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Sleight of Hand – Getting Robbed in the Mexican Mountains

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“I will now turn $60 US dollars into a small bag of Cheetos and three tacos!“ This is the magic trick I saw performed by a nine-year-old in a middle of nowhere town in the epic Mexican state of Michoacán. Pelón – his nickname meaning ‘bald’ as a result of his lack of hair as an infant.  His fluttering hands filthy with dirt from his pet chicken and his squeaky voice wet with sugary drinks easily able to deceive the gullible nobody – me – sitting in the front row.

When my life-long buddy, Alex, and I decided to quit our jobs and abandon all responsibility in the name of an ill-planned expedition to South America, I knew one person in particular I was going to have to visit – my friend Miguel. He and I had been kitchen warriors together before he moved back to his hometown in Michoacán to get married for the third time. When we said our heartfelt goodbyes, I assumed I would never see him again; but that was before I came to my senses, quit my job and anything resembling responsibility, and realized that other continents and cultures absolutely require visiting. I didn’t know much about Miguel’s hometown other than what I could glean from his favorite joke, “Do you beleeve that I am frome Meecheecan, wey?” And the first time I truly cracked open a map of Mexico it was immediately obvious that Miguel’s town was not going to appear on it.  I opted to just call him and find out where in the hell he was.

This task led me to a blisteringly hot street corner, cursing the monotonous female voice on the other end of the pay phone as she rattled off something unintelligible and redundant. Just as I was beginning to question the veracity of my college education, there was a series of beeps and clicks and suddenly I had Miguel on the line. His voice was thick with elation as he told me how to get on a bus out of Mexico City and head to Zitácuaro, the nearest “city” to his unassuming town. He picked us up at the Zitácuaro bus station, crammed us into his truck, and the three of us sped the 45 minutes towards his town of chickens, stray dogs, children, mechanics, irrigation canals, guava trees, guava trees, and guava trees. The inevitable masked Federal officers stopped us only once to search the car and check Miguel’s identity. Surprisingly, they touched neither Alex nor my bags or seemed to care one way or another who we were.

It was amazing to see Miguel. He is one of those true individuals. Someone for whom I would travel halfway across the world (working on it), empty my savings account (done and done), and risk my life. I love the man in a way that’s different than how I love anyone else. Trekking through his guava trees and seeing his house and his family and his town, there was so much pride in his showing it to me and joy that I would come to such a remote place to see him. In his eyes it seemed as though I was making a sacrifice in order to visit. In my eyes, as I slept in his master bedroom, ate his wife’s cooking, had my every desire and wish mercilessly catered to, it seemed the complete opposite. And with everything about his town being so beautiful, my gratitude was never allowed even the faintest moment of respite.

Nor was there ever a break from Alex and my celebrity status. We were apparently the first gringos to set foot in the town, and only those men who had smuggled themselves into the states for work as Miguel had done had ever seen Americans before. The kids followed us around like baby ducks, chirping Spanish and cackling at our accents. People stared and grinned golden-teeth-glittering smiles in the street. A steady flow of young women would come knocking on Miguel’s house, anxious to meet the gringos. And Miguel was as generous with the neighborhood as he was with his American guests: people coming and going at all times, children hanging out in his living room after school, playing on our computers and trying on our sunglasses, eating the leftovers from his refrigerator and helping to take care of his newborn. After our novelty wore off, we were more or less accepted into the community: visiting waterfalls with the children, working in guava farms with the adults, playing dominoes at night over caguamas of beer. It is in places like Miguel’s hometown where simply riding in the bed of a pickup truck through fields of green reminds you that you are alive and that to be alive is a very good thing.

Towards the end of our stay, as a way of saying thank you for the excessive hospitality shown by Miguel and his wife (and we’re from the South; we invented hospitality) we decided to cook them a true southern meal: fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans complete with ham hock. Now being a chef, the one luxury I allowed myself to pack in my bulging suitcase that contains the next year to three years of my life was my knife bag. Naturally, this was removed from my luggage and used to its fullest potential as we butchered the chicken and prepared the side dishes. The plot thickens. Stuffed into a zipped pocket on the knife bag, completely forgotten by me as the children explored it with enraptured fascination, was 360 US dollars. About a third of my money that was expected, along with the odd job here and there, to fund the way down to Buenos Aires. So many places to point out my naivety. I am fully aware.

When we were packing up a day or two later, the money was (drum roll) missing. I hated having to tell Miguel, knowing that because it had happened in his hometown and his home, the news would embarrass him. But my Spanish was not good enough for the necessary interrogations to ensue on my own. Real police tactics. Miguel was a pro. Separate the kids and make them think they’re all ratting on each other. Eventually we got it out of one boy that his brother Pelón had given his grandmother and caretaker a wad of American money the other day, saying it was from his father who had found it in the fields. Bingo. We hopped into Miguel’s truck and headed down to a neighbor’s calabaza field, as Pelón tended to help out there after school.

Miguel asked him if he wanted to go to Zitácuaro and he quickly leapt into the cab of the red Nissan pickup grinning and giddy.  He walked right into our trap and was now sandwiched between his interrogators. We got it out of him slowly, wading through the poorly crafted lies of a nine-year-old and coercing the truth out little by little. He was very afraid and kept tearing up, despite my constant assurances that he and I were still amigos. I honestly wasn’t angry with him. After all, he was just a child doing something he knew to be wrong in order to be rewarded by his caretakers.

So Miguel and I wandered the town together, collecting Andrew Jackson from all of his Mexican hideaways. From the dishonest shopkeepers who had allowed the $60 for three tacos and bag of Cheetos transaction to occur. From Pelón’s sobbing grandmother as she forked over most of the money he had given her, having already changed it into Mexican pesos. An ugly sight, I can’t deny, but I still feel as though if anyone is to blame in this besmirching of a beautiful two weeks (other than yours truly), it was her. She knew exactly where the wad of money had originated. Not in a field. From the gringos. And she wasn’t struggling to eat. She spent a fair amount of it on nice clothes and even tried to give some money to Miguel’s wife.

Is there a moral to this story? A cautionary lesson to be learned? I like to think not. Were I given the exact situation to do again, I feel confident I would behave in exactly the same way. My visit to Miguel’s town was clouded not by this experience (to be completely honest, it is only half of a sentence in my travel journal, it just makes for a better read than gloating about my lazy days eating guava and swimming in January). I wasn’t had by thieves. I was had by a nine-year-old. A nine-year-old who was consequently had by shopkeepers. If it was that easy to steal from me, I guess the money never really belonged to me in the first place. I might as well have bought three tacos and a bag of Cheetos.