Always be polite to the locals.
It may well have been the best time of my entire life. I'd been staying in a beach hut with a rather fruity Austrian girl, spending my way through the last of my holiday money before heading back to Mexico City and the flight home. I'd been out there for three months, bumming around, working a bit but the idyll was coming to an end and so I decided to use the last of my time lolling in a hammock in Playa del Carmen.
Whislt in Mexico I'd run into a lot of Americans, and it had rapidly become clear to me just how much the Mexicans hated them; whilst not wishing to disparage the entire US population, I'm afraid that they were seen as fat sex tourists fit only to be scammed by the locals. This was not a happy state of affairs. The speed with which attitudes of the locals I spoke to changed when I said "Engles" when asked "Americano?" was telling in itself.

In the huts next to mine were a group of just the sort of American the Mexicans hated, and watching them through the week I began to understand why; they were just rude. All the time. To anyone even faintly Hispanic. They played football and volleyball with the local beach kids, and cheated and fouled when they started to lose (which they did, every time). They hit on the waitresses. They didn't tip. They belittled the cleaning and bar staff. They were even rude to the night watchman making sure their stuff wasn't nicked (a stupid thing to do, I always thought. I bought him drinks and gave him cigarettes instead, and he invited me to meet his family).

Anyway, the last day came and I boarded the bus. The bus from Playa to Mexico city took 24 hours, and went through a war zone. You see, this was the mid 1990's when Subcommandante Marcos and his Zapatistas were fighting against in Government in Chiapas. The only route for the bus was in disputed territory and there was a certain tension in the air. Young as I was, this was all a big adventure. Three or four rows behind me were my neighbours from the beach. I put my walkman on and hunkered down.
As we drove, approximately every ten or twenty miles or so the bus was stopped by a roadblock. Sometimes it was the army, and sometimes it was guys in jumpsuits with little black badges and red stars on them. The routine would be pretty much the same, every time. Several men with guns would get on the bus and very politely ask for papers and they'd go down the bus checking everyone. The nice things was they'd see my British passport, smile and me and carry on without even checking it. Every single time, however, the Americans got the third degree - who were they? Where were they going? What was their business in Mexico? Plainly this had little to do with security, and a lot to do with frustrated Mexicans taking a little bit of power and making the most of their opportunity to bully their neighbour a little. I doubt that the soldiers and marxists knew what this particular bunch of Americans had been like back in Playa, but if their behaviour was typical I can understand why they were doing it. Just blowing off steam - fairly harmless so long as nobody lost their temper. And that's just what happened.

I'm guessing it was just frustration at being cooped up in a hot bus for a full day, being hassled every twenty minutes or half hour by bored police, but one of them said the wrong thing (I think it was 'Fuck you!') and was bundled off the bus. Everyone went quiet, and I thought for a moment things were going to turn very nasty; which they did, but only for one person.
As we all watched through the bus window, the guy was stripped-searched in the middle of the street. I can honestly say you haven't lived until you've seen a 250lb man having a torch shone up his arse by the side of a dusty Mexican road.

For the rest of the trip, I had the quietest fellow passengers I've ever known.
(davywavy, Mon 29 Jun 2009, 13:39, 1 reply)

Just desserts.
Oddly enough, they're too polite to do that in Canada. But they'd love to.
( Fronds are waving gently on, Tue 30 Jun 2009, 17:25, closed)