12/ The High Season
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
-- Yogi Berra
If there is a time of year when it isn’t nice to be in Oaxaca, we have yet to encounter it. By first arriving here in late June we cleverly managed to avoid the hottest months of the year (April and May) until 2019. Last year’s summer was certainly more than warm enough by our standards, but as long as you stayed out of the sun it was bearable, even pleasant. Then came the Rainy Season, during which the daily afternoon rains and occasional torrential downpour served to mitigate the heat of tropical summer. And ever since El Dia de Los Muertos, with its first hints of cooler air and clearing skies—and in spite of the chilly frentes frios that have swept through from time to time—the weather has been, well, perfect.
This fact has not gone unnoticed by the inhabitants of colder climes to the North. The major annual festivals in Oaxaca always bring an influx of visitors, but after Muertos we first began to notice that the visitors weren’t going away. And as the Christmas season ramped up to a fever pitch, the gringos kept coming. And coming. And coming. The locals know the American expression for this phenomenon and use it when prompted: Snowbirds.
No one can be blamed for wanting to escape the cold and gloom of a long winter, whether in the Northwest or elsewhere. (As I write this, a foot of snow has just fallen on Seattle, and I admit to feeling more than a little smug.) But it has been disconcerting, to say the least, to see our newfound home in Oaxaca now teeming with hundreds and hundreds more PLUs: People Like Us.
You are never more aware of how vulnerable you are to caricaturization than when surrounded by your doppelgangers, and such is my present lot. Baggy cargo pants & sun shirts, Keen sandals, stylish backpacks, floppy hats & long-billed caps, craning necks & gaping mouths—that was (and occasionally still is) me, under assault from the color and noise of Oaxaca. Someone has apparently posted an ad back home that reads “WANTED: Tall, thin white men of late-middle-age to walk around picturesque town in southern Mexico. Gray ponytails and white beards a plus.” The response to this ad has been overwhelming, to the point that I am constantly passing people on the sidewalk and asking myself, “Wait—was that ME?”
Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely applaud the notion of expanding one’s horizons through travel and the experience of other cultures, and that’s exactly what these legions of Norteños are doing (aside from escaping the snow). But some deeply immature part of me insists that my experiences here are somehow more valid than theirs because I’ve put in the time—or, simply, because I got here first.
This deplorable estimation of my own moral superiority over the transient visitor goes back to the 80s, when we lived in Hawaii. There, more than anywhere else I have been, the profound differences between the touristic and residential experiences were brought home to me on a daily basis. Tourists come to Hawaii, spend some time on the beach, take a van tour, go to a luau, do some shopping—while I’m fighting gridlock, paying $6 for a carton of milk, and absorbing the occasional racist epithet casually thrown my way. In Hawaii, the sophistication of the modern tourism industry is such that visitors, without even knowing it, can be completely insulated from the realities of daily life.
I worked hard over the course of our decade in Hawaii to reach a deeper understanding of the place where we had chosen to be, to show respect not only for its cultural traditions but also for my role as a newcomer, and to make whatever small contributions I could to the local milieu. I am now trying to do the same in Oaxaca, but I confess that my old feelings about “those clueless tourists” are resurfacing, and this after little more than 7 months here. However misguided and pigheaded these feelings may be, they unfortunately get reinforced by things that I occasionally see and hear.
For example, as I was on my way to the gym a few days ago a tourist couple walked a few steps ahead of me on the street. Together we neared a tiny old woman sitting on the sidewalk, wrapped in a threadbare shawl. Her face was disfigured from (I’m guessing) some kind of extreme burns, and her skinny bones protruded from her arm as she reached out with a cup to beseech the tourist couple for a coin or two. (I happened to have my phone out and snapped the picture below.) I overheard the man say to his companion, “Don’t give her anything—you’ll just encourage her,” and they walked on.
The heartlessness of this comment made me seethe, but I quickly realized that it was partly born of ignorance. What he didn’t know was that I have walked past that woman nearly every day for 6 months now, and that nothing that anyone will say or do will discourage her from begging on the street until the day she dies. From what I know she may a victim of an organized crime racket that preys on the old and helpless by dropping them on the street every day to collect coins, then gathering them up as night falls, feeding them a tortilla or two, and letting them sleep on a mat in a warehouse somewhere outside the city. (I routinely give this woman a few pesos despite not knowing whether it will actually help improve her condition; she knows me now and seems genuinely grateful for my gift.) There is a vast gray area that represents my own lack of knowledge about what life is like for people like her, but overhearing the man’s comment reinforced in me the urgent determination to not be that guy—that is, superimposing my own prejudices and ignorance on a totally foreign locale and letting them dictate my treatment of the people there.
However, and despite the occasional sour apple or two, the short-, mid- and long-term visitors we have encountered and befriended here in Oaxaca are generally lovely people who go out of their way to immerse themselves in Oaxacan culture and to contribute to the community in many positive ways.
And, truth be told, many of the expats we’ve met—whether year-round or seasonal—have long ago forged a permanent attachment to Oaxaca. They’ve worked hard to improve their Spanish at least to the point where they can meet the locals at least half-way in a good conversation. Some even lease apartments here year-round for the boon of having a predictable pied-à-terre that awaits their return.
But thanks to this annual migration, known as The High Season, decent apartment rentals have become much more expensive, and are often devilishly hard to find. Restaurants, shops and tour vans are crowded with foreigners. The Spanish language schools are full to overflowing, with the result that I have given up even trying to schedule classes with teachers who were only too happy to meet with me a few months ago. On the Alcalá, vendors are now laying out their wares flat on the cobbled street, since there’s no longer any room on the sidewalks.
Through it all, our oaxaqueño hosts maintain their friendly demeanor and customary good manners. Tourism has lately been very good to Oaxaca, and with word quickly spreading about her seemingly endless charms the visitor count is likely to grow exponentially in the coming years, straining an infrastructure that seems improvised at best.
Still, people here know that the flocks of snowbirds arriving daily at the airport are a good thing, and they behave accordingly, if not instinctively, in a welcoming way. The first question asked is typically “Where are you from?” To that I still respond “Seattle,” but am quick (and more than a little proud) to add that we are living here for a full year. This usually earns me a reaction of pleasant surprise and approval, to which I respond with a vigorous, but completely internal, fist pump. “How do you like Oaxaca?” is generally the next question, to which I immediately reply, Me encanta. I love it.
