Just Another Manic Monday

February 22, 2022

This village of Amatlan has long had a fraught relationship with the parent town of Tepoztlan. Tepoz represents rules and regulations, while Amatlan is a kind of anarchist collective. Defying authority is almost a civic duty here, and when the community acts together, it can be swift and scary.

Monday, February 21, was a strange day. Our internet was out till the early afternoon, so I was cocooned for a few hours from news about the virus, or the troubles in Ukraine. I found out later during the day that a close friend’s cat died, while another friend’s husband had to be rushed to hospital. And when my cleaning lady came, she was stung by a small scorpion that had found its way into my bedroom. I have an okay relationship with scorps, and while I sometimes see them in the house, none has stung me in almost eight years. But she went into an anaphylactic state, and needed several shots of anti-venin.

After all that, I went for a meal in town to settle my sense of upheaval. I came home at 3.30 in the combi micro-bus, and just outside the village, another combi driver heading out stopped our van and had words with the driver. I heard something about a traffic blockage, but when we came to it, it wasn’t what I expected.

As I found out in the next hour, three town officials had come to close an illegal beer-vending operation. The warning issued, two of them got into their vehicle, and their boss, a woman called Pilar Navarrete Morales, got into hers. What she didn’t see was that a local drunk had passed out on the street just behind her car, and when she backed up, she ran right over his body. He died where he lay.

The community went nuts. Some people blocked the main exit route with their vehicles, while in another part of the village locals piled rocks on a small bridge to make it impassable. The three officials went to the local sub-mayor’s office to avoid the angry mob, and soon a half-dozen police cars arrived to prevent what the Diario de Morelos called a potential ‘lynching.’

The man who died was married to a local woman, though I was told he wasn’t from Amatlan himself. I also have to wonder how much of a provider he was if he could drink himself into a stupor on the street. This became important later in the evening, when the woman official and the widow had a public interchange in front of an angry mob at the sub-mayor’s office. Ms. Navarrete Morales promised publicly to support the woman financially as long as she lived, while a crowd yelled support for the bereaved wife, and the widow asked how long such a promise would last.

But this wasn’t the day’s only death. Around 10.00 pm, a young man reported to be the brother of one of the officials was shot close to his home by an angry relative or friend of the deceased. The village had two violent deaths in one day, and it didn’t settle down for hours. 

Yes, I know – why do I stay where it isn’t safe? As I get tired of saying, it is safe here. Nobody hates me, and I drive like a nervous old lady in and around the village. The community protects its own, even us outsiders, provided we don’t ever forget who we are, and who they are. My lifestyle is based on a series of choices that have not made me part of the community, but they have made me welcome around the community. The key thing is respect for the people themselves, even the drunks. I have a relationship to Amatlan that at times is frustrating, but for which I’m still grateful. That gratitude communicates to the people here, judging by their expressed attitudes.

I’m left wondering what Ms. Navarrete Morales is feeling. What she did was negligent, but hardly criminal. Passing out on the street was never a safe occupation, though three or four men here do it regularly: the deceased was their drinking buddy. The rest of us step around them, or drive carefully past the spot near the cemetery where they hang out. 

But that woman is not as poor as some local people (not all locals are poor, though) and as a Tepozteca, she can never be liked here. Village-versus-town, as noted, is an old rivalry, and these events have only fuelled that.

Still, I’m sure she never thought for a moment that a routine disciplinary visit to our village would end up in something that would end one then two lives, and change her own so drastically.