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Published: January 19th 2017
A day in the life
This colour of bougainvillea is becoming a favourite in the Mexican landscape. So here I am back in my happy place for a little R&R before the New Year. Los Cabos!
Oh, and believe me, I needed it. After spending my summer locked up amongst the criminally insane who like to eat their prescription glasses and smother themselves in feces,
I am so done. As you might know, I love Los Cabos so much my handle is Cabochick. I am deeply connected to this place. My family have been coming to San Jose del Cabo for over 50 years.
Back when I was a kid, we would spend our winters on the Baja camping on the endless beaches only to slip into random sleepy fishing pueblos for occasional provisions. It was paradise.
I remember how gigantic conch shells littered the shores, stingrays cartwheeled in the surf at sundown, burros were an acceptable mode of transport, and you could walk for miles along the sandy shores, never seeing another soul.
Well things have drastically changed since then, let me tell you. Los Cabos is a huge tourist Mecca now.
And with that comes
the Bueno, the Malo, and the Feo.
But I'm okay with all this progress.
Did you see my Ass
Art display at SJD I liken the expansion of Los Cabos to your teenager daughter getting a purple Mohawk and neck tattoos. At first you are horrified but, you still love the stupid kid, so eventually you learn to live with it.
Arriving on my favourite month. November. As I disembark onto the sweltering tarmac of San Jose del Cabo, I'm instantly hit with that sweet heaviness of tropical air. It always makes me exhale gleefully. Apparently not much rain fell over the summer as usual so the desert isn't as green as it should be by now, but it’s still quite humid. Also missing, the millions of yellow butterflies that swirl around your car and decorate your windshield. Where are they this year?
I'm really looking forward to someday retiring here, but for now these visits will have to do.
My Mum greets me enthusiastically, she is all sunkissed and flowy. I announce my need for some margaritas & fish tacos
rapido.
First though, we must find the absentee parking lot attendant so he can manually let our car out, the new automated parking system for the SJD airport is expectantly broken.
Geez! It is hot here for
Federalies in camo
My very own security detail November. Even the locals are saying that, and they never say that.
Apparently 'The Switch' is about two weeks late, a phenomenon here in Los Cabos that sees the evening temperatures suddenly plummet from 30 Celsius to 12 Celsius. The locals mark this occasion by donning their winter jackets, scarfs and toques, which severely confuses the tourists from the far North who are all wearing tank tops, shorts, and flip flops.
After the sun sets in Los Cabos most of the locals finish work, drive like maniacs home on Baja 1 and then take to the streets for eating and socializing.
We too stop at one of our favourite haunts for a quick bite to eat. Every taco stand has it's own style and ambiance, ours loosely translates to
Little Red Cock.
This taqueria is usually jam packed with families but tonight it is alarmingly quiet. When I enquire why, I am told that a shooting happened here yesterday, one hombre dead.
Here? You know I've always boasted that San Jose del Cabo is one of the safest barrios in Mexico. This is very unfortunate news.
How Los Cabos has stayed violence-free all these
Another Tequila Sunset
Life carries on, no matter how ugly it gets years isn't really a secret. The Mexican government has been paying off the cartels for years to ensure nothing goes down around here. The cartels guarantee the safety and serenity and they also bring all their families to live here.
Its a mutual understanding you see.
…And it's worked well for over 30 years. But ever since El Chapo Guzmán, boss of the Sinaloa Cartel was successfully detained in the USA, the cartel have been losing their steadfast grip on Los Cabos.
So now it’s late 2016 and all bets are off. With the Sinaloa cartel decapitated, the vacuum of smaller gangs and corrupt government officials close in, keen to quickly disintegrate this arrangement.
Fast forward to my first few weeks here in Los Cabos. They have been alarming. A total of 30 people were murdered in San Jose del Cabo alone. Some were shockingly execution-style, some brutally decapitated and hung out for all to see, and most happening within a few square blocks of my casa.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government is in Def Com 3 trying to keep a lid on it. Their 2017 tourist season starts in a few weeks and they cannot
No problemas
Nothing to see here lady. afford to lose the billions of dollars that it generates, hence why no English news reports of all these shootings have surfaced yet...they do not want to panic the Gringos planning their upcoming winter holidays and spring break.
As for the gringo expats who are already here, the government has sent out heavily armed federalies in camo humvees to set up neighborhood watches.
I've got one parked at the end of my street as I write this. What the officials don't seem to realize is that back home in Canada if we see police taking up guard outside our houses, we get kinda nervous.
Here, it feels worse. I wander out into the blistering heat of midday to offer the young guards bottles of cold water, with the intent of gleaning some information.
Soy policia en Canada I tell them and suddenly we are all best friends. I compliment their new desert motif, and they all straighten proudly. All matchy matchy. Those black federal uniforms of yesteryear must have been insanely hot.
The boys tell me about an incident that happened this week where a decoy dummy was lit on fire in a pickup truck near
Mexican Ingenuity at its best
Heaven help those who need it the SJD airport and they all rushed out to that scene only to have the gangs slaughter two whole families of a rival cartel here in town. Sneaky. I guess with an increased police presence, the criminals have to get more strategic.
To distract myself from all this violence I jump right into my volunteering gig. I work with a community center in San Jose del Cabo that provides help for local families in crisis. I enjoy interacting in Spanglish, distributing essentials and raising money for school fees and medical treatments.
As I drive out into the barrios, I feel a little more on edge than usual. I watch for suspicious activities and keep an eye on my rear view mirror. I am lucky to have a car with Mexican plates, so I don't draw much attention. The guys I know at the tortilla factory wave me down and we have a little chat, apparently some of the ex-municipal police of Los Cabos that were fired for looting stores during the 2014 hurricane are now retaliating by joining forces with these newly established gangs. They are going house to house and extorting and killing innocent people.
Now
with 2017 right around the corner, the Mexican government suddenly announces 250 million pesos to try to fight this outbreak of violence on the Baja. What they didn’t announce was they secretly deployed a group of militia with carte blanche to get things under control.
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Coming back from the barrios one afternoon, I saw two military-looking dudes jump out of a white truck and shoot some guys in a car while we all were waiting for a stoplight. I was frozen in shock as I watched them pile back in and speed off. The dead driver slumped on his horn. I remember looking around at other drivers in disbelief and when the light turned green we all just drove away.
The following week, I was walking my dog when the same military-looking men in a white truck chased after a lone guy at an OXXO who ran into the Ziva Resort lobby. I think he thought he would be safe in there, but the militia men shot the place up, killed the man, while all the tourists looked on from their poolside in shock.
Familias lineup
Xmas gift registration for the kids of the barrios There are several YouTube videos of that.
A few days later I saw a dead man hanging half way out of his car, hung up by his seatbelt, in the Starbucks parking lot, and there was another shoot out at the Walmart in CSL a couple days after that. Bad cops verses good cops. Then a drive by shooting at the Mega grocery store mid afternoon while shoppers scrambled to take cover from the flying bullets.
Suddenly my retirement plans aren't feeling so concrete. I need to reassess my future.
Should I be moving to the Baja permanently from Canada? Could my desire to wake up to sunshine and blue ocean everyday be in jeopardy? Am I really safe here?
At some point, I took a drive out to Zacatitos so I can hike along the beach. For miles and miles, my thoughts are drowned out by the sound of waves crashing to the shore. It’s what I needed.
I can't even start to list all the reasons I love the Baja. It isn't just the azul blue ocean and the sandy shores. It's the charm, it's the golden pink of the desert hues, it's
Muerto
Finding dead people shot on the side of the road is becoming a trend in SJD. how the desert comes alive after it rains. It’s the people, it’s the culture, it’s the lifestyle.
Someone somewhere is frying fresh tortillas and the wild burros try to bully me for the sugar cubes they know I bring. Panga fishermen motor out into the rough surf in their little floaty-boats, and I can see grey whales breach off the far horizon.
Los Cabos is and always will be my home. I know that this explosion of violence will dissipate and it will go back to being a safe & serene paradise. I can wait it out.
Somehow, someway, I will live here until I die. I just need to learn how live amongst and cope with the corruption, the crime, and the outright craziness of Mexico. After my career in Corrections, surely I can.
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gangopa
tab gangopadhyay
sunshine everyday is a priority
I could appreciate how true it is for a Canadian battling the bone chilling winter! A good reading, Andrea!