During that just-past “crazy” March — from the Mexican saying, Febrero loco, Marzo mas poco —‘Nando Diaz Mendez had an unusual occurrence in the small covered corral of his chilly mountainside ranch. Two of his mares dropped foals within five days of one another. The blocky dun, always fat, surprised him. She was early. But now, as government-monopoly gasoline becomes so “dear,” the foal was a welcome surprise. Horses, especially valued during the rainy season, now represented a year-round economic bounty despite “painful” prices of supplemental livestock feed.
Nando and his amply extended family know March’s bruising inflation hike won’t retreat much, despite what economic “experts” preach. In March it hit its highest annual rate in five months, with government-managed prices leading the list for farmers and ranchers: gasoline and electricity. The Diaz Mendezes offset such hikes somewhat with well cared-for vegetable crops. Maiz, of course, which was only fair this year, though the use of corn stalks and cobs ground up for both the ranch and to sell as livestock feed was worthwhile. As were carefully tended calabazas and what older folks call calabacin (zucchini), frijoles, chayote, and melon, sandia, lemons, limes and mandarins.
A lot of the clan’s sprawling ranch is steep, rocky and arid; cultivating “garden-like” vegetables can mean hard work. But the property has two ojos de agua (springs), one that usually seeps water until the final days of the dry season. And the family, generations ago, dug and blasted several deep wells. Pumping water from such wells calls for electricity from gas-driven generators or the expensively government-owned electrical company (not known by many campesinos for its honesty or client friendliness). Nando’s clan, over the years, have managed to exist by depending on their own resourcefulness, which is based on the philosophy of existing as autonomously as possible. They call it “living contra el gobierno” as much as possible. This kind of independence has served them well during the long series of greed-crazed federal, state and municipal administrations, measured between presidencies of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970), Luis Echeverria (1970-1976), Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-1982), and so forth to the present reign of Enrique Peña Nieto. “This new president?” said Agripin Hernandez Ruiz, the clan’s present patriarch, last week. “No one really knows, do they? Some chilangos (Mexico City citizens) say he didn’t do well as governor of the State of Mexico. But who knows, that state is a long way away.” Agripin “has 86 years,” he says. And bumpy experience, especially since the 1994 “peso error” of Carlos Salinas de Gortari that devastated Mexico — and the ranch. His father, also named Agripin, now dead and sorely missed, almost lost the ranch. The clan was selling off livestock, and were hawking chickens and geese when an odd piece of luck appeared: Someone thinking of buying ranching property during the economic calamity. That person became a partner in the ranch’s recovery. The older Agripin ever after reminded his offspring to always think well before they acted, and to be lucky. That came from being alert to luck when it presented itself even in strange disguises. “Learn what your luck looks like, when and how it works.”Now, that man’s son, though elderly by his Mexican campesino rancher standards, was instructing Nando to hacer caso — pay attention — since luck was unfolding for the family. “Dos yeguas about foal. We need those. Don’t be distracted by this bounty, don’t let something happen to these foals. In the time ahead, we’ll need all the good fortune we can store.”
“So despite all the news everywhere that Mexico is now a middle class society, you see economic problems ahead?” I asked.
Nando had set off across to the troje, the barn. “Well, I tell him that to remind him to take good care. This is not the time to have problems with a birthing, and losing a foal. This noise that Mexico is middle-class is so much sh-t.” He readily uses words he picked up in the United States where he topped carrots and picked fruit as a young man. “But the details of everything these thieves are dreaming is something your telly probably tells more truthfully than ours. One day things are wonderful, the next day problems appear.”
Agripin is right of course. In Mexico, with a population of 114,975,406, the state of the country’s middle class has always been puzzling. There are so many contradictory reports. First of all, Mexico’s distribution of wealth is brutally unequal. Today, that is characterized by the world’s most wealthy man, Carlos Slim, who owns, among many corporations and companies, Mexico’s telephone monopoly, Telmex.
As Slim gathered riches, at the end of 2012 the economy so deteriorated that 60 million people were living below Mexico’s poverty line, according director of the Center for Research on the Economy and business at Monterrey Tec, economist Jose Luis de la Cruz. Though macroeconomic figures are positive, growth has not meant a reduction in the conditions of poverty, he has said. Thus, among the poor there are those categorized by some as the “better off poor,” and those who seem to slip into the category of middle class but occupy murky economic terrain. Numerous well-known news organizations firmly state they know what is and isn’t middle class. They like to point to improving education, shrinking family size, cheaper consumer goods, remittances of 22.7 billion dollars in 2011, and rising per capita income. But just as in the U.S., many middle class folks are merely one emergency away from poverty. Foreign-born residents long in Mexico know too many people who have clawed their way to the edge of what they’re sure is the middle class, and cling there precariously.
This does not characterize Agripin or Nando. The riddle of the middle class faded when Nando found their dun mare not banging the pole fence for more feed and freedom, but lying on her side, breathing heavily, ready to drop a foal.
“Dios, it’s twisted the wrong way,” Nando said, his shirt off, his hands and arms greased, talking to her gently.
“Got to turn it around now.” Agripin stroked her big belly. “She’s doesn’t have long. We have to be fast.” The dam squealed in agony.
“Who does she know best?” I asked. Agripin pointed at me. “You don’t remember, but you pulled her into the world, hombre.”
“It’s got to be quick,” I said. “The forefeet hooves will be sharp. I’ll calm her.”
“Remember, she doesn’t understand ingles,” Agripin said, as Nando reinserted his hands, and mare quivered and lifted her head to look at him. I stroked her neck and cheek and told her Spanish lies that everything was fine.
“The right front leg is twisted backward,” Nando said, his eyes closed as he worked to turn the leg. Pulling a foal is righteous work when anomalies occur. A mare has only so much time; she’s using up all her strength to push out the foal. If she becomes exhausted, the question of survival appears.
The snout appeared. I reached over and pulled away the torn fetal membrane covering the foal’s nose and mouth. The dam rested a bit, then began her exertions again. I stroked her neck and whispered more lies.
“Here it comes,” sighed Nando.
Bien hecho,” said his father. “Well done.”
The dam moved to get up, but I leaned on her shoulder and neck. “You’ve got to rest a couple minutes, darlin’.”