Surviving Mexico

January 28, 2013 · 8:15 pm

Meeting with el contratista chueco Phase 5

The fallen post with all its wires pulled on the rest of the posts in a domino effect, causing them to lean.

So el profe, R, the son of the original owner and I had a meeting. First, R started with the information that he had talked to the electric contractor in the presidency and had a list of requirements we needed, proof of work completed, authorization number, proof of payment, etc. We had already been to speak with him, so it really was redundant, but oh well.

The owner’s son tried to explain that el contratista more than likely had done the work without permission as he has never been in charge of projects, only an employee of the electric company. But R seemed not to get it. So we trooped over to el contratista’s office to ask for these documentation.

In el contratista‘s office, R began by asking for these documents, and el contratista wanted to know who had requested them. R gave the head guy’s name at the electric company, although they hadn’t been able to speak with him the last time they went. So el contratista admitted he had done the work but said he wouldn’t give us any documentation as he was still owed money. But he couldn’t say how much. And that he wouldn’t give us anything until he spoke with Chuchi as his contract was with Chuchi. He went on and on about professional ethics.

I was getting angrier by the moment and interrupted to ask whether his contract wasn’t with the people of La Yacata, but he was insistent that it was not. But I disagreed. It would be another matter if he had done work in Chuchi’s house, for example, then the deal would be strictly between him and Chuchi. However the work was done in La Yacata, a development jointly-owned by the property owners.

Then el contratista started to get more defensive. He made the statement that no one could obligate him to show his papers. I interrupted again. I said that we could obligate him. We could go to the Public Ministry, put in a demanda (lawsuit) against him, and he would be forced to show us the contract.

This shocked not only el contratista, but the other members of the committee. Seems that it was a social no-no, and el contratista went back to his professional ethics speech. R pointed out that Chuchi was not likely to pay him any money owed and asked why he would continue to believe that when it had been quite a few years that the work had been done, without full payment.

Apparently, el contratista was wealthy enough to not worry about getting paid or what he did was illegal and didn’t really expect to be paid fully. He made the statement that he didn’t want to start trouble and that if Chuchi didn’t pay, that’s ok. And that those that would be affected by a lien that he would level would be the people of La Yacata. Again I interrupted and said that we were people that lived in La Yacata, and we needed to know how much was owed so that we would know how much each of us had to pay. But he still didn’t want to name a figure. So I suggested since he didn’t want to give us any information, perhaps he would be willing to come to a community meeting and there present his bill to be approved for payment from the community members. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no.

He seemed particularly put out by R’s presence. He told R that what he was doing was wrong, but wasn’t specific. R took it to mean that having a new community council and stated that by law we were constituted. Then el contratista changed the subject. It made me wonder if R knew more about these dealings than he wanted to admit.

I was very angry about it as it was obvious there was no legality to the work done. El contratista as much as admitted it was a private deal between himself and Chuchi, and had nothing to do with the electric company. We were stuck in a position that really it would be better if he came and took away all the things he had done and leave it a clean slate to begin again. It’s probably better that I didn’t go along to any more of these sorts of meetings since I am not one to pussyfoot around the issue. I told as much to the owner’s son after we left. I’m definitely lacking in the fine art of diplomacy.

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2 Comments

Filed under La Yacata Revolution

Tagged as community associations in Mexico, La Yacata, Moroleón, rural communities in Mexico

January 26, 2013 · 8:42 pm

On life and liberty

My mother-in-law and father-in-law and 7 of their 11 children. From left to right, B, P, C, father-in-law, mother-in-law, L, Mr, Ma and my husband

This weekend marks the 8th month anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law. Her death has been a devastating blow to this family and there is no closure yet, no peace. She died as a result of injuries suffered when a police vehicle plowed into the moto that she and my father-in-law were driving through an intersection. Her body was caught in the front grill of the truck and carried another 200 meters, then it fell to the ground and was run over. The police vehicle has been estimated as traveling more than 200 mps. As the police hit the back of the moto, it spun around and hit the side of the truck. My father-in-law flew into the air and landed on his back, fortunately out of the path of the truck.

Both were taken to the hospital. My father-in-law was released the next day and arrested by police waiting at the hospital door. The law here is that all parties involved in an accident are detained and the vehicles impounded while an official investigation takes place. The officer had already posted bail and was out on the streets on active duty by this time. It took us 24 hours to come up with the 8000 pesos for my father-in-law’s bail. During his incarceration, he was not even given a glass a water, nor his pain medications.

Immediately upon his release, he returned to the hospital. My mother-in-law meanwhile had been transferred to the regional hospital. The small hospital she had first been admitted to said she would be fine in a few days, however, they didn’t have the staff to operate on her shattered leg. Thus, the transfer. She was conscious and in extreme pain, however, the small hospital did not take x-rays of her bruised sides and therefore missed the fact that her 2 broken ribs had punctured her pancreas and she was bleeding internally.

When she arrived at the regional hospital, she was rushed into surgery. She had been 24 hours without any sort of treatment besides a seeping bandage on her leg. Her condition was upgraded to grave, life-threatening. She had severe head injuries and her arterial vein of her leg was severed. Not only was her pancreas in pieces but a large section of her liver was damaged. She lapsed into a coma. We contacted her children in the States and told them to come if they could.

We waited three days at the hospital. She was now on artificial respiration. She was authorized to be transferred to Léon, however, her doctors did not think she would survive the trip, so she was not moved.

Her best friend Doña T came to visit and stayed with her for over an hour, talking with her and encouraging her to open her eyes. Her eyes fluttered. Within an hour, she had returned to consciousness.

Meanwhile, unexpectedly, her son J, who she hadn’t seen in 18 years, contacted me through the miracle of Facebook. My husband and I hadn’t heard from J since we left Virginia, in nearly 5 years. J was living in Tamaulipas, near the Texas border and wanted to talk with my husband. We immediately called him and made arrangements that he come to see his mother. He was on the bus that night. He arrived the day my mother-in-law was released from ICU and he was able to visit her.

Now that she was no longer in ICU, but still needed around-the-clock attention, and the family was required to provide someone to care for her. Her daughters, L and P, were the primary caregivers, however, the daughters-in-law, G and myself were also pressed into service. My shift was that Saturday, 8 pm until 8 am.

It was exhausting, both physically and emotionally. When I arrived, she was conscious and alert, however, wasn’t able to speak. I jabbered for several hours about the PAN meeting I had gone to in her stead and various bits of gossip she had missed out on during her hospital stay. However, she became weaker and I noticed she had an extremely high fever. When she drifted off, I went to the nurses’ station and asked that someone please come and look at her. They took her temperature and said she needed a specific medicine immediately.

I texted her son B who was staying in the albergue (beds provided for family members of patients). He had to go to an all-night pharmacy several miles away for this medicine as the pharmacy at the hospital was closed for the night. While we waited for him to return, the nurse gave me a bowl of water and a cloth and told me to try and get her temperature down using wet compresses. The elderly woman in the next bed also had an extremely high temperature and her husband and I took turns at the sink in our battle against the raging infections.

The medicine arrived and was administered, however, the relief was temporary. In the wee hours of the morning, she was again feverish. Meanwhile, our elderly neighbor died and her body removed to make room for a new patient, whose was in agony and extremely vocal about it.

My mother-in-law lingered another day and all her family that was present in town were able to make their last farewells. She was conscious briefly at the end, made her confession and received the last rites. Then she was gone.

We weren’t given any time to grieve. Now that she had died, the charges against my father-in-law were upgraded to homicide and his bail revoked. The police had begun their cover-up while we were still at the hospital. They claimed that my father-in-law was racing the police car across the intersection, that my mother-in-law did not have her helmet on, that there was some urgent police business that necessitated the excessive speed of the police vehicle, that the moto hit the police car first, that my father-in-law was to blame for his wife’s death.

It was a race against time. My mother-in-law’s body was taken to Yuriria for autopsy and would be released that afternoon. All of her children needed to make statements with a lawyer immediately or my father-in-law would be rearrested. We needed to make arrangements with the funeral director and inform the family in Cerano. And to top it all off, Jesus had sent another lawsuit that needed immediate answer, or I too would be in jail.

Now, 8 months later, this court case is still in limbo. The police are still denying fault even though we have submitted a video taken seconds after the accident that refute the officer’s version of events. Witnesses that at first were willing to testify have been ‘convinced’ otherwise. Anonymous threats have been made against the family as well should we continue with the lawsuit. And the thing is, at no time were we asking for monetary damages, even though my mother-in-law was the sole income provider for her household. Nor were hospital or funeral expenses present in the demands. There is not even a demand for a new moto as it was completely destroyed in the accident. All that we are asking for is justice. That my father-in-law does not go to jail on charges of involuntary manslaughter for the death of his wife. That these charges brought against him by the police officer that drove over my mother-in-law are dropped. Seems like we are whistling in the wind for all that we are heard.

The police officer, who is identifiable from the video, has been transferred to another place. In my opinion, for our family, that is for the best. The anger and grief his careless actions have caused have left this family with bitterness and rage. Should this police officer be seen by any of us, there is no telling what might be attempted and with what result.

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15 Comments

Filed under Death and all its trappings, Health, Safety and Security

Tagged as injustice, Mexico, Moroleón, police

January 25, 2013 · 3:22 pm

On being a burro

Nothing having money for a proper saddle, my father-in-law crafted one with blankets and cement bags.

To call someone a burro, is to imply they aren’t intelligent and therefore not much use besides working in the fields. It’s true, they don’t have the panache that horses do, and therefore true caballeros (gentlemen, although literally translates as one who rides a horse) are not donkey owners. But I must admit, burros have their uses.

We had our first introduction to donkeys when we bought my father-in-law a young male burro that he had his eye on for awhile. He was christened Margarito, and my father-in-law was delighted. My mother-in-law was not so delighted. Her father-in-law, the father of my father-in-law, was kicked by a burro and died of internal injuries and she was sure his son would go the same way.

Margarito was a handful to be sure. Burros aren’t like horses. They may be smaller, but they are unpredictable. With a horse, it’s possible to sense when something is up, but not so with a burro. All of sudden, just for the heck of it, it may kick out his back legs or roll on the ground, not caring that it might be still attached to a plow or someone might be on its back.

So I have what I consider a healthy fear of burros.

Margarito had wanderlust. Periodically he would pull himself loose and head out into the great beyond. Then we had to go and find him. Once he went missing for two weeks. We finally found him when a neighbor mentioned that he had seen him tied about 3 miles away. So there we tromped to get him back.

Finally, my father-in-law traded Margarito for an elderly pregnant burra he named Chona. Chona was an experienced work donkey. Even at 10 months along, she could pull the plow with the best of them. She didn’t fuss or buck.

In due time, she presented my father-in-law with Fabian, a wooly little burro. My in-laws also profited by selling cups of burra milk for 40 pesos per cup. Apparently, it has medicinal properties and people from town would drive all the way out to La Yacata in order to have freshly squeezed milk. Donkeys are not like cows. They do not give an overabundant supply, just enough to feed their offspring, so the rarity of it increases its value. This extra profit won over my mother-in-law to the benefits in keeping a donkey around.

Fabian, being young and male, was unruly. When he was big enough to be hitched to the plow, his training began. But he did not take to it at all. Berinche after berinche. (Tantrums) Once, he had managed to uproot the entire tree he had been tied to. Being loose, he started moseying about. However, the fact that the tree was following him, must have spooked him and he reared up and took off running down the road. He wasn’t hard to find, leaving a well-swept trail behind him. Eventually, Fabian was sold.

The one on the left is Donquita, and Chona is on the right.

Then my husband decided he too wanted a burra to plow and we bought Donquita. She was about a year old and so skinny. She had been living in a corral with about 10 other donkeys raised specifically for their milk.

Donkeys, when mild tempered and trained, make excellent plow pullers.

She worked well beside Chona and between the two of them, we plowed and planted about 2 acres in total this past year.

However, Donquita was jumpy. My father-in-law (and myself) had the concern that by accident she might give a back kick and hit my son. When she did eventually kick my husband, we sent her up the lane to live at my in-laws, where now pregnant, we await the birth of her first La Yacata burrito.

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