July 2nd, 2011. I look up and see a large arch with a welcome sign in Mexico. Opposite me is a man I have known for 4.5 years, and he is smiling. We loaded the bags, and Hector decided to give me a car tour of the city. He is an excellent driver, but at one of the turns, he makes a very sharp maneuver and heads in a completely different direction. I turn around and see something that struck me to the core... From my Afghan father, I heard many stories about tanks, weapons, and soldiers. But I was not prepared to encounter this in our relatively peaceful time. It turned out to be the opposite. A peaceful weekday city of Matamoros, with a huge number of cars and people. But here, the street is empty, and in the middle of it stands a huge armored vehicle with a turret, on which there is a machine gun and gunners... What is this? It is war. The kind they sometimes talk about on the news and never in the local press. But everyone knows anyway: the only truthful news comes from people's mouths. Journalists are not held in high esteem there; they keep silent themselves. Hector's sister loved one such man, and he is no longer with us... The neighborhood where I lived was populated by local intellectuals—teachers and other civil servants; there was always night security, only one entrance and exit. Teachers are especially respected and are given houses in neighborhoods like Fovissste (where I lived). There are their own shops, free courts, everything is clean and beautiful. Icons are painted on the walls of the houses, and mangoes and avocados grow on the streets. The Feds and the mafia do not go there and treat the residents with respect. At night, you won't be robbed, but outside such walls, you are very vulnerable... each neighborhood has its own unofficial "authority." Buses, unlike American ones, run until late at night. But they stop going to the border at 8 PM—it becomes very dangerous, and the whole city empties out. Whatever happens, it definitely happens at night... bursts of gunfire at dusk in late August and a corpse thrown near the city hall, which was immediately removed, made me realize that. During the day, Mexico is the most welcoming and lively country. People do not like to sit at home, socializing is their main joy, and Facebook is the most visited site. Mexicans do not live to work, but work to live. The city's fleet consists of accessible, ancient buses, as gasoline is very cheap. If in Brownsville they had air conditioning and cost a dollar (students with an ISIC card got a discount—25 cents), then in Mexico they lack special amenities and cost a student about 20 American cents. I usually took these to get to the border for work. A common sight was a mariachi who would enter the bus and play beautiful Mexican motifs for free; then the bus would quiet down and listen attentively, the driver would turn off the radio, and the youth would take off their headphones to hear the romantic classics. The mariachi never paid for the ride with money, exclusively with his talent. Be careful with Mexican flora and fauna: once, while running across a field, I crashed into a huge cactus. Huge centimeter-long thorns baptized me into this amazing country, and tweezers added to the pleasure... Everywhere I was accompanied by my friend, and for a long time, I could not understand why. But over time, my eyes opened wider. On the buses to and from the border, certain people constantly traveled who leaked information to their "masters" about the movements of necessary and "suspicious" people. Apparently, I fell under some criteria; I was constantly photographed under the guise of talking on a mobile phone, or they would simply go quiet when I spoke English. After the ominous cracking of Hector's fingers, everyone would start minding their own business and no longer paid attention to me. Their own, so to speak. Another rule—at the border, try to speak Spanish, less English. Almost everyone there is Mexican, and it is necessary for work.
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