Zacatecas

A weekend journey to Zacatecas, a beautiful and quirky colonial city north of Guanajuato. Like Guanajuato, the city's wealth was extracted from the earth, dug out of mines by Indigenous slaves under Spanish rule. The mine is still open and functioning today, yielding gold, mercury, copper, iron, zinc, lead, bismuth, anitomy and salt, as well as silver. The mine is also a tourist attraction and, strangely enough, a night club. Very, very bizarre. I wonder if the drunk clubbers need to wear the same yellow hardhats we had to wear on our tour. Not particularly sexy.

Also strange was a bar we visited, which had a theme: Mystico, a famous Mexican wrestler. The bartender and servers wore wigs and wrestling masks, and the decor included bright floral wallpaper, a clothesline with very large undergarments and tacky, flashing, Jesus and Mary lanterns. (What would Jesus say?)

Another small shock in Zacatecas...my friend Katherine and I visited an indoor market, and found ourselves slightly put off by the unidentified meat in jars, so decided to leave. As we came down the steps and back onto the street, we heard a deep voice say, "Permiso" (excuse me), and looked up to see a man carrying a massive skinned hog over his back. Massive, and entirely whole, aside from the skin, slug across his shoulders. Like he was giving it a piggyback ride, come to think of it. I have never seem anything quite like it.

We encountered a lovely street party in the Plaza de Armas Saturday evening. They are quite common here in Mexico; loud music and laughter can often be heard drifting across Guanajuato, as well as the occasional bang of fireworks. In Zacatecas, there was a six piece band playing Mexican music and tons of locals line-dancing and drinking Mezcal (like Tequila) out of little plastic cups. The children were particularly delightful. It was nice and a bit surprising to see little boys age seven or eight dancing together, swiveling their hips and dancing close, mimicking the adults and laughing. Despite the "machismo" so prevalent here, men are quite affectionate with one another. They have no qualms about being squished together on a bench in the bar, and one man might even lean on another, or wrap an arm around him when coming or going, the way a man would only do to a woman in Canada. I don't think I'd realized the extent to which men lack physical contact with one another at home (outside of the hockey rink, of course). Yet, at the same time, I don't think homosexuality is very well accepted here, on the whole. Although I can't really say for sure.

Que mas? A lovely bakery, slightly more aggressive men than those in Guanajuato, loads of sliver jewelery and a very, very long bus ride.

The people, as in Guanajuato, were very lovely, approachable, and eager to chat with the tourists. Although most of them were more interested in my friend Katherine, as I think her British accent is more of a novelty than mine. Although many Mexicans have told me, much to my delight, that I am not in fact a gringa. That term is reserved for the Americans, as it apparently comes from the phrase "green, go!", shouted to the green-coated American soldiers during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848. Some things never change.