A little over 10 years ago I had this far flung and not particularly carefully crafted idea that I wanted to start organizing tours to Mexico. Seemed like learning Spanish might be a good first step (:)) so I figured out how to work remotely and was living with a family in the old colonial city of Merida, State of the Yucatan in Mexico and enrolled in a Spanish study course four days a week for a month.
During that trip a friend from Houston flew down for a long weekend. I went to the airport to meet him and, as is the custom in many small airports in Mexico, we found ourselves heading back to the city center in a collective taxi. Typically many airports will have a transportation kiosk that gangs people up according to which part of town they're going and then you ride together. Which is exactly how we found ourselves sharing a cab with a lovely woman from Villahermosa and her teenage daughter.
It was the day Pavarotti had died and someone, I can't remember who, brought up news of his death. The woman shared with us that she had seen Pavarotti at the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza when he performed there in the late 90's!!! Now I'm not an opera fan, but that must have been pretty amazing. My friend, who IS an opera fan, was even more excited. And, as often happens to me in Mexico, I am happily surprised by the sophistication of the discourse. We talked about music a bit and it was the first time I heard the phrase "musica folklorico" as it might be applied to contemporary music. In short we were what the Mexicans call "platicar"ing….a sort of friendly kind of chatting with people you don't know well.
Eventually the subject came around to what's brought you to Merida. "Oh I'm studying Spanish and my friend is down here visiting. We're going out to the Gulf Coast to the beach for the weekend. Maybe do a little birdwatching. What about you?" Well as it turns out she had flown into Merida with her daughter to go to the American consulate to apply for a visa. Seemed like a long way to come for a visa. "Isn't there a consulate in Villahermosa (that big, bad, hot, humid, oil town I had visited in my 20's)?", I wondered aloud. Well yes there is, but the lines and the wait are longer and the outcome is uncertain and she thinks she has a better chance of obtaining one from this consulate than the Villahermosa one. Plus, she tells me, she's in a little bit of a time crunch because her daughter, who is married to an American and lives in Texas, is having a baby and she wants to be there for the birth. Wants her younger daughter to be there too. It was her first grandchild. I wished her good luck.
I'm embarrassed to say that, up until that time, it had never really occurred to me that the only impediment facing a Mexican who wanted to travel to the States were the same ones facing me wanting to travel to Mexico. Essentially I had always thought that, as long as you had enough money, you could get yourself in. It was only the poor campesino/farmworker who didn't have enough money to get a passport and a ticket that had to "sneak" in. My, probably more affluent than I, taximate still had to jump through way way more hoops, face more uncertainties and pay more to visit my country than I do to visit hers. Check my passport dates and make sure there's enough money to pay for the plane ticket and away I go. Here was a woman of considerable means, well at least enough disposable income to wrangle a ticket to see Pavarotti, and still having troubles. Her crime? Wanting to be at the birth of her first grandchild. I guess you could say I got woke to the lopsided rules about visiting between our two countries. I think it's what is known as a double standard. I really consider this encounter one of the first I had that put me on the path to wanting to learn more about our immigration system and how we can right it. And I always wonder how my Pavarotti friend is doing visiting her grandchildren in the states.
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