Along the north shore of Lake Chapala in the 1960s-70s, medical care was scarce.
For the relatively thinly populated pueblos between Chapala and Jocotepec, there were no doctors at all. There were curanderos and brujas, some of them quite good for the trimmed, specialized reach of folk curing.
But there came the inevitable day when I and my friends needed to take a sick associate to a bona fide “trained” doctor. On the way down from Denver to Jalisco, he had stopped at Mazatlan for some surfing, and was hit by a jelly fish. He suddenly was short of breath, had a sharp pain in his chest and seemed only faintly awake. I lived in Ajijic then, and on this hard day, at the entry to the Carretera, I wasn’t sure which way to turn. I was massaging – sometimes pounding – my friend’s chest, trying to keep his aching heart beating. Chapala was closest, so I said “Go right and go fast.”
That choice turned out to be the right one. Though for other maladies, like most my Mexican friends living along the highway to Chapala, I often consulted a deft, primarily self-trained pharmacist. He did a landslide business due to his wide experience, his low prices, his exceptional ease of treatment and, of course, his success.
Yet many citizens living along Lake Chapala’s raw highway, chose to go to curanderos or brjuas. Every pueblo, large or small, had its own assortment of such curers.
But this time, once my friend said “jellyfish” to the doctor, the cure was sure.
More difficult was Lupe Pementel’s problem. A large, sweet-faced woman with several children, her common name was La Molacha – Gap-Tooth – for she was missing some front teeth. She appeared at my front door one day in tears. Her eight-year-old son, Chuy, had a broken right leg, she was sure. Could I drive them to the pueblo’s clinic? Of course, how not? We piled into a dented Fiat and jounced downhill. The biggest problem was mounting the miss-named Calle Rico, which then lead to a chapapote (tar-paper) roofed house.
La Molacha brought the youngster out, leading him carefully.
“Going back down will hurt,” I said. “All ruts and rocks.”
Stoically, Chuy barely whimpered as we lurched and banged down the road. But at the clinic he cried as the doctor prodded. And then, after asking if I were going to pay, the medico took x-rays. When the pictures were finally developed, he said that Chuy’s femur was shattered. The choices included having an operation at the pueblo’s minute clinic, or to take him to the Hospital Civil in Guadalajara.
“What should I do?” La Molacha asked, as she and the doctor turned to stare at me.
Though I was a foreigner and fairly new to this pueblo when there were few gringos in that neck of the woods, they both clearly expected me to have a fitting answer.
Stalling, I asked the doctor if the boy could stay at the clinic overnight. But La Molacha protested.
The doctor countered: “There’s a nurse here all night, and I live across the street.”
Lupe frowned at him and, plucking my shirt sleeve, walked toward the door. La Molacha whispered that leaving the boy behind was impossible. “These are all strangers, señor,” and even worse, her voice emphasized, “mestizos!” By which she meant not merely a mixed breed, but one of white and Indian blood. She looked upon anyone she didn’t know well and who wasn’t a Nahua Indian as a suspicious alien.
X-rays plainly showed that Chuy’s leg was somewhat shattered, though I wasn’t sure that Lupe was clear about what that meant. If the boy didn’t get good professional aid, he possibly could be crippled for life.
In those days Guadalajara’s Hospital Civil didn’t have an inspiring reputation among many Mexican citizens I knew. But how good was this village clinic and its physician owner?
La Molacha peered back through the rusted screen. “These strangers will hurt him with their carelessness and ignorance if he’s left here alone with them.”
“And the Hospital Civil in the city? What about that?”
She blinked gravely. “So, it’s the government, isn’t it?” La Molacha gave a doubtful sigh. “What should I do, señor?”
“Only you and Alfonso (her husband) should make that decision.”
La Molacha frowned darkly at me. “Pos, you have education. You know these things. My husband doesn’t,” she seemed about to say. But didn’t. She added unhappily: “There are many strangers at this Hospital Civil, no?”
“Yes. Many.”
Making an unhappy sucking sound around her missing teeth, she squatted against the clinic’s flaking green wall and clenched her calloused hands. “Señora Santa Maria Madre mia.” La Molacha declared to the hot, cobbled street. She glared at the threatening clinic, and at me. Why had I cast her and her son into this bleak and fearful pit of the unknown, her expression said unambiguously.
La Molacha was stern as she stood. ”You just don’t have children.”
Back inside, she seemed doubtful about the doctor.
“Didn’t you decide?” The doctor rubbed his hands together.
“I don’t think she’s made up her mind yet,” I said.
He cleaned his glasses on his soiled white doctor’s jacket, and spoke in English. “These Indians are so distrusting. They’re not capable of making decisions such as this. You should have told her what to do.”
La Molache glared at him both angrily and fearfully.
We left, and I drove her and her son home in silence.
At her house, she briefly told Alfonso what had happened, and told me a weary, “adios.”
Several days later I ran into Alfonso. He had taken La Molacha and their son to the Hospital Civil on a bus. Chuy had been successfully operated on. La Molacha was now working in the hospital kitchen to pay for Chuy’s care and food. She slept nights on a petate on the floor under the boy’s bed.
But, Alonso said, she remained angry – at him, at the doctor, and especially at me. “She made me promise that if you ever get sick to let her know. So we can get you to the Hospital Civil. Otherwise,“ he laughed, “she’s decided that you’ll never know how to get cared for in the right way.”