A smaller place

There is an old saying in Mexico that goes, “Pueblo chico, infierno grande”. Basically alluding to how living in smaller places can oftentimes be hell for so many reasons, that you can probably imagine yourself. And I would agree, except cities just feel like bigger hellholes. I will admit, however, there are more upsides to it. I mean there is not knowing your neighbours and your mother’s friends never finding out your whereabouts before she does. That’s always nice. 

I find people in bigger cities are more often sad and lonely, kind of disconnected. It’s somehow easier to get stuck in your head. People in smaller towns are more often overwhelmed and bitter by things that don’t concern them. 

In my small town, at the southern border of the northern state of Tamaulipas, I lived the ignorant blissful life that only children can live. I stayed there until I was twelve. My memories of living there are very sweet, pristine even. They stayed that way until the very end. Almost.

It was the place where barbecues were segregated; the women would sit inside sipping whatever and the men would be outside smoking their testosterone away. Tampico, the place where 17 year old girls were picked every year by the sporting clubs to be their “Queen”. Don’t ask me how it works, all I know is they have to wear a wedding dress to their coronation. It’s a rather curious experience to the outsider looking in. I certainly was one. 

Small towns have a tendency to make you feel foreign if your family hasn’t been settled there for at least a few generations. In that case, I suppose I’ve never really been from anywhere. My father is from the south and my mother from the north. I was born in central Mexico but grew up in the north-east, and I have bounced around a lot since then. 

My parents raised me in very rudimentary ways and as a result I grew up thinking a lot of the small town concepts ridiculous. The gossip, the sporting club queens, and lest I forget the incredibly judgy super catholics. All of my friends, and I do mean all, attended Sunday school. I believe I have gone into a church about a handful of times, not counting touristic visits. I usually sit on the side of whoever decided it was a good idea to bring the atheist child to mass. People give me dirty looks when I don’t stand up and sit down along with them in the pews. Mexico is one of the countries with most catholics worshippers outside of Vatican City. So my parents bringing me up without the help of the church was, and I quote, “odd”. 

Tampico is surrounded by water, both sweet and salty. Despite feeling it hasn’t seen much of the world, it is an incredibly industrial place. Plenty of factories line the outskirts of town and it’s amongst one of the most important ports along the Gulf of Mexico. The weather is balmy and warm year round, palm trees sit on most sidewalks. There’s a beach about 20 minutes away from the idly buzzing town but my favorite place has to be my house. 

However many years seem to pass it seems impossible for me to detach myself from the water, the nature or the actual physical structure. It’s a warm white house that sits about 6 feet above street level on smartly raised ground. Tampico gets a lot of hurricanes and rain. Seeing as we live across the street from a laguna the added height saves the house from drowning in the rainy months. The sunsets are beautiful and the lake houses plenty of ducks and other funny looking birds and crocodiles. As a kid I loved being outside, rescuing birds and tortoises, observing odd looking bugs. I had a few friends and we were together all the time. Our poor mothers had to drive us all over town because we all lived in different neighborhoods. 

Looking back at myself, particularly at around the age of 10, I feel completely confident in stating that I am not the same human as that girl who lived in front of a lake. As aforementioned I was an outdoor kid, all my friends except for the one who also ran track with me, were not. María was a girly entitled girl, she would turn everyone against you if you didn’t do what she said. We didn’t hang out very often. Miriam was very thin and quiet, she usually stuck to María’s side. And then there was Gaby. She and I were closest, our intense personalities matching perfectly.  We were all walking along my street probably just following my dumb lead to go look for the local croc when a rabid growl rumbled from the neighbor’s house. My friends and I all whipped our heads in that direction only to see a rabid stray dog zooming it’s way down from the garbage cans over to us on the other side of the road. The entire damn street was deserted. No grown up in sight.

“RUN” I’d yelled and started blazing my way back home. I was in the track team but I don’t think another human being had ever run three blocks that fast. I was up front with Gaby on my heels and my two other friends were barely making it by. The dog was barking and frothing at the mouth on our heels. But you want to know what I was thinking about? Beating Gaby home. I wanted to be the fastest. There was a rabid dog about to eat two of my friends and it was probably my fault, but I was concerned about making it first. Ten year old me had a strict list of priorities and I’ve never been particularly luke warm.

It was two years after that things started getting ugly. Our seemingly average palm tree town was run dry by cartels. They installed a curfew on the whole town, ran around shooting each other on the streets, kidnapped and burned down businesses of people who refused to pay their fee. For a while it didn’t seem like it would end. And my parents certainly weren’t the kind of people to wait around.

I moved to Mexico City the summer before 7th grade. When you move to such a big city, you’re in for culture shock no matter what. The capital of Mexico reports a population of around 22 million people as of 2018, according to Forbes. The traffic is terrible, the driving is even worse and the people think they’re above everybody else in the country. Chilangos, which is what people from Mexico City are called by everybody else but them, are the kind of people who will ask you to speak just so they can mock your accent. While being completely sure they have none. 

They’re deaf but only to their own ears, because the accent actually varies by neighborhood. It grates on my ears even now, when I go home.

There’s something different about people there that I can’t quite explain, but I’ll paint the picture with my first day of school. I had to ride the school bus to get there, which I’d never done before. Despite the fact there were another 22 million people in the city, my school was pretty small and the kids knew immediately I was new when I stepped onto the bus. I could feel stares boring into the back of my head the entire 40 minute ride. 

Once in class I don’t think I’d ever heard three things more in my entire life: “Ay wow, tiene acento!”, “Habla como gringa!” and “Puto”. The first two were remarks at me and my accent, both in Spanish and English and the third is an extremely versatile swear word. Apparently 13-year-old Chilangos were obsessed with shouting it in class as a dare at completely random moments of the day. 

Growing up completely bilingual is a big benefit, but also a huge, incredibly gigantic, hindrance on a child. Sure, learning two languages at the same time is great but the way you end up mixing and matching the languages is not. Especially when you’re 12 and kids are just looking for things to pick on. Everyone at that school spoke English, but I spoke it with a funny accent. Most of the English I heard growing up was, of course, from the U.S but all my practice had been with an Australian family. From whom I was told I’d picked up a little accent. Skipping over to Spanish though, I was of course raised by my parents who I mentioned previously come from very different parts of the country and therefore have different accents. My mother’s best friends back in Tampico were three ladies; one from Argentina, another one from Cuba and one from Spain. 

Those women raised me. 

I spent the majority of my childhood with them. So in Spanish my slang and my accent are... varied. If there is one thing Chilango kids like to do is make fun of you and to this day I have friends calling me up to imitate me. 

The town I grew up in no longer exists. After the cartels were done the government rebuilt and I can’t recognize half the buildings anymore. Many people left, moved, like me. I have no idea what happened to a lot of my friends. I know I painted Chilangos like they’re all mean, but bullying is always reciprocal in any close Mexican relationship. I believe I grew up to be better, stronger and closer to a version of myself that I like because of the city. And I made the best friends of my life. 

Small towns are all good and I am still very much attached to mine, but cities stretch you and maim you of impractical habits. They’re rough, but if you go through one and come out feeling like you learned something then I think you’ll be alright.