Adventures in Mexico

or

Last week I was in Argentina with my family. It was the second time for me and I quickly fell in love with the clean air, the easy access to processed meats (hmmm...picadas anyone?), cheap red wine, leather, shoes, amazing tango groups playing their hearts out right on the street, and well groomed and exercised dogs. Argentina seems like a first world country but lives with a third world reality with untrustworthy leaders, capricious currency, a sad legacy of oppression and Dirty War.  It also seems incidentally Latin American. As I walked about and felt swarthy in comparison (okay, this is an exaggeration, but I didn't feel as much of the pigment-less giantess as I feel to be here in Mexico) to the very European masses of people, I thought, the only way I know that I am in Latin America is that Spanish is being spoken and with an emphatic Italian sounding accent at that.

Because Argentina looks so comparatively pristine next to Mexico City, whose extremes of utter poverty and excessive wealth are on display on nearly every street corner, it's hard to remember that like any country with great poverty and a lot of tourism, that there's a lot of petty street crime. As my parents were walking a bit off course on our way to San Telmo (very touristy, antiques galore and those annoying people who paint themselves and pretend that they are statues),  we discovered that my dad's back had been splattered with mustard. 

We stopped to assess the stain and scrambled for something to clean him off. In that moment, we were approached by a couple, conveniently carrying a wad of napkins. I digress to say that Argentine napkins have all the absorbency of waxed paper. In that moment we discovered that my back as well as my step mom's were covered in mustard and the "nice couple" conveniently picked up a bottle of water and a new wad of napkins came out. Their hands were suddenly all over us.  My step mom smartly guessed "This is a perfect set up for a robbery." No sooner had she said that when a man began to insistently urge us to come to his cafe down the street to get cleaned up.  I quickly sprung into action and my family followed suit. 

We managed to escape our growing group of helpers/thieves. The couple took off quickly in a get-away taxi and we sped off by foot. Later, my dad discovered that about 20 USD were missing from his pocket, but we were relieved that we weren't hurt or more wasn't taken. 

As we debriefed the incident in a nearby coffee shop, again employing the inadequate napkins to try to make ourselves look, well, less like mustard had been splattered at us, we all felt a collective relief that the crime was not one of "throw mustard at the ugly American," but instead "let's take these ignorant tourists for all they've got." I am so grateful that they didn't. And like with any averted disaster-great or small- I am reminded to be more cautious and mindful.