los ninos y los gringos malo

"Help me move the picnic table to the patio before the Mexicans get here," one of the lingering snowbirds said to his wife.

What the fuck! "Before the Mexicans get here"!!! Lest you forget, Mr. Gringo Snowbird, you are in Mexico. The country Mexicans live in. You are a visitor. This is their town, their beach, their park.

I guess I looked a little shocked because he quickly added "Last weekend a little boy was cutting into the table with a knife." Okay, so why didn't he say "Let's move the table before the little hooligans get here"? After all, children carving initials or whatever into picnic tables happens all over the world. Even grown-ups have been known to do that very thing.

It distresses me to hear Americans and Canadians talk about "the Mexicans" in such a demeaning way. Last night, just before sunset, two couples parked under the palapas, scrambled out of their clothes, the women revealing lovely swimsuit-clad bodies, the men both a little flabby and pale (signs of wealth, I think). In the surf, each couple became as one, the woman with her arms wrapped around her man's neck. You see that up and down the beach here - two people holding on to each other so very tightly. I think it's lovely.

As I watched these two couples, a gringa full-timer walked up and said "Look at them making babies. As though there aren't enough children running around. Why, some of these women have a dozen kids."

Yep, some women do. Yesterday I met some of their kids.
At the muelle, a fisherman loaded little boys into his panga. Notice the guy on the jet ski. He was a total asshole. I got great joy when later in the day the thing ran out of gas and he had to push it ashore.






The fisherman took the little boys out to a beat-up but still-floating panga where the boys frolicked and screamed and dove over and over again into the water.

These two girls were next to me on the pier. When I asked if I could take their pictures, they scurried down to pose on the beach.







The boys had finished with the panga and returned to swim around the muelle, the panga having washed ashore. But as soon as my fashion models went to play in the boat, the boys ran over and chased them away, interested once again in that wreck.




Children are the same all over the world, aren't they? Boys will push little girls away and then let them cling to them a few years later.