Tenancingo

      Presently, Tenancingo, is an overlooked place. It is nestled in a high valley seemingly on the way to nowhere. Long ago some Matlazincas must have liked the spot. Four rivers, various springs, good soil, and a favorable climate got their attention. 

La Malinche Archaeological Site

View from La Malinche

  Tenancingo just 2 kilometers from El Centro

     
     Before autopistas that now divert traffic from Tenango to Ixtapan and Taxco, Tenancingo was well positioned. It was a stop on the main route between Taxco and Mexico City,, the preverbial silver road. Dubloons were inevitably left behind which encouraged the Tenacinguenses to prosper. The people were always an industrious lot, having taken advantage of their location, plentiful water and reasonable soil. The city evolved into a commercial place. It has never been washed in pastels. Tenancingo's surface is grubby from the commerce that constitutes its corazon. It is the most important economic center in the southern part of the State Of Mexico,, yet it doesn't merit a sign indicating Tenancingo in Tenango where the auto pista to Ixtapan and the old highway 55 diverge. 
     Over the years we have withstood so many disrespectful comments from neighbors,, and "between election" snubs from politicians, especially the PRISTAS who see fit to rob the city down to its socks and underwear. However it has been belittled Tenancingo remains politically important. When election time arrives great quantities of money are dispensed to keep Tenancingo in the political grasp. Politicians appear in droves to be confirmed, reconfirmed, or reassigned. Every so many years a beautiful counterfeit ballet is staged when political leaders are among us like mockingbirds. They hug us, dish out cheap televisions, and money, and some bags of concrete, pay off caciques, and leave with the city in their pocket for another few years. They pass through  like emaciated heroes and Tenancingo suffers their fleeting presence. Investments by politicians in luxury homes and high end developments don't exist here,,, so why spend effort to clean up the city. Tenancingo is not their playground. It's much more real than that. In spite of all, though, Tenancingo aspires to be more than its visual image.

  Peña Nieto supporting his party,  PRI

     I liked this place from the get go. In french they would say "Tenancingo est entre un loup y chien". (Tenancingo is between a wolf and a dog). It is the past and the present fused. Living in Northern New England kind of prepared me for the poverty and the "old ways",, that is what to do about shoe fit, corns, bunions, croup, and how to make your own cough syrup, or how years ago anyway,  northern New Englanders lived apart from the rest of the country, frozen in some other time. However New England didn't prepare me for the visual shock,, that is seeing people outside so much of the time as if the guts of the city had been turned inside out and spilled upon the streets. The climate and the indo-latino rythymn make Mexico is an indoor outdoor culture. When I arrived I would often ride slowly down the main street on my bicycle mesmerized by the human movement and myriad sounds.

  Streets of Tenancingo

     
     That brings back a memory. When I first came to Tenancingo I was like a monkey in a cage, isolated from his tribe. Very few people speak english here. Long term isolation causes a person to act strangely,, unrestricted by the social checks and balances that govern lives when we live in our own community. I talked to my self, and cried spontaneously for example. I realized very early on that my North American cultural preparation was useless here. In the States one takes for granted the aquired knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of acculturation. What good is Babe Ruth, and Joe McCarthy, and the Scopes Trial when no one here knows what they signify. Mexicans have their own cultural bon bons to inject into and enliven conversation. It was like being reborn,,tabula rasa, and I had to fill in the blank with a new history or the monkey would never find a way out of his cage.
     Saturday is the one year anniversary of the killing of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa. Today,, a year later, all that has been determined is that the government version of events is suspect. After a year, the politicians are debating the subject,, debates that are timely, lame, and do not address the causes,, that is actually THEM and their refusal to speak the truth. Today, the morning clown, Brozo, who has the best news program on mainstream TV (the closest one gets to mainstream conscience) said the political class is lodged in a shell that no one will break open because,, and using english phrasing here, it would open a huge can of worms,,, so the political class remain tightly sealed, auto sequestered, while the country simmers.