Mexico y ladrones

A year or so after I moved here, a local Mexican periodical called Paginas (pages) had a story called ‘Mexico, Pais de Ladrones’, ergo, Mexico Country of Thieves. By then I knew the editor and publisher of this paper and his entire family. He and his writers are very bold and publish articles, complaints and letters to the editor that no one else would touch, so I admire the guy.

I have been ripped off several times in my years here and try to learn from each but its a simple fact, trust no one. Only once in all my years in the states was I ripped off and that by someone who broke in my apartment knowing I worked all night.

One of the families I know here has a 20 year old son who has been in jail for stealing from houses and robbing two cars. I let him cut grass, pull weeds and clean my truck for the last couple of years. To date he hasn’t stolen anything. However, three weeks ago, I let him use my computer for emails though I was in the house and never more than 20 feet from him. This past Sunday I needed my $500 digital camera with 2GB memory and couldn’t find it in the drawer next to my computer.

Only this guy Chancharro (Pedro) had been near it so I knew who the culprit was. The local police stop by my house at least once every two days to chat. They work 24 hours on, 24 off, are paid poorly and get bored and tired with such long hours. So I give them cokes and snacks and we joke around a lot. So I told them and they were going to pick him up for theft.

I hadn’t yet talked with my lawyer so asked them to wait. Next day a friend came by and said this Chancharro had stolen his cellphone, so he went to the house and asked the mom about it. She said yes, there was a strange new cellphone in her son’s room and returned it to my friend. I told my lawyer this and he suggested I speak with the mother. So I printed up a photo of my camera and showed it to her and yes she had seen it. She said her son told her I ‘loaned’ him this expensive camera. I corrected that and she gave me a blank stare but did return the camera and the leather case with cables.

That was all I wanted but I told her about other things her son had done and again she gives me this same blank stare, after all, this is her baby boy (he’s 20) and he was not a ladrone despite the jail time. She then suggests it is three brothers who are thieves that I should watch out for. I suggested anytime she finds anything in her son’s room that she track the source with his reputation. She ignores this and just kept saying lo siento (I’m sorry) but she adds to this kids behavior.

So $130 down for two other things he also stole that alerted me to the camera theft, but I’m just glad I got my camera back and will take all pains to avoid this thief and warn anyone who asks me about him. Of course he is known to be a thief here but I’ll now add to his rep with my experiences.

It just astounds me how SOME Mexican mothers are so over protective for their kids where they let them do anything and lie their way out of it. I suggested to the senora that one day without corrective action, her son would wind up dead or crippled from such behavior. She didn’t seem to realize the law of cause and effect. So I’ll not be helping their family again.

Time for a michelada (beer cocktail popular in Jalisco state). Made with half a chavela (goblet) of clamato, ice, black pepper, chili, lime, worcestershire sauce and salt. Fill the half glass with beer and stir, very tasty.

Drink it halfway down, then add the rest of the beer from the bottle, stir and enjoy. Used to be 12 pesos ($1.20) 5 years ago, now they are up to 20 pesos.

Sunday Parade, Cantinas and random notes

Now that I have this blog, I need to get into the habit of taking snapshots with my cellphone so you can get some visual image. Had a great chicken pasta at La Viuda and the waitress had no clue why they called it ‘the Widow’. 50 pesos ($5) including a soda, can’t beat that. Some kind of parade for Santo de something with an Virgin Mary icon in a glass and wood box, carried by priests and followed by at least 2 city blocks of people on foot.

Really clogs traffic but funerals are worse as they go much slower. And it is expected that people slow or stop as a sign of respect. I just duck into a bar for a couple of beers until they pass….that would be La Oficina today. Only had one beer since I was on the motorcycle but chatted with some mex buddies and Raffa the bartender. Its rare that you see gringos in cantinas, not sure if they are afraid or what…lots of chisme (gossip) about fights and theft, etc…but I’ve never had any problems though I’ve seen a few fights, women and women, women and men and mostly men and men and I often stay til they close at midnight or 2AM, then sometimes run over to La Rodeo where they have women for ‘company’. 20 pesos ($2) for a beer for clients and 40 pesos for the girls. When they get their beer, they also get a little plastic chip which they can redeem at nights end for about 20 pesos or so. Thus, the more beers they drink, the more money they make. They also offer other ’services’…its interesting and not really my style of companionship but I do study the culture and subcultures here.

I have developed a theory and code of behavior which I follow fairly rigorously, which in essence is Tres Reglas: Discreto, Secreto y Sin Chisme, which means 3 Rules: Discrete, Secret and Without Gossip. Like most small towns, chismosos (gossips) and metiches (malicious gossipers) abound, in their sad lives watching and scheming for salacious stories to pass to their peers.

Plus, I follow my late Great Aunt Mert’s advice, given to us many times as children, where she said, if you are in a place and something doesn’t feel right or you suspect there will be trouble, LEAVE…WALK AWAY. Aunt Mert said if you stay, its your own fault and you deserve what happens to you. That has saved me countless times in my life, where I didn’t like the vibe and left, to find out later that something bad happened.

Getting late and I make it a practice not to drink too many beers OR ride on highways at night, partly due to pozos (holes in the road) and vacas (cows in the road). Hank told me when he first moved here years ago he had a car, was driving on the Libramiento (road between Ajijic and Chapala) and four horses ran alongside his car for about a mile.I like to take the very scenic view from Santa Cruz to Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos where I live (pronounced iss lah wah cahn day las mim bree yos and Membrillos is kind of a green horse apple that grows on the moutainsides and they boil to make a very sweet jellied brick to sell to the tourists), so sometimes I will stop at La Rameno cantina to chat with Sochi or Eddie who tend bar there. There used to be a sign saying ‘for proof of age, you had to be with your +100 year old grandfather’ as in the attached image. It’s hilarious and typical of some of the very funny signs in cantinas. I’ll collect some photos.

In many places they have very strange statues and in Rameno is what looks like a greyhound dog with wings! I’ve never seen anything like that before so have a photo somewhere that I will post. I have a photo or two of it but will have to look.

Here are 3 photos of a very strange statue in a small restaurant called Cenizas del Sol (Ashes of the Sun). It looks Japanese with the helmet and the bizarre octopus like tentacles.

I asked the cook where it came from and he said Colima, but also added that he thought the artist was probably on drugs and hallucinating.

An old guy here named Alan told me he knew a man from the American Legion who had used a metal detector on the partly dried up shores of Lake Chapala years ago and found a small gold statue about the size of a fist. The statue was of a being with multiple arms like the Indian goddess Kali. I have never seen anything like that in any books or histories of Mexico and have been trying to meet this guy to get a photo.

There is a story here that some big Japanese company offered to dredge the entire Lake Chapala since its average depth is only about 13-15 feet or so when the water level is up. When it was low back in 2001, I saw fishermen wading up to their knees a good 300 feet from the shore, dragging their nets to catch fish, particularly charales which are served dried. The Japanese company said they would do all this work for free, but they would get to keep anything they dredged up. The Mexican government turned them down since Lake Chapala is very old and considered sacred by native tribes such as the Huichols. People often find ‘blood pots’ which were used to hold blood as offerings to the gods by being thrown into the lake.

But I monitored the weather for my first two years when the lake was almost a kilometer from the shore. Then I had my welder build the frame for my weather machine and used it in 2002 for 3 months. During that time, rainfall increased as intended and the lake filled up. I don’t trust my test because they also took water from some dams upriver and reduced consumption from the residents of Guadalajara. But I think the machine setup a ’standing columnar wave’ which is still active 5 years later.

I was told not to talk about this locally because the lakefront property owners who farmed could use the dried up and exposed extra land. And that if they heard about my experiment, it might cause someone to shoot me or slit my throat! So only a few friends knew about it and they didn’t believe it had anything to do with the machine. I got the plans from my longtime friends Mary and Dean Hardy who had done lots of weather manipulation experiments with a secret group. They used a pyramid and obelisk combination which they say are tuned to each other to create the standing columnar wave.

This all described in their book, ‘Pyramid Energy - Philosophy of God, Science of Man’ by Mary & Dean Hardy…two of the most original researchers on the planet, Mary & Dean Hardy have spent years traveling, studying and working with the energy effects of pyramids and how they can be tuned to resonate with obelisks to create ’standing columnar waves’ which alter weather patterns for starters.

Mary and Dean were the people who first made me aware of Doug Benjamin’s photograph of the double helix from the top of a pyramid excited with a Tesla coil and which has puzzled many over the years. This book goes into great detail about the pyramid, its construction and use as determined from their many trips to Egypt in addition to working with others in the field. They have concluded the Ark of the Covenant was a power source which fit into a niche feeding what appears to be a fresnel lense cut into stone. Mary and Dean were first to report much of what is now seen on other sites and from other sources without credit or acknowledgement being given to them for their pioneering discoveries. This book also goes into detail about what Mary calls ‘tachy ions’ and their properties as well as information on radionics and many other aspects of subtle energy manipulation.

The link above leads to the Products page on KeelyNet where you can buy the book if you’d like. It is very interesting. I haven’t been in contact with the Hardy’s for about 3-4 years now. They live up in Allegan, Michigan on the lake. Dean is a huge prankster and used to tell me he and his friends would fill condoms with highly explosive acetylene gas for these monster balloons, put in a long fuse, light it and let it float out over the lake. It would explode and the pressure wave would rattle windows for miles around. He also had a couple of yard cannons that they fired on holidays, as well as a 30 foot wide, big pyramid they built in their backyard. They believe the pyramid helped their autistic son which I believe is written bout in the book. And more another time…