Mexico

In little over a week I'll be going.

I grew on sandy beaches, cracked asphalt and
a pockmarked face made of potholes
and sad mirages hidden behind tall trees.

I grew up in a Mexico where my mornings started in a sleepy town with cows and a milkman a la fiddler but quickly scaled up to the land of coronas and dos equis only to end the day in a pre-packaged "American" experience involving Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The dichotomy between the sweet cool air conditioner and the perennial sun burning the back of our necks was as beautiful as the words politician and honesty in the same sentence.

Black and white.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country like a child loves his mother, like  a brother loves his middle school girlfriend with whom he talks on the phone nightly 20 minutes after having last seen her for about an hour. I love Mexico with a grin on my face, the air running through my hair and my hand on the shift stick.

Mexico was my first "bro" - Mexibro.

There were two of them really; the first was one of open fires, warm corn hand-made tortillas with heaped mountains of beans, meat, sauces in every shade of green and red, cilantro, onion and pineapple. The second was one of nightclubs where my friends and I would measure our level of cool by wearing button downs that were taken literally - buttons undone down to the last two - complimented only by the thin gold chain with a hanging cross around our neck.

One was the story of my grandparents and haciendas on a plane that looked alit with fire every sunset - something about the play of sunlight on the red clay ground and raspberry fields. The other was a tale of a city that grew too big for its own overtaxed resources and where city planning involved little more than a prayer and a "vaya con dios".

What I'm trying to say, if there is a point at all, is that behind the lacrimose gas and gang wars between the druglords and the army - there is a beauty that no amount of PR or heart-stopping ads will show.

It's people.