Inauguration

To begin, I want to go back. A January day in 2020 on the road between Pátzcuaro and Morelia, the capital of Michoacán. Open stretches of strawberry fields glistened from an unexpected winter rain. My husband and I were en route home from shopping – a trip we’d done innumerable times – when the car hit a rock. Bob said, “Ouch. That’s not good for the Honda.” But we thought nothing of it until the ominous ‘clunk’ of the right tire sent us reeling onto the shoulder.

Trucks zipped by us headed toward the mountains and Pacific coast beyond. Cell phone in hand, I hunted for the three bars needed to call an emergency auto service. No luck. We were in a nether region without service. Michoacán is a rural state, one listed as a no-go zone by the US State Department since the 2006 escalation of cartel violence. But we’ve lived part-time in Pátzcuaro for over twenty years. In 2013, I taught at a university in Morelia through a Fulbright grant. All that time, we’ve never been afraid. Still, I wouldn’t go to the mountainous “tierra caliente” – the “hot land” - where battles between local cartels, auto-defense groups, and state and federal authorities rage. Towns with musical names like Buenavista and Apatzingán are known to be dangerous, especially at night. But tourists flock the stunning colonial cities of Pátzcuaro and Morelia for Día de Muertos and Semana Santa. These areas feel safe, especially for foreigners. “El virus” that we’d read about still felt distant. My only fear on this sunny day was that we’d be stuck on the highway and miss a dinner date with friends.

Bob got down on the ground with the tiny “gato” that came with the car. I’ve never known why a car jack is named “cat” in Spanish, but this poor animal looked skinny and malnourished. Sweating profusely, Bob had barely raised the car after twenty minutes. He’d almost given up when a rusty red pick-up truck pulled over. The man who emerged was about forty, tall and muscular but with the gentleness that big people sometimes have. “¿Necesitan ayuda?” he asked. How could we possibly not need help? “¡Un ángel!” I blurted out, grasping his extended hand. He laughed. A big grin when he explained he had stopped after spotting a woman and a “cadáver con pelo blanco” (referring to my husband, sprawled on the ground) – “a corpse with white hair.” My slim, fit 71-year-old husband, whose hair went grey in his 20s, laughed uproariously.

Our new friend and Bob got the spare on in fifteen minutes. We finally asked his name. “Alejandro,” he offered his hand again. Where was he headed? “Home to Apatzingán.” A shiver of shock ran down my spine. A good Samaritan from this town of “mala fama,” known as one of the hot spots of narco-violence?

Logically, we know that “bad” places house “good” people. But Apatzingán carries symbolic weight beyond its place on the map, standing in for something larger. Logic goes dormant when we react to a symbol.

Symbols stand at the center of our stories about one another. Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argued in a widely viewed TED talk that the danger of a single story is how it crowds out competing versions. In the U.S. press, life in Mexico is one story—violence—and at the center of that story stand towns like Apatzingán. But here was evidence that a powerful symbol could suddenly flip and disrupt that narrative. When that happens, we have to measure what we read and hear against human experience and emotion.

Afternoon light began to fade. Alejandro still had several hours of driving ahead. We thanked him profusely, pressing pesos into his hands, though he insisted that he didn’t want payment. “Ayuda,” he repeated, as though the simple word “help” explained everything. As though it could cancel out the years of false and accusatory statements and beliefs about Mexicans that infuse news north of the border. As though one human being reaching out to another is all we need.

We said goodbye to Alejandro with a big hug. This was the first time in over a year I had touched a stranger, thanks to COVID. I imagined him steering his truck into Apatzingán before dark. I hoped that lingering light would guide his path.

I guard this moment in memory, even as I grieve what we lost during the pandemic. How can we mine that loss for new ways to see “the other”? Pandemics, like violence, recur in human history and experience. To begin again, we need to integrate what we’ve learned, expose our fears of the unknown, and interrogate the symbols we read as menacing. Even in the face of violence and disease, we can enliven human bonds across borders and move beyond mistrust of one another and the places we come from—fears as menacing as any global health crisis.

About the Author

Joanne B. Mulcahy, Ph.D., grew up near Philadelphia, then ventured to the Arctic, Europe, Australia, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America. The author of three non-fiction books, Mulcahy was based at the NW Writing Institute of Lewis and Clark College for nearly 30 years, where she also taught anthropology and gender studies. She has taught at The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and in libraries, prisons, and varied community settings as well.