Catemaco License

I'm becoming more Mexican every day. A friendly officer at a recent police stop away from beautiful downtown Catemaco reminded me that my license was about to expire. So one day I set off to battle the fiercesome Mexican bureaucrcy.

Surprise! 30 minutes later, not including 90 minutes of playing musical chairs at Hacienda (the Federal cash register), I walked out  with a 3 year permit for 746 pesos. That's a lot of pesos!

Other requirements were originals plus copies of passport, FM2 visa, proof of residency. The doctor was not around, so no eye test was administered, which I would have flunked.

The written exam was 12 or so computerized questions  about traffic signs and general driving, which I often guessed at, especially the one about which side should you drive on in a narrow street with cars parked on both sides? The driving test was administered by a traffic police officer in his  half ton pickup truck and involved driving around the block once.

Mexico 1934

.. Mexican worker doesn't live like a tourist and he wouldn't want to. In Mexican products, which provide him with all he needs, a peso has the buying power of a pre-inflation dollar. Oranges cost three centavos (less than one penny). Avocado pears cost the same. The staples, black beans and pink rice, cost usually 20 centavos a kilo, which is more than two pounds. That's 2½¢ a pound. And if you've eaten black bean paste with chili sauce and Mexican pink rice, you know you don't have to feel sorry for anyone who makes it his daily fare...

A Time magazine quetch from 1934

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan should have sung that in Spanish 75 years ago

Historic Time magazine articles mentioning Veracruz

Catemaco Call Home

Today beautiful  downtown Catemaco received new phone books. Actually it is the phone book for 83 cities in Veracruz, including Veracruz City.

It is a shame that no entrepreneur in Los Tuxtlas has the desire to produce a Los Tuxtlas directory with both white and yellow pages. Considering the junky advertising sheets and magazines that are constantly published here, this could be a profitable business for someone.

The phone book delivery man said they would distribute about 1600 books in Catemaco. My page count of numbers shows about 1700 (I counted one row and mulitplied it by 16).

I did  the same count last year, and it looks like there is a little growth in Catemaco. (La Victoria and Sontecomapan were split off the Catemaco phone book this year, about 100 combined)

Of  those 1800 I would guess no more than 15% (270) have internet access at home, plus a 100 or more machines in internet cafes primarily devoted to hotmail and pornography.

Catemaco Noticias (not Catemaco News) averages a measly 600 returning readers per month,  plus another 20,000 fly bys and I would guess most everyone in Catemaco reads the Noticias at least twice before upchucking.

The local monopoly of TELMEX which delivered the book against a 10 peso propina, considers its white pages a military secret. Idiotically, only Telmex subscribers have access to the pages.

The yellow pages, also of course, have no listing for Catemaco, until you figure out that the section listings are ordered by by cities.

And also "off" course the current and previous mayor have no listing, and the roll of last names sounds like any small town in southern Spain, with a focus on Dominguez, Hernandez and Perez, the equivalents of Smith and Brown.

TELMEX (owned by the second richest man in the world, depending on the dollar exchange) has some of the highest rates in the world, but I have no complaints about either its quality or service.

Catemaco info made a very small effort to list some of the basic phone numbers in the soon to be finished (2015):
Los Tuxtlas Directory

Dive Catemaco

Next time you drop in to beautiful downtown Catemaco, bring your snorkel! It will come in handy during the rainy season which is just about to start and you can also use it on the surprising number of dive sites along the Los Tuxtlas coast.

The state of Veracruz recently published a dive guide for Veracruz in English and Spanish,  which is curiously titled Submarine Tourism.

It was designed for myopic internet users. To read it download the whole guide to your computer.

Veracruz Dive Guide 

Catemaco Homos

In beautiful downtown Catemaco the news is primarily spread by word of mouth, followed by dilapidated vehicles announcing whatever a publisher thinks will get people to pay 5 pesos for a copy of their drivel.

The most reliable news seems to be an FM radio station that knows which of its sides is politically buttered.

Today's 120 decibel news announcement was of a homosexual killed on the passing federal highway, allegedly after enjoying himself on the Malecon.

Mexico, aside from having  the propensity of killing reporters, also has has some of the most perverse laws on the books for defamation and libel and regularly jails reporters for investigatory comments.

The most recent local perversion is jailing a legless reporter, Victor Luna,  for alleging improprieties in the lottery system of the nearby city of San Andrés Tuxtla. The most recent national notoriety is an ongoing battle of a reporter alleging a governor to be a child pornographer and drug dealer.

The really annoying aspect is that newspapers are afraid of mentioning anything or anyone with political pull, when describing an accident or crime scene. Usually those occured in a "lugar conocido"  by an "empresario conocido" ( known place and known businessman).

That does not stop them from publishing gruesome photos of crime victims, including their names and data, but, curiously, when I published one, Google yanked it off my blog.

Lesbian ran over while reading Catemao News
Tomorrow I am awaiting full photo coverage and personal details of a bisexual, transsexual, or oh shucks, a lesbian, who got run over by a heterosexual while reading Catemaco News on a, whatever sex,  lap top.

Catemaco Noah

Anyone driving up to beautiful downtown Catemaco must have noticed the giant wooden ship being constructed in Alvarado. I once tried to enter the boat yard to take some photos but had the gate closed in my face. Finally there is news on what it is about.

Apparently a millionaire is building a trimaran hulled sailing ship to sail the seas and spread the word of peace in the Mayan language. He previously built a replica of  the Columbus vessel, Santa Maria, which is now used as a tourist cruiser in Puerto Vallarta.

Here is a Google translated link to the story