Christmas Eve: Best to plan ahead and where the old meets the new

It is odd that in this shrunken world of technological proximity I feel remote from the world we left a bit over a month ago.  I believe Christmas  has something to do with that, not that I understand why it would. Christmas has not been an important landmark for me for decades. It hasn’t particularly been a time of family and friends. That is what I invited and expected. Today, though as I stand here typing many miles from friends and family a sense of distance I did not expect surrounds me. Not a bad thing, only an unexpected thing.

Today, Christmas eve was a fine and interesting day in spite of my remote sensation.  Now that language class is on Christmas break I have settled into a routine. I get up, wander around the apartment taking things in and then I study Spanish for 1-2 hours. After that I usually have a breakfast of avocado toast made with a dense chewy dark bread from a small neighborhood bakery. That is normally followed by a walk.

Today the walk was quite different. One of the most known and talked about attractions in San Miguel de Allende is the Tianguis de Martes, the Tuesday Market. We had gone once, about 20 months ago, and found it overwhelming.  It seemed proper to try it on for size once more. The market reportedly covers an area the size of three football fields. It is covered, no walls, and is situated on a rocky unpaved parking lot overlooking centro, the old town. Definitely not a developed site. It is inhabited by hundreds, maybe more than a thousand vendors. Lots of food stalls, produce, clothes and many other items. as big as it is, people congest many of the aisles, especially where food is sold.  It is still overwhelming. We soon gave up cruising the aisles and had tacos.

I had heard of gorditas, and seen the discs of varying sizes on griddles. After the tacos we found a gordita vendor who wasn’t busy. I asked her to explain the gordita to me. She informed me that the discs are corn. They are a cross between a tamale and a taco shell. They are somehow breadlike. After they are griddled they are split open and often partially filled with cheese. This gordita stand, as appears to be typical, had about a dozen pots with differing fillings; meats, eggs, potatoes, cactus, mushrooms and some things I could not place. You pick a shell and a filling and they fill your shell. We had a beef with a chili sauce and a chicken potato gordita. I think I have found a street food that can stand up to the taco.

There is a wall along the unpaved road in front of the market. It is painted in colorful murals. At this point I have drifted pretty far off the track from a point I want to make. There is a harsh juxtaposition attached to the market. San Miguel is an old town that grew in large part due to its location in an arid section of Mexico. As the Spaniard gold seekers and missionaries trekked north to present day California, Arizona and New Mexico they needed places along the way to stop, rest and refuel. San Miguel was one of those places. The Tianguis is representative of old San Miguel with its unpaved streets and parking, as well as the battered half wall of stone on its north? side. The wall is covered with murals its entire length.

The market is a substantially big undeveloped area, but it is surrounded by the newest un-Mexican parts of San Miguel. We took an Uber to the market and he came in from the back side which was a combination of cobblestone and dirt roads, but it was within a stones throw of two HUGE gated walled very new modern apartment complexes. Leaving the market to the west you arrive at the 6 lane paved road with stop lights. There are zero stop lights or signs in centro. We crossed the busy street on a walking bridge to a very modern and quite large mall. The road continues east to more box stores, modern homes and strip malls or north to the old part of town.  The road encircles San Miguel but the part that encircles centro goes back to cobblestones and two lanes. The San Antonio neighbohood starting at Calle Sterling Dickinson separates the old Unesco Heritage part of the town from what could be any U.S. southwestern city.

That separation, which I have probably used far too many words to describe, is the juxtaposition I referred.  It is both the thing that is drawing large amounts of gringoes to live in San Miguel, but also the thing that arouses ire in the city. Many gringoes come here for the climate, and the culture, but want the culture on their own terms. They would rather live on the outskirts of the city and only go to the old neighborhoods as an excursion. Some folks decide to resent this as an intrusion that waters down the culture and the charm of San Miguel. Like everything else in life, however, we all get to decide what we make of it. My opinion is that we are in Mexico and everything that is here is now part of Mexico also. San Miguel welcomed foreigners starting in the 1940’s. Picking and choosing what you like does not change that. Vote with your feet. After 5 weeks here we have only seen the gringo side of town two times. It does not bother me, I know what I like best.

We are extremely fortunate that our friends Anne Marie and Leonard happen to be in San Miguel the past three days. We have doe some sightseeing and visiting together, but this is where the it’s “best to plan ahead” comes in. The four of us had decided to have a Christmas eve dinner with a molcajete at Los Milagros. Some may have read the earlier post about the molcajete. To review it is large earthen ware bowl at extremely high temperature with 4 kinds of meat, nopales, chiles bubbling over the side of the bowl with savory chile verde. We had raved about this and our friends were enthused to try it.  Unfortunately, we did not plan ahead, did not think about Christmas eve tradition for Mexican people is to have the big family dinner that night. We arrived at Los Milagros to see a sign on the door that they had closed early 90 minutes earlier. After two more failed attempts at finding a place to eat we stumbled across a very cool looking place with a lot of diners. We knew that this was the place for us.

What followed may be worthy of a Laurel and Hardy act. When we ordered we made sure the waiter understood that Sheila’s food could have no dairy or sugar. Unfortunately, this ruled out all the moles. Anne Marie’s dinner came first. Ten minutes later she was the only one with food. Luckily she is a slow thoughtful eater. Next came a plate for Sheila, a pork loin mole and beans with cheese. When the waiter brought food for Leonard and I explained that we asked for no sugar or dairy for Sheila and that he had told us that the mole had sugar. Also, that the supposed pork loin was so tough it was difficult to cut and even harder to chew. He looked confused walked away and returned with a sharp knife and offered to scrape the cheese off the beans. It took about 3-5 minutes of conversation to have him understand that there were tough pork chops on the plate, not pork loin and no mole was ordered. Eventually, Sheila asked if she could have a piece of fish grilled in olive oil and herbs. That proved to be an agreeable alternative.

Leonard and I ate our meals, even though Leonard also did not get what he ordered. He agreeably ate what they served him. The meals all were tasty, but it took at least 10 more minutes for a piece of perfectly cooked salmon swimming in olive oil and herbs, surround by simmered vegetables to arrive for Sheila, perfect. By that time three of us were very close to being finished with out meals. Our last 10-15 minutes Sheila was the only one with a plate in front of her. Please do not think this ruined our meal or evening. We were in a building with beautiful old stone architecture with friends enjoying decent food and a comedy routine. The final act was when the bill arrived. Two of four items were billed correctly. They billed Leonard for a more expensive item and Sheila for the mole. Bottom line we were over billed by about 150 pesos. Leonard and I both felt that we had had enough confusion and simply paid the bill, over some not very forceful objections. Note, 150 pesos is about $7.50 (we did leave a tip). Best to plan ahead! On to Christmas day.