Surviving Mexico

One afternoon, not long after our tense encounter with the infamous Chicken Feather Guy, I got a call from a fellow colona, her voice full of excitement. She had just come from the presidencia, and was eager to share what she witnessed there with me.

Apparently, Chicken Feather Guy had stormed into the Urban Development office while she was there asking about escrituras for a different fraccionamiento where she owns lots. There, she had front row seats to quite a public spectacle. Chicken Feather Guy launched into a tirade, his voice rising with fury, accusing Super Prez of refusing to recognize his claim to a lot. You know the one. His allegations spiraled. He insisted la gabacha (which, of course, is me) had also bought her lot from Chuchi, the previous administrator, which was a flat-out lie, and added that Super Prez had 300 lots. Also untrue. And I fail to see the relevance of either of these statements to his particular complaint, but ok, whatever. 

He wasn’t done. He swore up and down that he’d had that lot for over 20 years, another fabrication, while pacing and gesturing wildly, saying he’d just sell the lot and be done with it. When he finally paused for breath, the colona warned him that trying to sell that certificate would be fraud. At that, he switched gears, declaring with exaggerated indignation that he would never do such a thing, right.

The Urban Development guy, clearly weary of the theatrics, finally cut in. “This isn’t our jurisdiction,” he said. “Talk to the asociación civil.” Meaning: talk to us, the mesa directiva. That should’ve ended it. But Chicken Feather Guy, undeterred, puffed up and stormed out, muttering that he’d take his complaints straight to the presidenta.

The circus didn’t stop there.

The following week, Huesos, the very man who had sold Chicken Feather Guy that dubious lot, booked an appointment during our Thursday office hours. He arrived fired up, brandishing a rolled-up plan like a sword. He was furious, he said, because we had claimed the lot didn’t exist, and he had the documents to prove otherwise.

Unfazed, Super Prez calmly laid down a legal document of his own, showing that the very lot in question had been transferred years ago to his father, with Chuchi’s signature sealing the deal.

As we examined the paperwork Huesos brought, a tangled web began to unravel. The chain of custody traced back to an architect who had once done work for Chuchi and had allegedly been paid with that lot, a lot Chuchi never had the right to give. That architect had then sold the land to none other than Fidel El Pancho Villa, the eccentric old man with the tricycle who famously built La Chuecha.

Huesos confessed that he had bought the lot from Pancho Villa’s son, also named Fidel, who assured him everything was in order, except, he warned, he might have to pay off some outstanding aportaciones. Ironically, Pancho Villa owed nothing, and that reason was a complete lie made to justify the low selling price.

I reminded Huesos, again, that both my husband and I had warned him about the questionable status of that lot before he sold it to Chicken Feather Guy. And then, I looked him straight in the eye and asked: Did Chicken Feather Guy send you here?

He hesitated, then nodded. Yes.

I didn’t hold back. “The issue was never whether the lot exists,” I said. “It’s that Chuchi never had legal authority to sell it. You saw the document.”

He mumbled that he’d confront Fidel Jr. the next time he saw him. I invited him to bring Fidel to speak with us directly. But instead, Huesos lowered his eyes and quietly slunk away.

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So you have big dreams of buying a few acres in Mexico and living the good life? There’s more to living in Mexico than you might imagine. In a land where everybody’s finger is in the pie, it’s hard to find the proper channels to get basic services like water, sewage, and electricity installed. When one community has had enough, they staged a coup and launched La Yacata Revolution. Follow along with their attempts to restructure the Mexican political system in microcosm. Viva!