When I was a little girl, my family and I used to travel around Mexico. One of my earlier reminiscences is sleeping in the back of our van as we headed towards a new destiny. One weekend we were on Veracruz beaches and the other buying crafts at the dainty, wondrous island of Janitzio, in Michoacán. Unfortunately, those days are gone.
Today travelling around Mexico is a perilous choice. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it is impossible, I’m only asserting it is quite risky. Years ago, when the wave of violence was at its initial level, I didn’t hesitate for a second to travel by bus to Chiapas or spending a weekend with my friends in Cuernavaca. The truth is that only in this 2011, we have failed to assist to 2 of our good friends weddings because one was celebrated at Tijuana and the other at Veracruz. Two cities with high index of rampage, kidnapping and riots. Only family assisted to the Tijuana wedding and 2 or 3 friends went to Veracruz (mainly friends that are originally from there).
And this really make me sad; a country full of dazzling places, with a stunning regional gastronomy and a lot of lost corners to be discover, is now kind of a vast ghost town. I have heard stories from close friends that gives me the creeps, I read every day of new waves of violence in Monterrey, Acapulco, Veracruz, Tepic, Sinaloa, Cuernavaca, San Luis Potosi and a big etcétera.
I wish my words were only a product of paranoia, but the truth is that I don’t feel secure travelling around my own country, and this is a real tragedy. Sometimes I feel depressed, frustrated. The sadest part is that I feel, deep in my hearth, that there’s no turning back. No more unexpected, amazing trips in the back of my parent’s van. No more.
—–
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
(Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats)
Si te gustan los deportes…
