Looking for some water (scarcity)
Posted on March 7, 2008
Filed Under Articles, Photography, Reportage |
Just after entering Mexico I take in the car José, Blanca and the little four-month-old José Luiz. The renting contract of the car states that the insurance does not cover any other persone than me. But says also that the insurance is not valid in Mexico (it does not say anything about Canada). So it does not make any difference if I take some passenger.
They have to go to Santa Clara, where the Colorado River ends. Me? Also, or at least seems a good idea to go there. I have to understand if the river is running out of water.
José is very shy at the beginning. At the end of the day he will make jokes and laugh like if we knew each other since ever. We make a detour to see the river. The river, actually, does not exist anymore. It is a small stream of dirty water, slowly moving towards South.
But José is not a farmer (although his family is), and does not care very much about water. He is going to Santa Clara to ask if the corvinas – sea bass in the US, branzino in Italy – have arrived. Like salmons, they swim upstream, and, like salmons, they have to face any kind of predators. Particularly fishermen.
The air is fresh, almost cool, and the sun is hot. The sky deeply blue. The best weather ever. And the curvinas have not passed yet, people on the beach say.
Then we go to Blanca’s sister and her husband – Juan. Juan does not seem Mexican. Everybody, but he, has black Mexican-style mustaches, brown skin and black hair. He has some redish beard, dark green eyes.
US-Mexico is really a frontier. That is what you would call a border. In southern California, US, I thought I was like in Mexico – as soon as they heared my accent they switched to Spanish. People looked Latin American and not North American. My mistake. The people I was speaking with were not Mexican, they were Latinos. And only now I understand that Latino does not mean Mexican. No one of the Latinos I met has anything in common with my new acquintances.
What slightly shocks me is green-eyed Juan’s family, and how he lives. He has got a lancha, a 15-foot boat with a 110 hp off-shore engine on the back. That is the fishing-boat. That is the source of income on which he and 14 more people rely on.
In three hours, the boat sucked about $50 of fuel. To transport the boat from his place to the sea - and back - he pays $20 for the trailer (!). That means that if he goes out, cannot find any fish, and comes back, he loses at least $40. The good news is that in one day he can rake up $800 in corvinas or calamares. If he catches something.
Observing his house, I wonder if that ever happened. If it did, it did not frequently, for sure. There are two shacks and a semi-destroyed caravan. The restroom is the typical hole in the ground, with a wooden bowl on top of it – but we are not in the country side, we are in a small village, with some American tourists wandering around.
Still, as one would expect, everybody laughs and seems happy. That could be the results of a diet of mussels and paprika, both notoriously afrodisiac. Juan has a new child every two years. The daughters, as soon as they are just below 20, start to have kids as well. A nephew may have to take care of her young uncle. The grand-mother may be younger than the father. Family roles blure.
In the night, we drive back to San Juan, close to the Mexico-US frontier. It’s 6 pm, and there is a 3-hour queue to get in to the US. Then I decide to sleep in Mexico. José recommend me a hotel – the one in which they “manufactured” the child, he says. Ten dollars each six hours. I’m too tired to look for another place, and accept the advice. After a while, I have to stick the earplugs up to my eardrums, in order not to hear the effect of a diet based on mussels and paprika.
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