[Before I arrived, I was obsessed with a kind of human geography. What was it like? Thus the first released some of this energy. Then the music and colors of the everyday caught me. The second part. I realized I could not finish either to the extent I wanted to, and that they deserved. Thus each part is unfinished. An exercise in the end, I guess.]
1
San Miguel, a town of about 80,000 residents, sits on the leeward side of Cozumel Island, and swells to 100 or more thousand when tourists come to stay, or multiple cruise ships disgorge shoppers. Known as Cozumel, the town is laid out in a grid with streets running north and south and east and west, many one way.
From the sea in the west moving eastwards, there is first the main tourist shopping street, Rafael Melgar. It runs north and south of the center where ferries from the mainland arrive and depart. The east-west street dividing the town roughly in half is Benito Juarez. Melgar is lined with shops for about ten long blocks, and beyond this, luxury hotels and condominium projects are scattered north and south. They mostly avoid the foot and taxi traffic that make Cozumel's, if you can call it this, downtown bustle. The shopping and tourist area continues from the center eastwards two blocks till 10th Avenue, a main thoroughfare running south to north. Thus forms a rectangle about ten blocks by two blocks for English and Spanish speakers, pedestrian friendly and colorful, where the tourists police in khaki shorts safeguard the economy.
Continuing east, another section of town begins on 10th. This is mostly a locals shopping area, dotted with small hotels and houses with room-for-rent signs. This area includes a locals market for daily food, necessities and sundries. This section runs to 30th Avenue, making another rectangle about ten by four blocks.
North and south of the center from the sea eastwards, bordering both the tourist and locals shopping areas are posher neighborhoods where the wealthy absentee, expatriate, or sunbird hides behind high walls and imposing facades. These neighborhoods mostly shed their foreigners around 30th Avenue.
Extending six blocks from 30th eastwards and bordered by the outskirts of town north and south, there is a mixture single family and small apartment houses, small businesses, and all manner of eateries and miscellaneous services, many situated in the front or as a part of private homes. There are several large stores for building materials and such along 65th, another main thoroughfare.
From 65th north and south and east to 100th or more, there are neighborhoods and parks and mom-and-pops and bars with cement floors and plastic chairs and tables, a landscape of unfinished dwellings, and some that look as if they have been constructed using the last hurricane's debris.
A short canopied jungle borders or surrounds all developed areas and encroaches onto vacant lots and wherever it can. To the north of town, there is a military base and the international airport. Further, opposite luxury condominium and high rise hotels, there is a golf course with several resident reptiles on about the tenth T.
The town will grow into the jungle areas as the population grows. A public-minded housing project of 1,000 very small and modest homes begins to rise beyond the current southeast outskirts near a state university branch campus.
Running through town in roughly a north-south line is high ground, from one or two meters above sea level to about eight, less than a town block wide. Although logically a desired location to avoid overflowing streets when it rains, this raised spine of limestone hosts structures as diverse as the non-tourist areas of town itself.
Local sources and incident records show Cozumel to be a safe place, but there are neighborhoods where caution is wise. The tourist areas are carefully monitored by different police forces. However, as safe as these areas are, everyone local is being paid by someone or some business to hook any foreign looking person into a place of business to spend money. Dollars exchange hands more often than pesos, and competition reigns. Prospective customers hear the offers of another adman as the pitch from the previous has hardly settled into the distance of a few steps away. It is a feeding frenzy when the streets are crowded.
The central Plaza, Benito Juarez, draws tourists and locals alike each week for concerts, extravaganzas, fiestas. One block from the Plaza the, Church of San Miguel rings its bells daily and nightly for services for locals and shy or curious others who listen from the sidewalk and pedestrian areas.
2
Pastel skies greet the early riser while a tree iguana big as a tomcat watches and waits in a tree.
Shacks and shanties outnumbered by other dwellings not much better, unfurnished, concrete and block, graying in the sun, washed by warm rains, dark holes with dirt or wood floors, hammock limited in sway for the moped that serves also as necessary furniture just inside the doorway.
Adult-sized tricycles, two wheels front, carrying silent Mayan women, slowly peddled through neighborhoods, morning and evening by older men. Or carrying wares announced by a monosyllabic clap or bell or horn or whistle. As if to say, "I have this today. Don't hurry into the sun. I am not going anywhere very fast. I can wait for you."
The rains down pour as if from the bottom of a bucket with peso-sized holes. Streets flood and deep waters carry waste flushed up from shallow sewers incapable of taking it all away for hours or a day and a night. Or the waters drain into underground caverns which take it somewhere, some say out to sea.
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep. A truck broadcasts bottled water or cooking gas for sale, up, down and around the corner and into the distance, now and then interrupted by the silence of an unseen purchase.
Boom boxes and street speakers stationery or mounted on beater cars or the semblance of trucks. They tell the world of promotions, a salsa band, candidates, or they just infiltrate the days with rap and base. The many heartbeats evidencing life in a something other clime.
Front porches and entries of private homes morph into eateries. Up to five ride on scooters meant for one or at most two. Penniless and barefoot, they ask for money and are offered food. Swarms of mosquitoes chase editable you if a jungle explorer you dare to be.
Musical horns and drums and groups of marchers practicing for imperfect exhibitions celebrating what? Each after dark or early in the morning for hours getting ready for or having events that have all in uniform but not quite in step.
Gringos and romantics walk, bike and drive to the western shore for an unobstructed sunset that along with steep, tall clouds turn the edge of the world into a single-performance-only spectacle.
Behemoth boats belch forth shoppers and hedonists for daylight diversions. Some only reach the mall at the foot of the pier. Others venture up and down the main seaside street. A few penetrate interior avenues till the local scene intimidates, or their vessel beckons them back blaring hoarse horns not to miss the scheduled departure.
Dogs lie lifeless in scrapes of shade. If not homeless, they sit atop roofs and fences in the evening protecting property when it is cooler. Some do not survive the night for another listless day, slain from neglect or taken by exacerbated natural causes.
Tourists and locals come and go and discover money is either easy to spend or hard to come by. Best make the best of things while there's work to be done or things left to see and do before the glitter and magic fade and it is there you are and life's like that again another day.
