Adventures In Mexico
©Copyright 1998, Carroll Williams
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        Over the course of five years it was my privilege to make six trips deep into the heartland of the Republic of Mexico. From 1971 through 1975 I conducted a program of study, combined with travel, for students at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado. Our tours varied in size and duration. The smallest group consisted of myself and five students traveling in my pop-top Volkswagen camper. The largest group was made up of twenty-six students, myself and one other professor, using three vans including my VW. I can remember the number on that trip because twenty-eight people spent twenty-eight days camping under the stars. All of the journeys were memorable.

        The program began as the result of a conversation with five students in my office. We were discussing plans for spring break. Someone suggested a trip to Mazatlan to enjoy the beaches. I asked if anyone would be interested in a more serious look at Mexico, its historical sites and museums. I had never been to Mexico, but I had always wanted to go. I spread out a map of the country on my desk and we all talked about what we could see in the span of one week. We narrowed it down to the pyramids at Teotihuacan, Chapultepec Castle, the National Museum of History, the Palace of Fine Arts, and a few other sites around Mexico City.

        We organized ourselves into three driving teams. Each person drove four hours and rode shotgun for four hours helping their partner stay alert. This method insured that one person only drove four hours out of every twenty-four. Teams not driving took turns sleeping in the rear of the van.

        We left the college after classes on Friday afternoon and drove to El Paso, Texas. We selected a route that would minimize mileage and avoid two mountain passes. Our route took us south through the central desert of New Mexico past the Trinity Site where America ushered in the atomic age in 1945. Carrizozo, Tularosa, Alamogordo, became check points on our map in the middle of the night. We arrived in El Paso before daylight the next morning. After a breakfast we set out to cross the border.

        We followed Mexican federal highway 45 across the desert south to the city of Chihuahua, the home town of Francisco "Pancho" Villa.  Our guide book was correct about one thing. Pancho's widow still lived in a fifty-two room mansion in Chihuahua and for a small fee visitors could tour her home. We spent several hours with Mrs. Villa who was the only legitimate wife of Pancho Villa. 

        She laughed and told us about Pancho's many other "wives" around the northern part of the nation. When Pancho led the Army of the North in the long rebellion known as the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917, he "married" a young woman in almost every town his army passed through. One of Pancho's soldiers dressed in a priest's cassock conducted these ceremonies. The marriage was consummated and the army moved on. These deluded ladies sincerely believed themselves to be "Mrs. Pancho Villa." Pancho has dozens of children and hundreds of grand children across northern Mexico.

        A bullet-riddled 1923 Dodge touring car sits in a patio near the front of the house. Mrs. Villa told us about the night Pancho was assassinated in Parral south of Chihuahua. He was leaving a night club when several men with sub-machine guns stepped off the curb into the street and began shooting. His driver executed a quick u-turn but to no avail. Pancho and his chauffeur perished in a hail of gun fire. The bullet holes in the car left no doubt about their predicament. On a later visit to this place one of my female students asked me how Mrs. Villa could talk about the violent death of her husband and smile at the same time. I suggested that a half century was probably enough to get over the shock of it.

        I was delighted to get to talk with several old men who had fought alongside Pancho in the Mexican Revolution. The old soldiers lived in the large mansion, some with their wives. Mrs. Villa provided them with a free room in her home for as long as they lived. One old vet explained the reasoning behind Pancho's famous raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Our history books only record that Pancho burned the town in 1916. No reasons are given for the event. Pancho was buying guns and ammunition from American gun runners operating out of Columbus. Much of the ammunition was U. S. Army surplus and was badly out of date. In battles with Mexican government troops Pancho's rebel soldiers would fire a live round and then have to shuck out two or three bad rounds before another live round would chamber in their weapons. This was getting a lot of his lads killed. Pancho decided to settle the score with the ammo merchants in Columbus. He was spending good money for bad ammunition.

        The U. S. responded to the Columbus raid by sending General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to Mexico to capture Pancho Villa. The U. S. Army spent the better part of 1916 chasing Pancho all over the State of Chihuahua with little to show for the effort. On one occasion, General Pershing called for a conference with Pancho under a flag of truce. Mrs. Villa had a large black and white photograph in her parlor showing General Pershing standing beside a smiling Pancho Villa. Each man is accompanied by his staff officers. Standing next to General Pershing is a young short-haired U. S. Army captain named George S. Patton. Patton would later gain fame as a tank commander with the nickname "Old Blood and Guts" in North Africa, Sicily, and France during World War II.

        We enjoyed our visit with Mrs. Villa so much that we got away from Chihuahua later in the day than we had planned. When my turn came to drive it was the midnight to four a.m. shift. I was sleepy and needed a cup of coffee. We left route 45 at Jimenez and took route 49 southeast through Gomez-Palacio and Torreon toward the beautiful Spanish colonial city of Zacatecas.

        Somewhere in the rugged mountains in the State of Durango I spotted a small cafe beside the highway. Several trucks were parked there and the place was obviously open. I pulled in and parked. My traveling companions were all fast asleep. I locked up the van and went inside. The place was small with just a few tables. Several truck drivers were having a meal at this unbelievably early hour. The proprietor was a lady of about sixty. She was dressed nicely and had on a spotless white apron. I explained in my best Spanish "Quiero una taza de café con leche, por favor." She ushered me into the kitchen; removed a cup and saucer from a dish pan filled with soapy water, rinsed them thoroughly and then poured scalding hot water from a kettle over both pieces. She placed these on the edge of the large wood-fired cook stove. She opened a new jar of Nescafe instant coffee and handed me the jar and a spoon. I measured out enough to keep me awake for a few hours, and poured steaming hot water from the kettle on the stove into my cup.

        The proprietor went to the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk marked "leche pasturizada." I added the white liquid to my black coffee and savored this precious brew. Yes, there are angels! One operates a diner on the side of a desolate mountain in Durango, Mexico. I looked around this humble establishment. I have never seen a cleaner restaurant in more than twenty countries I have visited. This little place was truly spotless and well run. I had a second cup, paid my bill, tipped generously, and returned to my duty driving five sleepy college kids down the road to adventure.

        I have many fond memories of Zacatecas, the next city on our route. It was built by the Spanish in the late 1500's and was a center for silver mining for over two hundred years. Tons of the bright metal made their way to the coffers of Spain. Many Spanish silver coins minted here fueled the commerce of colonial America. The architecture of this city would make Disney envious. Some of the cobble stone streets pass through tunnels carved from solid rock. You almost expect to see Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in your rear-view mirror.

        On my second trip to Zacatecas our group learned that you cannot always believe camping guide books. A campground tent site turned out to be a solid stone mountain top with no facilities. There was no way in our wildest dreams that we could drive a tent stake into this rock dome. We found a motel and rented two adjacent rooms to try and accommodate twenty-eight people. Fortunately they were large rooms with two double beds each. Four people slept on beds and ten slept on the floor in each room.

        As we unpacked the vans at the motel, I said "O.K. ladies take this room, and the gentlemen will take that room." My college students looked at me with a puzzled expression. One of them said, "Some of us want to party." By this time I was too tired to argue. I modified the arrangement, and said "O.K. crashers take the first room, and party people take the second room." It worked out well. Half wanted to sleep right away, and the other half wanted to party.

        I joined the party bunch, and periodically looked in on the sleepers just to make sure all was well. I always tried to make sure no drugs were used on my tours. I was not successful at preventing alcohol consumption. These kids were all over eighteen and many of them drank back home in Colorado. The usual stuff kept appearing; Cerveza (beer), Tequila, and Mezcal. The latter is a hard liquor made from the maguey plant. For some reason distillers traditionally place a large worm in each bottle. Whoever empties the bottle gets to eat the worm. They say the worm has quite a kick to it. Personally I wouldn't know.

        My diplomacy and my Spanish skills were severely tested on this occasion. Three of my lads went out for a late night walk and met some strolling ladies of the evening. The boys wanted access to one of the vans for a liaison with these ladies, but I wouldn't hear of it. Not only did I have to talk through the Mezcal the boys had imbibed, I also had to convince their raging hormones to cool it, and I had to carry on a simultaneous Spanish language negotiation with the ladies to make sure they didn't get their feelings hurt. Good sense finally prevailed. My lads retired to the motel, and I paid the ladies a few pesos for their promise to leave the area and look for action elsewhere. They kept their word. We saw no more of them.

        On my third trip to this beautiful city our bunch stayed just outside town at a motel that was not yet ready for business. We arrived in town late and found no available rooms. A local lad led us to a family who had just acquired a motel and were hoping to furnish it and open soon. We drove to a rural setting and found a lovely collection of buildings. The proprietor was a lady in her thirties with four children. Her husband was somewhere up in the hills working a mining claim in order to raise money for linens and other items. We didn't get to meet him.

        There were no sheets or pillow cases, towels, soap, or other necessities. We showered using our own soap and towels, spread our sleeping bags on bare mattresses and rested well. We unloaded our groceries into our hostesses' kitchen and joined her and her children to prepare our meals. We ate together in the open courtyard becoming one big family. The owner's children acted as if my students were their long lost cousins. Language and cultural differences disappeared quickly in the camaraderie of the occasion.

        From Zacatecas we drove southward on route 49 to Queretaro.  A Roman-style aqueduct brings water to the city from the hills above. The Spanish colonials built the aqueduct following the example set by the Romans centuries earlier in Segovia, Spain. Both are still functioning and carry water to their respective cities. Queretaro is the place where a Mexican firing squad executed General Mora, General Mejia, and the Emperor Maximillian von Hapsburg at the end of the War of Liberation around 1867.

        On a subsequent journey I took my group to see the church at Dolores Hidalgo. I stood in the pulpit where Father Hidalgo stood when he issued "el grito de Dolores" the call for independence from Spain that set off years of blood letting from 1810-1821, known as the Mexican War for Independence. This war not only severed political ties with Spain, but became a struggle of class and caste which marks Mexican society to the present day. In Guanajauto, a few miles away, we viewed the small iron cages hanging on the four corners of the granaditas in the plaza. These cages were used for several years to display the severed heads of Father Hidalgo and his three co-conspirators. Independence can be costly.

        On one of my tours I took my students to see the massive stone figures at the Tula pyramids in the State of Hidalgo. These figures were featured in Eric von Daniken's book Chariots of the Gods. He presented them as ancient astronauts. I failed to see any similarity between the objects they hold in their hands and some high-tech weapon as he claims. However, I was very impressed by the statue of Chacmool reclining on feet and hands, holding a bowl on his stomach waiting to receive the still-beating human heart ripped from the chest of a sacrificial victim.

        The Toltec tribe that lived here became the teachers and mentors of the Aztec peoples for a couple of centuries. The Aztecs sojourned among the Toltec on their migration from Aztlan far to the north (possibly in Arizona) to the Valley of Mexico where they arrived barely three centuries ahead of the Spanish. The Toltec taught them everything they knew about agriculture, astronomy, architecture, mathematics, and human sacrifice. The Aztecs learned well. They became the Nazis of Meso America. They conquered and dominated the whole region and were hated and feared by all the surrounding tribes. Oppressed subject peoples eagerly became the allies of the Spanish conquistadors. Cortes defeated the Aztecs with the help of thousands of Indian allies.

        From Queretaro to Mexico City we traveled route 57. Traffic on this modern freeway flows well until you get to Mexico City. There it becomes a traffic nightmare. Long delays in smoky lines of busses, noisy trucks, and cars make you wonder if you will ever breathe clean air again. Mexico City is seven thousand feet above sea level and is surrounded by mountains forming one of the world's most polluted air basins.

        The city is laid out European style with wide boulevards and roundabouts at major intersections. Many of these roundabouts feature a statue commemorating a leader from the nation's colorful past. Cuitlahuac, and Cuauhtemoc are honored along the Paseo de la Refoma. These were two brave Aztecs who opposed the Spanish conquest. It is noteworthy that neither Cortes nor Moctezuma are to be found in statues anywhere in the capital city. Cortes because he represents the European conquest, and Moctezuma because he is viewed as having betrayed his people by welcoming the conquistadors to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and now the site of downtown Mexico City. Knowing how other Indian tribes hated the Aztecs, and how the Mestizos view Cortes, I wondered if Mexico suffers from a form of cultural schizophrenia.

        I found the tomb of Hernan Cortes in the sacristy of a small church in downtown Mexico City. His bones disappeared at the time of the Mexican War for Independence. They were found again years later hidden away from the mobs who hated all things Spanish and are now sealed in the wall of the church. Mexicans ignore his presence in their capital. To my knowledge, no one honors his memory. A bronze wall plaque says simply 'Hernan Cortes.'

        Cortes made good use of a young Aztec woman as a translator. Malintzin, whom he called Dona Marina, was sold by her parents into slavery to the Maya of Yucatan. She spoke Nahuatl the language of the Aztecs, Mayan the language of her masters, and she learned Spanish from two ship-wrecked sailors living in Yucatan. Dona Marina became the concubine, first of one of Cortes' lieutenants and later of Cortes himself. She bore several children to the Spaniards. These offspring of the native race and the conquering race were more Indian than Spanish in appearance. The new race called themselves Mestizo. Most Mexicans are Mestizos and jokingly call themselves Dona Marina's revenge. Mexican culture identifies with its Indian past rather than the thin veneer of European civilization imposed upon it through the conquest.

        On two occasions I have been in Mexico City on "La semana santa," or holy week. At the Basilica of Guadeloupe we watched Indian dancers slowly circling to the steady beat of drums to honor "Our Lady of Guadeloupe." The Virgin appeared to an Indian shepherd, Juan Diego, at this place, and to prove it she left her image on the inside of his cloak. It is this image on Juan Diego's cloak that is enshrined here.

        What is more revealing about the way Christendom overlaid Indian religious beliefs is the fact that this very place is the revered sanctuary of Tonantzin, the mother of the Indian gods. What an easy transition from Tonantzin, "the mother of the gods" to Holy Mary Mother of God. That an Indian shepherd had been so honored by the apparition made the conversion of the Mestizo peoples to Catholicism much easier than it might have been otherwise.

        In Cholula, east of Mexico City, Cortes destroyed over 400 Indian shrines and replaced each with a church. Over 300 survive and are in regular use. The Indians and Mestizos found it easy to identify with the old Indian deity overlaid by the new Christian saint at each of these places. Often the differences between the two became lost in a haze of cultural antiquity.

        In Mexico City we visited the National Museum of History where we saw the bronze bust of a young congressman from Illinois. Abraham Lincoln served a single term in Congress and lost his bid for a second term. The people of his district did not like the way he opposed the declaration of war against Mexico in 1845. Mr. Lincoln demanded to know which side started the war and upon what spot of ground the first blood was spilled. His Illinois constituents nicknamed him "Spotty Lincoln" and voted him out of Congress. The Mexicans believe he was a man of conscience and they honor his ill-fated effort to get at the truth.

        When I was a sixteen-year old Marine recruit at San Diego I sat cross-legged in the sand and listened as my Drill Instructor lectured on the history of the Corps. We learned among other things that the red stripe worn on the dress blue uniform of NCO's, the ranks between corporal and master sergeant, represents the blood those ranks shed in the famous battle of Chapultepec "Fortress" in the War with Mexico.

        When I surveyed the site, I was astonished to learn that Chapultepec was actually a very vulnerable mansion on a hill which in those days housed a military school for the sons of upper class Mexican families. The military cadets at Chapultepec ranged in age from about 8 to 15. On the day before our forces attacked the castle, U.S. Army troops suffered a set back a few hundred yards to the west. Mexican cavalry temporarily drove American forces back and then, using machetes, slaughtered our helpless wounded on the ground. Our men were incensed by this act of barbarism and were primed for revenge.

        Our Marines took out their anger on a bunch of kids who had nothing to do with the atrocities of the previous day. My D.I. didn't know the whole story. Chapultepec's boy defenders gave a good account of themselves and fought to the death. The last three cadets wrapped themselves in their nation's flag and leaped to their death onto rocks below the mansion's walls rather than surrender to the ferocious gringos. A ceiling fresco in the mansion commemorates that act. In 1947, one hundred years after the capture of Chapultepec Castle, President Harry S. Truman traveled to Mexico City where he laid a wreath at the monument to its boy defenders and spoke the truth about our actions there.

        We visited the world-famous Museum of Anthropology at Chapultepec Park.  There we saw artifacts that strongly suggest pre-Columbian cultural contacts between Meso-America, Asia, and Africa. There is no absolute proof of such contact, but some characterizations in stone are so striking that one cannot escape the implication.  (See photos: 15, 16, 17)  We saw carved figures on stone walls at Monte Alban outside Oaxaca that gave us the same impression.

        On the road from Cuernavaca to Oaxaca one summer evening, we decided to spend the night parked in the plaza, or town square, in Izucar de Matamoros. We joined about a dozen other car and truck campers around the plaza. During the night we heard angry male voices shouting obscenities. We thought at first that this was coming from some really rough cantina down a nearby alley. Morning light revealed a regional prison with high stone walls directly across the street from where we were parked. A mustachioed sentry walked the top of the prison wall wearing two bandeliers of ammunition in an X across his chest, an ancient bolt action rifle slung over his shoulder, and a large sombrero on his head. This scene could have come straight out of a Clint Eastwood film. The voices we heard were prisoners taunting their guards.

        Our greatest surprise in Izucar de Matamoros came from a conversation we had with an elderly Zapotec Indian who joined us for coffee. It was the summer of 1972. Richard Nixon was up for re-election in the fall. This man had read everything he could lay his hands on about U. S. politics and the character of Richard Nixon, and his advisers. He assured us that if U. S. voters re-elected Mr. Nixon there would be a scandal which would rock the presidency. He predicted that Mr. Nixon would not serve out a second term. I suddenly felt very inadequate. I barely knew the name of the Mexican President, and little or nothing about their political institutions. The news of the Watergate break in had not yet surfaced. I thought back to this gentleman's insights as I watched the Nixon presidency come unraveled. I began to read up on Mexico's political institutions.

        Nothing in the Valley of Mexico compares with the pyramids at Teotihuacan. We climbed to the top of the pyramid of the sun, the pyramid of the moon, and just about every other structure open to the public. Teotihuacan was a ghost city hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived in Mexico. No one is sure why it became depopulated. At the height of its glory it boasted a population of nearly six hundred thousand. This is phenomenal when one considers that there were barely that many Indians estimated living in the 48 contiguous states in our country at the time of the discovery in 1492. I took every one of my tour groups to Teotihuacan without fail.  

        On one of my safaris, I took my group to Veracruz. On the way we stopped in Orizaba, a town high in the mountains of eastern Mexico. We arrived about midnight. We knew there had been a devastating earthquake several months earlier. Damage was everywhere evident along the main streets of the city. Whole buildings lay collapsed in their former basements. We found a hotel and checked in.

        The next morning we were appalled to find that the interior of the first floor was propped up with large timbers such as you would find in a mine shaft. At breakfast we conversed in low tones about the possibility that an aftershock could bring all this down on us. Most of us had slept on the second and third floors. Here was a disaster just waiting to happen.

        We checked out and drove to Veracruz where we slept in tents in a beach-front trailer park. There is great comfort to be found in a nylon tent in earthquake-prone country.

        On several of my Mexican journeys I became well acquainted with the medical services available there. I took students to the emergency room three times and I became the patient on two other occasions. The first time I was a patient was in the INSS hospital in Oaxaca. Instituto Nacional Seguro Social hospitals are Mexico's socialized medical system. Medical practice when I was visiting the country was similar to that in the U. S. forty years earlier. Even so, it was good medicine.

        I had been visited for several hours by the ghost of Moctezuma and around 2 a.m. he came back with a vengeance. I crawled out of my camper van, found a pay phone, and called a taxi. At the hospital there were three or four people waiting for admission. A Zapotec Indian lady on the verge of giving birth walked over twenty miles to be there. She lived in the mountains to the north of Oaxaca and had come alone the entire distance without food or water.

        I sat for about an hour next to a nurses station. Something was definitely coming up. I dove headlong into a waste basket beside the nurses desk and made a sizable contribution. Without hesitation, the nurse arose from her chair, reached around me and released my belt, dropped my pants and stuck a hypodermic needle into my hip. It was a shot of Phenegren. Within minutes, Moctezuma began to fade away.

        I was admitted overnight and placed in a room with four dark-skinned Zapotec Indian men. An orderly squeezed a fifth bed into the room that already held four beds. I undressed and put on a hospital gown. One of my room mates rolled over and stared at me. He had never seen that much white skin in his entire life. I was the odd-looking stranger here.

        I checked out around noon the next day and returned to our campground. I was amazed when I learned that an INSS hospital has no business office or cashier. There was no charge for anyone using the facility whether Mexican or foreigner. I expressed my deep appreciation to the staff for the good care I had received. Moctezuma had disappeared for now. I would meet his ghost again in the capital.

        In both of my hospital stays I did not hear nor speak a word of English. My Spanish skills were severely tested. When people tell you that "All those people down there speak English." Don't believe them. The taxi driver and the hotel clerk in the capital or the resort town probably do speak English.  But when you check into the hospital, or have your car repaired, you may need to speak Spanish.

        My second experience found me checking into El Centro Medico Satellite, a private hospital in the northern suburbs of Mexico City where I was admitted with typhoid. I was running a high fever, had unbelievable stomach cramps, and could not walk erect. My Mexican doctors and nurses treated the disease aggressively. In 30 minutes they broke my fever from 104 down to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I remained on an antibiotic IV drip overnight. My total bill for doctors, lab, and a one night hospital stay came to $140. In Denver those services would have cost at least $800 at that time.

        The following afternoon I took my tour group to the Plaza de Toros to watch the best matadors in all of Mexico prove their manhood. I followed the doctor's advice. I sat on the shady side of the arena and drank lots of seven up and coca cola.

        My doctor back home assured me that typhoid takes five to seven days from exposure to illness. I looked back over our itinerary and concluded that I was exposed either in Roswell, New Mexico or El Paso, Texas. I felt badly that I had taken the disease from the USA into Mexico. I was thankful that the Mexican medical community was familiar enough with the disease to know how to knock it out quickly. It is seen there frequently.

        Ballet Foklorico de Mexico is certainly one of my fondest memories of Mexico. The best young folk musicians and dancers from all parts of the nation are employed in two troupes. One troupe tours the world while the other performs on stage at El Palacio de Belles Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts in downtown Mexico City. The troupes then switch with the home stage performers hitting the road, and the touring group settling down for half a year. We sat in the high balcony. You get a great view from up there, but I thought they should have issued parachutes. I had the distinct impression that if I stood up too quickly I would fall right out onto the stage. If you are acrophobic, insist on a ground floor seat.

        Downtown Mexico City is slowly sinking into the earth. The whole place, including the Palace of Fine Arts, was built on the dried up bed of Lake Texcoco. The main square, or El Zocolo, is located in the middle of Tenochtitlan which originally was a man-made island and the Aztec capital. When Cortes sacked Tenochtitlan he also pulled the plug and let the water out of the lake. Many buildings such as the Palace of Fine Arts sits on a relatively soft foundation and not on bedrock. While they are subsiding over time into the earth, this soft layer has spared these buildings the ravages of many earthquakes. The Palace of Fine Arts has sunk over twelve feet since it was built around 1934 but has not been severely damaged by any earthquake. The U.S. Embassy on the Reforma was deliberately designed to float on the soft earth beneath to prevent earthquake damage. The famous floating gardens of Xochimilco in the southwest suburbs are the last remnants of Lake Texcoco.

        On one of my tours we had a peculiar situation arise. I had a group of around 18 students and three professors counting myself. One student became very ill. I called the student's parents and arranged for her to fly home to Denver as soon as she left the hospital. I asked Jenny, one of my colleagues, if she would accompany this young lady on the airplane. It seemed pretty cut and dried. I had forgotten one little detail. My colleague had one of our two vans stamped on her tourist visa. When you enter the country with an automobile the Aduana stamps "con automovil" on the back of your visa. They issue a federal permit for the car while it is in the country. Jenny had both a stamped visa and the federal vehicle document in her purse. She and our student spent the night at a hotel on Alameda Park in Mexico City before their intended flight home. The rest of us returned to our camp ground north of the city.

        We broke camp and headed north up route 57. I was sure that all would go well with our two air travelers. Not so! The student was allowed to board the plane and made it home without incident and without the intended escort. Jenny was refused the right to board an international flight as long as it appeared she had a car in Mexico. Luckily, she was an experienced world traveler. She had studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where she had been gassed along with other students in the anti-De Gaul riots of the 60's. Jenny had traveled all over Europe and North Africa. Nothing daunted her. She cashed in her airline ticket to Denver and bought a ticket for a domestic flight to Monterry, Mexico. She could go anywhere within the country but could not cross the border without the car indicated on her visa. Jenny took a bus from Monterry to Saltillo and north to Piedras Negras opposite Eagle Pass, Texas, in an effort to rendezvous with the caravan. We were scheduled to cross the border there around four in the afternoon. Unfortunately for Jenny we arrived at the border around 1 p.m. and crossed into the USA.

        When her taxi driver learned that she had to find the car that was indicated on her visa, he just grinned and said, "Get back in lady and I will take you to find the people who have your car." He drove away from the Mexican customs post in Piedras Negras and straight across the bridge to Eagle Pass, Texas. At the U.S. Customs post he said, "I think you will have better luck finding the people who have your car on this side of the border." Jenny paid him and tipped him generously.

        As we started our trip north I remembered that Jenny had the visa and federal car permit. I tried to call her from a restaurant. She had left the hotel to go to the airport. I had her paged at the airport but failed to make contact. We were out of touch. I knew she was resourceful and I wasn't too worried about her situation. Then the horrible thought crossed my mind. We were traveling with two vans, but possessed only one federal permit. One of our vans was subject to confiscation, all property in it could be taken, and all the people in it could be jailed. We had to be careful. We also had to turn in the federal permit when we reached the border.

        At Ciudad Allende, a small town about 39 kilometers from the U.S. border, I led our two vehicle caravan through a school zone without doing the mental arithmetic. The sign said 15. I was thinking 15 miles per hour. Not so! It was 15 kilometers per hour, or about 9 miles per hour. A police car was sitting right there. The officer flipped on his blue lights but remained parked. I pulled over followed by Don who was driving the second van. The worst thing that could happen would be for this officer to discover we didn't have one of the federal permits. I immediately offered him my Colorado drivers license. He asked for the federal permits. I pretended I didn't know a word of Spanish. I leaned against his car door while he remained seated inside. I smiled and pointed to my license and repeated, "Yes sir, this is my license and that's my picture right there."

        Racing through my mind was a picture of twelve students and one of my colleagues languishing in a Mexican jail, all of their baggage and a state-owned vehicle confiscated.  I leaned inside the car with my wallet and pulled up a 100 peso note so that the corner could be seen easily. I smiled. He looked puzzled and said, "Por los dos?" "For the two (cars)?" I smiled and pulled up the corner of a fifty peso note. I was offering this man twelve dollars to forget the whole thing. I would never have tried this if I hadn't seen motorists do it several times when stopped by a traffic officer. This officer smiled, accepted the money, we shook hands and he handed me my license. I started walking back to my van. By this time my colleague, Don was coming over to see what was happening. I smiled and said in a low tone, "Just get in and drive. Don't look back."

        We stopped in Morelos, another small town, about five miles up the road to have lunch. I gathered my students around me and explained what I had done, and told them of our predicament about not having both federal vehicle permits. Then I hatched a plan. I told them we might need to pass some money to the Aduana at the border to persuade him to let us leave the country. I would need as much money as we could muster. We took up a collection of around a hundred dollars worth of pesos for a possible bribe. I told the kids to remember how much they put in and I would give it all back if I didn't have to use it.

        I told them to be sure and have their cameras ready at the border. I wanted the group to pretend they wanted their pictures taken with the uniformed Aduana with whom we would be dealing; gang around him, and one person get out front and snap a group picture; then change places, and get in the picture, and someone else get out front and take a photo. Keep moving rapidly in and out of the group. The idea was to keep his attention on the photo op with a bunch of American college kids and off the number of pieces of paper we were handing him. One of my students said in a forlorn voice, "But I don't have any film left." I said, "Fake it. He won't know that."

        It worked like a charm. At the border, the Aduana told me to step inside his office and deposit the federal vehicle documents in a basket on his desk. He remained outside collecting the tourist visas from each person and held those papers in his hand as we jostled to get into the picture with him. His hands were full of forms, I had my back to him when I placed the one vehicle permit in the basket. There were other papers already there, so our single permit wasn't lonely. He loved the attention we were giving him. I told the group, "O.K. let's load up and go stateside." We were out of there like a shot. At a Dairy Queen in Eagle Pass, Texas, I my gave my students all of the pesos I had collected from them an hour earlier. Everybody was happy.

        No matter how many times I go abroad, I always enjoy coming back home. I appreciate other countries and their cultures, and enjoy the sights, sounds, and flavors, but as a good friend recently said to me after a long overseas trip, "I think I'll stay home a while and sleep in my own bed and drink out of my own coffee cup."

End

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