Columns

Sixteen-year-old Concha Rosales and her eight-foot rattler have prompted reader comments.  Some don’t say it outright but seem stirred by a fear of snakes.  Some frankly say that no “rational” 16-year-old girl would be so “reckless.”

For some Mexicans a dolorous mood hangs over days that traditionally have been celebrated with high hearts, beginning with the Thursday, October 31 celebration of  El Dia de Brjuas (The Day of Sorcerers).  Friday was Dia de Los Santos (All Saints Day),  remembering los angelitos, the “little angels,” who died in infancy.   Saturday is Dia de los Muertos, (Day of the Dead), also called Fieles Difuntos and La Parca, honoring teen-agers and adults.  By whatever name, this cluster of days has become more complex – emotionally and spiritually – in recent years.  This complexity grows out of myriad kidnappings and of mass, and individual, random slayings by drug gangs.  Especially troubling is the slice of the kidnappings that a discomforting number of eye-witnesses report are carried out at the hands of the Mexican military.

How does a 16-year-old girl kill an eight-foot rattlesnake? Today’s semi-cute answer is a worn cliche: “Very carefully.”  Actually, despite the simpering intent, it’s accurate. 

It wasn’t, isn’t, won’t be (any time soon) an “economic version of the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” a Time magazine reporter wrote March 8.  And for the corps of such long time on-the-ground observers of Mexico’s puzzling and certainly surreal government, the Niagra of north-of-the-border stories gushing about the booming Mexican middle class prompted bemused puzzlement.

The second people of great significance preceding the Aztecs into the Valley of Mexico were the Tepanecs.  Their key city was Azcapotzalco which then dominated the valley and had a cultural tradition prior to the Tepanecs of nearly a thousand years.  A bit before A.D. 1300, the people we know today as the Aztecs (they called themselves Mexica – me-shee-ka – until a Spanish historian prompted the use of “Aztec” in the 18th century) arrived and settled in what now is Chaputlepec.  They were not welcomed.  Noted as perversely savage trouble-makers, who tended to slaughter neighbors, the Mexicas had a rough time there and were expelled twice. This is where today’s Mexican presidents reside.  Some of those presidents have sworn the old gods jinxed the place. Today, several 21st century political and cultural observers suggest that if that were true, those ancient gods are tweaking the Republic of Mexico’s present leader, Enrique Peña Nieto, with a canastafull of testing.

When Concha Rosales was 16 she did something she hated.  She asked someone to help her without getting angry about it.  Something she hadn’t done since she was six or seven, she later said.  Her false siblings were too surprised to make fun of her. Chema and Guadalupe Rosales, the man and woman who had (unknown to Concha) informally adopted her, gave each other quizzical glances and later agreed it was just another odd bump along the road to growing up.