There Were No Parades....

this week! But there was

Charro!

No, no. Not the weird singer/dancer woman who captivated Ed McMahon. That's Charo.  Charro is a cult-like (but not icky) group of horse people whose lives revolve around the charra.  The charra is kind of like a rodeo but with no scary clowns and smaller bulls and better riding.  First, the cult type stuff.  According to a local friend, you are either born into a charro family or you are not.  Once you are, you will attend every meaningful event in your life dressed in full charro garb. Baptism, Marriage, Funeral -- probably first day of school.   As will everyone you know because you hang with mostly only other charro folk because you spend almost every waking moment on a horse doing charro-y things.

You will be placed on a horse as soon as your legs can span its back.  You will be lashed to the saddle (in a kind manner) until your legs get longer.  If you are a boy you will learn to do sophisticated rope tricks,  grab a steer by its tail at a gallop and throw it to the ground and leap from one horse to another (with no saddle or bridle) at full throttle.  If uncoordinated, you will probably be dead by age five.  By the time you are twenty you will be doing these things with a bottle of tequila in your hand.

If you are a girl, by the time you are six or seven you will be able to ride sidesaddle at very high velocity in a ring with eight other girls and horses at very high velocity and crisscross each other in intricate patterns missing each other by inches. Your mother will probably take a lot of Xanax or drink heavily.  Actually, your mother probably did the same thing twenty years before.

This charra featured a boy of perhaps 12 or 13 who was the overall champion of all events charro.  Whether he was the Junior or regular champion we never figured out but he was....words fail me.  He:
1) did rope tricks on ground and horse which included standing on the back of his horse and jumping through the lasso from side to side multiple times; 2) made the horse dance with steps more intricate than the Rockettes could master; 3) bunches of other stuff too hard to explain.

While seated stupefied, I began to realize that the life of a big time charro is not cheap.  Just the outfits alone cost a bucket.  Then, it looks like you have multiple horses (dancing horse, roping horse etc.), serious tack (lots of silver and I don't think it's fake), horse trailers, stables, lassos, tequila... well, it all adds up.  So, charro is to Mexico what polo is to England.  You can render your socio-economic conclusions from there.

As always, in Mexico, being part of the audience is always as diverting as what you have come to witness.  You have lots of time to interact with your peers because everything always starts late. We know we haven't fully assimilated because we simply cannot yet manage to be even ten minutes late for anything.  And anything counted in minutes doesn't even qualify as late in Mexico.  So, there we were sitting on the hard concrete seats in the bullring with some time to kill.  Bored?  But non!  To our right behind us were seated the mothers of the small girls who would within minutes be hurling themselves around the ring on steeds that were about 20 times their weight.  They braided hair, laughed without a care and did cheers and songs to support the offspring.  Young entrepreneurs stalked the stands trying to sell rebozos (shawls) on a day that had to be 80 degrees. More work on marketing needed.

And then, there was the borracho.  Now those of you who have been following the blog since the early days may remember our references to the town drunk (see Globos festival and a few other posts).  This is a man of endless good cheer, endless inebriation and, we now know, significant coordination.  As we were seated in the stands munching jicima with chile and lime (exquisite!) we spotted the borracho dancing with abandon to the blaring banda music supplied to keep us entertained prior to the event.  He danced along the railing and benches, he tottered above the ring, he bobbed, he weaved.  He balanced a cup high above his head, twirling, never spilling a drop.  He capped off his performance with a series of cartwheels performed high above the bullring.  The crowd was appreciative.  Meanwhile, the audience continued to consume margaritas, beers and street food in huge amounts.  Polishing off his supply of drink, the borracho unfurled a black plastic garbage bag from his pocket and made his way through the stands collecting empties.  Within ten minutes, his bag was full, his money collected and his next round of drink supplied.  A man with a plan.

The thing about the village is that people just seem to take people for who they are.  The borracho is the borracho.  Give him your empties, don't sermonize.  If he looks like he's going to be run over, pull him out of the way.  There's room here to be who you are.  Which leads us to our next, and rather sad, tale.

El borracho dancing for the crowd...

and el borracho turning cartwheels

Adelita appears even at the charro

Dancing in pairs is also part of the entertainment at the charro...

as well as dancing alone.

No charro is complete without lariat skills ...

and even more lariat skills...

and lariat skills on a horse!

Kids, don't try this at home!

No charro is complete without colorful costumes...

pretty women & handsome men.

The colors are spectacular...

as well as the skills involved in dancing on a clay pot!

As Deirdre mentioned, the charro tradition begins very early, even for the women.

The skills in riding sidesaddle...

while executing intricate maneuvers on the horse are impressive at any age!

You can get an idea of how the horse is "dancing" by the direction of the tail.

Note how the horse has all its weight on one leg!

Most of us have trouble sitting a horse, let alone standing...

or staying on when the horse rears up...

or kneels down...

or sits down!

Riding bareback on one horse & then jumping to another horse!

Finally no charro is complete without bull riding.

Pedro Loco Will Be Missed

Once again, I call on you to remember prior blogs where we have spoken of Pedro Loco.  A quick catcher-upper for the newcomers.  When we first came to Ajijic we were walking along and spotted a tall guy dressed all in white and festooned with feathers, jewelry and really good cowboy boots.  Not your average Joe-- even in a quirky town.  We saw him everywhere and he was a very pleasant guy -- if a little vague.  Like almost everything in Mexico there were numerous, contradictory explanations, descriptions of who he was, where he came from etc. etc.  We knew that he owned Vino Blanco at some point and it was rumored that he was a high powered lawyer who chucked it all and came to live here.  That was enough for us.

Shortly after New Years we heard that he had died.  And only through his obit and talking to some friends did we find out "his story".  It turned out he was Canadian and a very successful criminal lawyer.  He came from two very wealthy, established families in Canada and had left his practice at 55 (12 years ago) and moved to Ajijic.  He had neurological problems at that time and then developed Alzheimer's.  What components of his new Ajjic persona were dictated by his medical state we'll never know.  He really was a fixture in the town and his picture was in ads and he had special seats at bars dedicated to him alone.  Ajijic does embrace the unusual.  Well, he had decided that when things got too bad, he'd just take care of the situation.  And he did.  At the memorial service, his son and relatives spoke lovingly of a man who must have been quite different than the man we were acquainted with.  But, in both of his lives, he seemed to have brought happiness and a smile to those around him.  Not a bad legacy.

Pedro Loco will be sorrowfully missed on the streets of Ajijic,...

goodbye Pedro Loco.

On to Other News 

 It is well known that American politics is dysfunctional.  And Congress is just getting beaten up badly -- and deserves it.  But, I cannot, in good conscience, let my American friends think that we live in political nirvana.  Actually, you probably DIDN'T think that but let me elaborate.  Mexico has changed its immigration laws.  I will tell you about it.

1)  Eighteen months ago, they passed the new law.  But writing the whole thing out was really boring so the legislature just kind of did an outline and threw it to the bureaucrats who are mostly their really stupid brother-in-laws.
2)  They mostly went on vacation or did Sudoku for seventeen months and then dashed off some stuff to fill in the outline so they could release it in November.
3)  It didn't make any sense then and still doesn't but the government implementers swear it is all very clear and succinct even though every lawyer or facilitator (hired by gringo's to penetrate the veil of obscurity) gives a contradictory interpretation.
4)  We care because we have to change our status.  From FM3 (No Immigrante) to either Temporary or Permanent -- by April 13.  But no one who has filed since this fall has received their completed documents.  And you can't leave the country without them unless you pay even more money and submit more paperwork into the gaping maw that is the immigration department.
5) If we go Permanent, we may have to drive our car to Texas, sell it and come back and buy a car in Mexico because customs doesn't talk to immigration and........ I just can't go on.  There's more but I'll spare you.

So, don't feel so bad.

One Last Odd Death-Related Thing

The following was in the Guadalajara Reporter this week (English language newspaper)

"A 38 year old man in a rural community outside Lagos de Moreno has been charged with the stabbing death of his curandero (folk healer) after paying more that $300 for a 'spiritual cleansing' that 'didn't
work'".            CLEARLY!

Okay.  On to another week.  I promise no more death oriented pieces for a while.  This week we go on another House Tour (let me know if you want a reprise of this one) and may venture to Guadalajara to confront the forces of Seguro Popular (national health insurance) on their own turf.  Take care.