or two, and an art gallery. On the highway is a petrol station and an Oxxo convenience shop. Beyond the highway, the hills, covered in tropical vegetation, rise steeply. These facilities would have been completely lacking in the 1930s. However, friends tell us that those who can afford private insurance (such as the diners at the San Angel Inn) escape the long waits, shortage of medicines and dated equipment and facilities of the public health care system. Health care in Mexico can be as good as any in the world. Indeed, there is a good deal of health tourism from the USA. Foreign citizens can enrol in the public system for a very modest annual contribution (a generous concession, given the demands on the system of Mexico’s own citizens), or can access cheaper private care.

 

San Pancho, community centre and library

Education also tends to be divided in similar fashion. Much public education is part-time (four hours per day). Our driver in Mexico City sent his two children to private schools for a better education and access to university education. They found work in technology businesses in Germany and Estonia. Mexico produces international-class scholars and professionals, and supports a lively cultural scene. The country has come a long way since the era of Los de abajo and La Perla, but limited employment opportunities, enormous inequality and unequal access to education and other essential services are issues that are still far from being solved. Most jobs are poorly paid and terms of employment would be considered very harsh in Europe: a 46-hour week, no holidays at all in the first year, six days in the second year. Even after ten years in the same job, our usual five weeks of holiday is beyond the dreams of a Mexican worker. Salaries, even for middle-class management jobs, are very modest by European standards, and working-class salaries are low indeed. The low-wage economy is precarious. Life outside it (juggling or cleaning windscreens at traffic lights, selling chewing gum on the street) is even more so.