How many currencies come immediately to mind that bear the picture of a dead donkey? The quiniento (500) peso note issued by the Bank of Mexico, for one. A small military tableau appears on its obverse, the donkey depicted from its least flattering angle, lying flat on its side like an abandoned bicycle. A soldier in mid-nineteenth century military kit is lifting a fallen comrade from beneath the animal, which juxtaposition goes a long way in explaining why the soldier looks very much like the donkey in the encounter.
The fracas depicted there in miniature is the Battle of Puebla in which Ignacio Zaragoza (depicted on the note just to the right of the donkey) defeated invading French forces in the barley fields of Puebla on May 5, 1862, in a single stroke inventing Mexico's first national holiday and the cerveza with which it is celebrated. Here is a photo of Ignacio, the sort of portrait which might have been taken by a proud parent after a weekly piano lesson.
The French, during the Second Empire, had invoked Mexico's international debt as a pretext for this invasion, passively abetted by Spain and Great Britain who withdrew their own forces from Mexico so as not to upset France's colonial aspirations. Fortunately we live in a world now civilized by the warm glow of global commerce, a world in which every national self-interest necessarily encompasses and buttresses the interests of every other. China's generosity in purchasing national debt and continuing selflessly to adjust its balance of trade with poorer nations such as the United States is merely a case in point. Rest assured, China is no France, sir.
We participated in the global economy ourselves today, and I was able to divest myself of at least part of that 500-peso note in the interests of international amity and the delicate geopolitical understandings that further the universal bonhomie of a civilized globe. We took a city bus to the weekly market, known amongst the cognoscenti as "the Tuesday Market," It is basically a flea market on steroids, convening just outside of San Miguel on one of the industrial ring roads. The passengers waiting at the downtown stop for the market bus were officiously shepherded aboard by a young man wearing a cap blazoned with the logo of a dead scorpion, carrying what appeared to be a well-used guitar. Upon departing the bus stop, I discerned that this is not the official municipal transit workers' uniform - the fellow stood in the aisle, cast his eyes towards the roof of the bus, and from his first chord (his only chord, it proved) promptly disabused the entire busload of any notion that his guitar was well-used. His tempo varied to suit whatever song he took up, and he had, besides that one chord, a flat reedy timbre falling somewhere between Irish tenor and falsetto. The songs were of unrequited love - I caught the words "tristessa" and "Durango," which is pretty much the capital of unrequited love. His delivery was workmanlike and given added piquancy by a furrowed brow.
The market proved a plein aire universe of goods - tables piled with surplus WalMart clothing, antique pipe wrenches, vise grips, sheep shears, kitchen knives and machetes; someone (the same person) selling old tools and lengths of fresh sugar cane; piles of hammers and scraps of lumber, pieces of electronic equipment, computer cables, cell phones and cell phone batteries, odd used auto parts and used parts of used auto parts; tables of kitchenware plastic, wood and metal; glass blender jars without the business end of the blender, caps of all sorts, from baseball caps to flannel caps lined with acrylic fur and earmuffs that would nicely top off a Canadian or a North Korean; nearly invisible specimens of ladies intimate apparel, new jeans with sparkly pocket flourishes, t-shirts covered in logos and legends and more sparkly things; heaps of peanuts and unshelled pecans, meats, fruits, vegetables, and dry goods of every sort. The vendors hawked their wares with a certain energetic elan, walking among the aisles with hands full of samples, many of them abetted by commercial colleagues on competing public address systems.
It was all just too much. The timid come away only with mesh bags of assorted fruits and vegetable. We were among he faint of heart on this maiden foray - we merely ate some gorditas and came home nearly emptyhanded. But I have higher ambitions: someday, amongst the bananas and the papaya I will bear home with a manly glow a paper sack of assorted miscellaneous carburetor jets - or manifold bolts.
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