Becoming local

I am becoming local.

Not a Mexican, per se, because that involves an ethnic and cultural identity that I will never manage, regardless of how long I stay here, but a local.

A local in that I am no longer feeling like an onlooker here. I am now more or less a part of the tapestry.

Which may or may not be a good thing.

I realized this yesterday while walking to the Insurgentes MetroBus station. I was on my way to class and, hungry, had stopped to pick up a small plastic container of cucumber with limon and chile, which I was now carrying in one hand. Due to a protest on Reforma (yet again – any sympathy I might have felt for losing presidential candidate Lopez Obrador is gone entirely on the basis of the number of times his ridiculous empty protests have upset my day to day life), I had had to take a route I didn’t know to catch the MetroBus – a route that rounded a corner and brought me face to face with Mexico City-brand desperation.

First was the smell – the unmistakeable sweet and sour funk of clothes and body not washed – and then the person asleep/passed out on the ground whom everyone was merely stepping over. It was a few steps further before the others loomed up from either side of the path.

One young man, without even looking up once, fixated on my cucumber. He made a plaintive gesture, not a word. He stared at it.

It is unsettling to have someone beg for whatever it is you’re eating or drinking, but it is unfortunately not that unusual. In the past, overcome with privileged guilt, I have given in and handed my half-consumed water or half-eaten torta over to whichever large-eyed child had broken my resolve. I don’t feel particularly great about this kind of half-assed charity, and, while I am undoubtedly considerably better off than these people, I am in no financial position to be giving away food to everyone that asks. Still, it’s hard not to feel somewhat obligated to do something when asked directly; I might be struggling financially, but I at least am wearing shoes.

So when this young man with his knotted hair and torn clothes and gnarled feet fixated on my cucumber, my ordinary reaction would have been either to give it to him or at least to feel terribly guilty about not giving it to him. Instead, I simply said, “No.”

He made the hand gesture again. I said, “No.”

He made the hand gesture again. I said, “No.”

He made the hand gesture again. I said, “No!”

And by now, rather than being riddled with guilt, I was getting angry that he would not let me be. So the next time he made the hand gesture, still not having lifted his eyes once, I snarled, “It’s my dinner. No.” and stormed past him.

When Pavel and I were in Palenque in December, munching on peanut butter sandwiches bought with the few pesos we had left after the robbery, a little girl made the same hand gesture and gave us the same fixed, desperate, hungry look. Pavel told her no and turned a little to face me while I bled a little inside. Before her, it had been an emaciated little tan dog with howling eyes and its tail between its legs.

But yesterday, I felt nothing but possessiveness, my own survival in this often difficult city.

I am becoming local.