By Adriana Mendez
The pandemic surprised me in the midst of remodeling a house in the center of San Miguel de Allende. Every day, I walked about 10 blocks at least three times a day through this small town of cobbled and steep streets to supervise the work.
Before confinement, smiles, casual comments, and greetings flowed naturally and were exchanged along the way with neighbors and acquaintances. With the news of COVID-19, familiar faces disappeared. Some hid behind masks and shields. Others vanished. The city was filled with signs recommending preventive measures. Disinfectant arches were installed at the entrance to the city center, markets, and public offices. The fear of contagion, disguised as a Catrina, began to rule. Tourists stopped coming. Hotels, restaurants, and shops closed. Like many people, I stopped receiving income for many months.
The obligatory appointment at seven each night with López Gatell underlined the seriousness of the health crisis. Only during the earthquakes of 1985 and 2017 have I been as glued to television as during the first months of the pandemic.
I kept walking to the construction site three times a day. In the solitude of my journey, my brain was torn between stopping or continuing the work. Should I stop? Am I being irresponsible? What doctor and hospital do I go to if one of my workers or myself gets infected? I decided to continue despite the lack of financial resources and the omnipresence of uncertainty and fear. I spoke seriously with Gabriel and Fernando, the masters who made the work possible, so that they would make their assistants aware of the seriousness of the problem. I negotiated to pay them half and the rest when the situation normalized. I got into credit card debt.
Sometimes I would make a detour to the main square where the Parroquia is located. It was empty. My feelings fluctuated between unusual peace and brutal nostalgia. The Jardin was in solitude. The voice of silence presided. Going through it was a beautiful and unrepeatable experience, almost inconceivable.
However, I longed for the characteristic life of this public square filled with Mexican music, color, and balloon sellers surrounded by children, of wrought iron benches occupied by people from different latitudes, of boleros shining shoes and listening carefully to the conversations and gossip of their customers. I missed open businesses: taco carts, hot dog carts, restaurants, galleries, and shops. I missed the coexistence between locals and foreigners in this magical place where nationalities and social classes disappear.
It overwhelmed me to think of the difficulties faced by people who lost their jobs and businesses that couldn’t keep going. The dynamism and joy characteristic of this square vanished; the mariachis fell silent.
In San Miguel, as in the rest of the world, fear, uncertainty, and despair reigned. As the weeks went by, things never seen before happened. I witnessed, on several occasions, squads of government personnel dressed much like astronauts, disinfecting the streets of the city center. They wore white overalls with a cap, mask, face shield, orange gloves, black boots, and backpack tanks used to spray and disinfect public areas.
The act of dying took on an unimaginable and absolutely sad dimension: the company of family and friends was replaced by the loneliness and coldness of full hospitals and exhausted and frightened medical personnel. There was no space to depart from this world lovingly. We lived a forced suspension of the farewell rituals. The last goodbye, well-attended funerals, and physical contact couldn’t happen. Isolation and limited mobility were some of the cruelest consequences of this disease.
The effects of the pandemic were forceful and painful. The forced pause of the feminist movement in Mexico after the resounding success of the March 8, 2020, march; the increase in domestic violence and violence against migrants in transit through our country; the increase in the suicide rate; the rise in the poverty rate; the parenthesis of the process of environmental awareness and the hope of the fish for a life free of plastics; the tragedy of the death of entire families infected.
Almost three years after the first case of COVID in China, we are still here, coexisting with this virus that insists on mutating. We are happy because kiss-and-hug greetings have returned, hopefully because of the ability to adapt that our species has, but with pain and sadness for the countless losses. We are smiling and giving thanks for each new day.
Last week, San Miguel dressed in yellow and purple. We have been able to celebrate traditions again. Through our altars, we have remembered our dead, who continue and will continue to live through us, because in life they planted little pieces of themselves in their loved ones, to transcend, to continue living.
I feel happy because the Catrinas revived and paraded freely through the streets of this beautiful place but, above all, because in the center of San Miguel de Allende, the mariachis have been heard again.
