A Christmas Carol

It's approaching Christmas of 2022.  Depending on our prejudice, the world is full of hate, or full of love, or somewhere in between. This is no such story. This story is about people making do, getting by, and sticking together as those before them have done for countless generations. It's a Christmas carol worth celebrating and embracing.

I hear many stories about people coming to vacation in the San Miguel de Allende area and claiming they have seen the real Mexico as they follow the steps outlined in the travel blogs and magazine articles. That, of course, is nonsense pushed by the politicians and the people who make the real money.  In San Miguel, if you take five or six small rocks and throw them as hard as you can from the Centro tourist area, you will enter the real Mexico. I think they call it the Campo. The desert.  Where many of the real Mexicans live with extended families huddled together in small communities, often without power or water—all this right in the shadow of the Emerald City that is San Miguel. Right next door and off the grid.

The Pantoja community is about 3 km west of San Miguel, on the main road to Celaya.  This time of year, a group of women from Pantoja gather together and hug the shoulders of the highway. This is their workshop. They can't afford artist's studios, so they work on the edge of the busy road making Christmas decorations out of twigs and dry flowers from the desert for the rest of us to display in our houses. The same decorations sell in San Miguel for four times as much. Here on the highway, they sell for a hope, a prayer, and a mere couple of pesos more. Their work is wonderful. Their work is from their hearts. Their work is from the heart of the real Mexico. They make reindeer, angels, wreaths, Christmas trees, and other decorations. Symbols of hope for a pittance along the side of the road. In good conscience, how can we not support them in their task?

These same women work as housecleaners for more wealthy homeowners during the year. Their husbands are brickmakers. This time of year, they go out into the hills and gather special twigs called vera de viuda and small dried flowers they call gordolobo. They make a big pile of this material next to the highway and then build their art forms by hand. They bend the twigs into shapes, add pieces of dried flowers, and they tie them all together using a kind of twine they call hilo cáñamo, which they pull strands of from a rope like material called lazos. They just make do with what they have. It's a very old story, told time and again across generations of people finding a way to get by.

A couple of days ago, I spent a few hours with these wonderful women out on the highway. As is often the case with poor people reinventing themselves, I found them to be happy, kind, and generous. The building block foundations of the real Mexico. They support each other and cling together for one another in the neighborhood. I remember my old neighborhoods back in the US. Sadly, I have no comparisons to offer you.

And then, suddenly, a parade passed us by. The Virgen of Guadalupe is celebrated all over Mexico. She has been celebrated for hundreds of years. Today's Mexicans say they are children of the Virgen first, and secondly, they are Mexicans. Not the other way around. They call themselves "Guadalupanos." In honor of the Virgen, on December 13th, a procession of thousands of people and hundreds of horse riders wandered out of the surrounding hillsides and into town to the San Antonio Church. In the process, they passed by the Mexican vendors selling Christmas decorations for next to nothing. You can throw out what the travel blogs say. You can toss away all those "must-see" celebrations, margaritas, and Day of The Dead fashion shows. Facing the Virgen, those mean nothing. In Mexico, nothing is more real than these two icons passing one another close to Christmas on a highway filled with traffic in the high desert of central Mexico. I love Mexico, and spontaneous things like this make it so. On the surface, it's not pretty and doesn't fit in the hip pages of a travel magazine, but in the center of Mexico, the heartbeat is strong and carries the body of Mexico along with it.

There are only a few days left until Christmas. If you can spare $10, please drive west out of town a short distance. Stop under the pedestrian underpass about 3km out and pick up one of these decorations. They are beautiful, and so are the artists. These people need the money, and you'll get a symbol of real Mexico. The women will remember you as someone who cared enough to stop. I don't know what anyone else might call that gesture, but I'd call it a Christmas carol worth singing.