A street in the village….

Sad to say there was another narcobloqueo in Guadalajara the other day – major roads blocked, buses set on fire, a bus driver killed, the usual. Rosa said they found two men hanged in Zapopan too. To the north, it sounds just horrible, gunfire and grenades in the night. Supposedly our fun and games here was in revenge for the federales having captured a big drug kingpin and extraditing him back to the States. Guadalajara continues on “Alerta Roja” (red alert); the scuttlebutt is that they are zeroing in on another capo or two. No matter, alas, if they get the one they want another is right behind him (or increasingly, her) in line to move into the top spot. It just never ends.

But at least over the past couple of months, we have been spared anything too horrible here in our little village, though everyone is always somewhat on edge, because of course it can all start up again at any time.  Still, for a change, there are the stirrings of some good things happening  – signs that people are coming out of the shadows after so much recent violence.  At least this week, instead of dealing with mayhem, our local government has been trying to spiff the place up a little bit, in hopes of encouraging tourism and “quality of life”, one supposes. Our much-loved contractor and volunteer-about-town, Moctezuma (Chuma for short),  has organized a charming remodel of our town plaza, with mosaic floors, new plantings, and art donated and commissioned from a number of  favorite local artists and craftsmen. The crew does as much work as they can till they run out of money, then they stop.  Chuma puts on a fundraiser or two, and they then continue on. We ran into him in town today and he said that next month there is going to be a folk dance performance we have to attend – to benefit the plaza redecoration project, as the project is once again broke. Of course we will go.

Then, the last time we took the bus in to Guadalajara, we noticed a little cement block bench at the bus stop, where before, people waiting had to stand in the blazing hot sun in the middle of a knee-high weed patch just off the highway in order to avoid being killed by oncoming traffic. The grass around it had just been trimmed and someone had painted the little bench white. This was really nice because so many of the people who wait for the bus are elderly, or are parents with little kids or babies in their arms. And then a few days later, a steel roof magically appeared over the block bench to shield people from the sun.

They have also been putting up new street signs all over the village to replace the now rusty and faded old ones. When I saw them being put up everywhere I thought “Boy, our corner could really use one of those.” The original one got knocked down or stolen years ago and now, since there are no street signs anywhere on our street, people are never quite sure where they are. So I went into our little city hall and stopped at the entrance, where a tiny desk was flanked by three police officers (one a young woman), their scary-looking automatic weapons leaned against the wall in a corner as they chatted amongst themselves over styrofoam plates of tacos. I asked, as respectfully as I could, given the armaments just a few feet from where I was standing, where the Street Sign Department was. I told them I wanted to find out how to apply to have one put up. “Oh, just go upstairs, Señora, they are working on them now and someone will help you.”

Upstairs consists of two rooms, a tiny office where the delegado – basically the mayor – works, and a second room, which was filled with boxes and piles of street signs all wrapped in plastic. I went in and pled my case – that we really needed one of those on our corner, people often got lost, there had been one before, etc. “Of course, I think we have an extra one here, and I know exactly where you mean for it to go”, said the nice man who was on all fours in the middle of the room organizing all the piles of street signs. “We’ll run out there tomorrow morning and put it up for you…” “Muchas gracias”, I said, carefully backing out of the small room. “De nada, señora, que le vaya bien”. Once back out on the street, I thought, sort of growling to myself, oh, sure, I know I’ll be back here twenty times asking about my famous sign before I ever see it, if they ever DO put it up. There are a zillion signs in there they are dealing with, they’ll never get around to it…but at least I tried. I went off on my other errands and forgot about it.

Well, damned if I didn’t walk to the corner early the following morning on my way to my exercise class, when lo and behold, there was the new sign in all its glory, gleaming in the sunlight, nailed up precisely where I had suggested they put it. Not completely straight, but there it is. Que le vaya bien.