Editor’s Page – September 2011

speedyEditor’s Page

Guest Editorial by Tommy Clarkson

Okay, I Give Up!

 

Okay, Gringos of the North, I give. You, up there, are correct. We, who live here, must be completely and irrevocably wrong. We defer to you who are all knowing. Mexico is not safe.

We acknowledge that your protracted, opinionated, pontifications of self-righteous piety and pusillanimous pronouncements must be right. Why, you heard it on the evening news so it has to be the gospel! And our opinions, stemming from years of living among some of the most wonderful folks on the earth, in the most magnificent environs, must surely be absolutely wrong.

We surrender. If you say that it must be a virtual hell-hole of crime, violence and discontent down here then it must be. Who are we to know?

In fact, forced to do so, I confess to some of the terror with which we daily live.

Yesterday, three folks we know suffered gruelingly, gruesome pain and anguish from over-eating a sumptuous meal at a local cantina that cost them each less than four dollars – and that included two cold beers. Yet another sun-burned her nose from too long in her lounge chair on the wide-open expanse of litter free, wind swept beach that lies in front of her house. And my buddy complained that he was terribly tired from the ordeal of our weekly poker game last night that went on until the wee hours of today.

Yes, life down here in Mexico is a living hell.

Stay up north. Lock up your women, children, silverware and ability to think for yourselves. The media will do it for you. Hence, it’s gotta’ be right. They said it to be so, so it’s so. Thus, it’s a veritable war zone down here! We live in daily dread and trepidation.

I tell you it’s just terrible. I woke this morning to the countryside crowing of (shudder, shake and tremble) fighting roosters raised by locals in a nearby colonia. Near noon, a solitary, marauding hummingbird left hibiscus quivering from his beaked assault. (I nearly wept at the violence.) And last evening, we watched in awe at the destructive aerial warfare wrought by sweeping flights of swallows that ravaged mosquitoes silly enough to venture out.

Yes, but what of that “on the ground,” down in the dirt, as it were. What’s it really like down where the burro’s hoof meet the dusty road? A’hhhh, you saw through my pure blue skies subterfuge. The realities on the ground are bleak. What with boisterously bountiful Bougainvillea blooming year around, scores of colorful Hibiscus cultivars waiting around each corner and the heliconia in a rainbow of varieties too many to mention, the flora must surely hide assassins, thieves and highwaymen at every turn.

Maybe snipers lurk in the sumptuous vines of Passion Fruit, Bleeding Heart and Allamanda. Hanging high with long, scoped rifles, they skulk inside mango trees heavy with large, sweet fruit. Or maybe they lay hidden inside the roadside piles of fresh pineapples, papaya, limes, oranges, guava, coconuts, mangostinos, jackfruit, starfruit, avocado or wide array of juicy melons.

Kidnappers surely must be slinking beneath the magnificently old and enormous Banyon, Papaleos, Primavera. Perota, Ficus or the Silk Floss with the spiked truck sacred to the Mayans. Trees that huge and beautiful would have to hide something sinister, I’m sure.

Yes. It’s ugly out there but someone has to address it. You stay up there. We’ll man the front. So for now, I guess, we’ll just trudge once more into the fray of paradise!

 


For more information about Lake Chapala visit: chapala.com


Ojo Del Lago
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