Still Free to Break the Rules in Baja
Irrepressible Utopian Lawlessness in Popotla, B.C.
Brian McNeece
My friend Randy threaded his Jeep through a line of parked cars along a narrow, rutted dirt road toward the small fishing village of Popotla just south of the wall of the Foxploration studios in Baja California. It’s a ritual he’s been following all summer to supply his evening meal with fish so fresh that it slept in the ocean--this morning. Like the village of Puerto Nuevo two generations ago, Popotla has sprung up casually from a group of spindly, dilapidated tiendas on the cliff above the water and a quarter mile cove of sandy beach.
Every morning a dozen pangas bring in whatever the sea offers to sell right out of the boat or off wooden tables on the beach. Today, there’s all manner of rockfish, some 20 pound yellowtail tuna, sea urchin, sea bass, crabs, clams, oysters, and lobsters out of season. All along the beach, other vendors are at the ready to clean and fillet your fish--even fry it if you like. There are oysters to be shucked and prepared with onion, tomato, salsa, and fresh lime, 10 pesos each or a dollar, whatever you got in your pocket. Pick your fish; whatever it is, you’ll pay about 35 pesos a kilo or around a $1.22 a pound. A dollar goes a long way here.
By 10:00 a.m. this Sunday, the beach is nearly full of cars, and they’re still streaming in. This is perhaps the main draw. Vans and pickups abound with kayaks, umbrellas, bicycles, motorcycles strapped to the roof or filling the rear ends. Visitors are very sanguine; this morning I see a nearly new Mercedes sedan plowing through the soft sand passageway that funnels the cars onto the sandy stretch. Every other kind of car finds its way to spend the day a few yards from the surging sea.
This is the beauty of Mexico. In the US, once an activity is found to be the least bit risky or of potential annoyance to someone else, it’s banned. Apparently not here. Just about anything goes. Part of the Mexican character is to be more than tolerant of a wide variety of happenings. If there’s a guy changing his tire on the narrow entryway and partially blocking the route in, everyone else just blithely waits his turn. Just because a two-lane road has become a one-lane road, don’t worry, be happy. Traffic clots up at the entrance to the beach. No sweat; we’ll work it out.
The vendors seem to form a happy cooperative. When one guy needs to weigh a fish to charge his customer, he carries it by the tail over to the neighboring stand and plops it on the scale.
What else is for sale at Popotla? A crowd anywhere means business opportunities. The popsicle man rings his bell and pushes his cart over mounds of drying kelp. Get a mango on a stick with half a lime impaled atop it. Don’t like the glare on the beach? The sunglass man has a beautiful array of glasses in his fold up display case. Or get a hat from the tiny hat lady wearing her wares about 10 high on her head. With her free arms, she’ll sell you necklaces, bracelets, or wind chimes made from shells. A youth not out of his teens rolls a wheelbarrow type mechanism displaying a series of cubicles filled with Mexican candies of every color.
The place seems to be infused with a casual sensuality, a place where everyone can let their hair, and other body parts, down. Most of the women wear very light, flimsy blouses that don’t leave much to the imagination while still being properly opaque. The fishermen are mostly men, while the little colorful puestos selling oysters and clams are run by women. There’s a languid side to the busy-ness of the vendors and the visitors to the beach, and lots of smiles.
I take a quick jog down the beach. Dome tents are tucked up against the 15-foot bluff for protection against the sea breeze. Pop shades and even carports create an instant zone of influence. Music blasts from cars. Umbrellas, tables, and backyard grills create an instant beach side city. Kids play soccer, ride bicycles. Dog frolic in the waves while just past the smoothly breaking faces, another trio scamper in the cove on Jetskis. It seems that whatever you want to do, you can do it in Popotla.
This is what I thought till I chanced to actually read the large sign that guards the entrance to the cove. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but just about everything I’d just rejoiced at seeing was in fact banned by the authorities. In both English and Spanish, beachgoers were forbidden from driving on the beach (the stated fine was $36-1800 dollars--ten to 500 times the minimum daily wage). Perhaps one hundred cars had defied that order. Also banned: glass containers, dogs, bicycles, beach fires, fireworks—you name it—it was banned. Might as well have been in Mission Beach, where the boardwalk is adorned by bulleted lists of No, No, and No. (At the bottom some frustrated Mission Beach visitor had added, “No Fun!”)
Luckily for me and the several hundred revelers this Saturday, this being Mexico, no one is paying attention to the rules. Randy drives his jeep out onto the beach and pulls in about fifty yards into the maelstrom for a quick and easy approach to “Mariscos Mary's”—a seafood stand with five-foot Mary at the helm. Randy is a regular there. As we pull in, two of her young male workers look through the window, “Oh, a new guy!” they exclaim (in English). We make a beeline for Mary’s stand, where she efficiently is opening oysters and clams for a line of eager customers.
Mary can shuck an oyster effortlessly. Since I have impaled myself a couple of times with an oyster knife, and Randy has never wanted to risk his dentist hands to open one, we watch Mary carefully to learn her secrets. First she takes a large kitchen knife, and with the butt edge breaks off a little of the oyster across from its hinge point. Then she inserts a small paring knife into the slit she has made and slides the knife to the side. The oyster opens right up. Randy has an “aha!” moment. “She cut the abductor muscle!” he says. No strength needed with this method, and no risk of stabbing the palm of your hand. She’s a master, and now we know how to become one too.
On the sand in front of Mary’s stand sit three tables with plastic chairs and umbrellas. The tables are topped with baskets full of saltine crackers, tostada crisps, salt, pepper, napkins, and a whole array of bottled salsas. At the table next to us, a couple is settling down to some serious partying. A thin woman in a loose tank top is pouring tequila into a paper cup filled with Squirt.
I ask the waiter, Chuy, why the name “Mary’s’ and not “Maria’s.” “’Mary’ sounds better than Maria,” he tells me in English, as he replenishes our basket of crackers. We leave it at that.
New entertainment has begun next door. A guy in a Ford Ranchero circa 1969, is trying to back off the soft sand, but his wheels keep digging in, and the trench they’re digging prevent him from moving laterally enough to clear the parked cars on both sides. He’s getting plenty of advice from the waiters, fishermen, and tourists who are watching. About the same time that Randy and I look at each other, someone yells, “Get the guy in the Jeep to pull him out!” in Spanish. In a flash, we’re out of our chairs and into rescue mode. Randy has a nylon tow strap wrapped around a high-lift jack on his front bumper. Before I can get to it, another Popotla fellow traveler has begun unwinding it. One of his compas (buddies) has taken a pin out of Randy’s bumper, and together they immediately connect the two vehicles. I post myself behind to keep errant toddlers out of the way, and in a jiffy the Ranchero is freed up.
All the while, cars have been streaming in. The candy man, the hat lady, dogs, bicyclists, motorcyclists, are passing in front of and behind our rescue project. Now a musical combo, complete with charro outfits, enters the scene. They stop at the table of the tequila-sipping couple and fire up accordion, violins, guitar and a couple of trumpets. Everything happens in Popotla.
Since we’re in rescue mode, our team also extricates a weary looking matron in a late model sedan that heavily dug into the sand. We then set to our business of buying dinner. Randy, an old hand, sits on the tailgate of a pickup with the clam vendor and his gunny sacks full of two varieties of large clams. They look like old friends enjoying the hubbub. I elbow my way through a crowd alongside a beached panga. The bottom of the open fiberglass boat is full of foot-long fish, some silver, some darkly striped. Patrons are picking their own fish and attempting to get the attention of three fishermen who are sharing one handheld, spring loaded scale.
What kind of fish is that? I ask one of the fishermen. “Mojarra,” he answers. “It’s seabass,” says one of the many bilingual folks next to me. Actually, I thought lenguado was seabass. “How about that one?” I ask pointing to one of the few striped fish. “Mojarra,” says the fisherman. “They’re all mojarra,” he continues. That’s helpful. How much? 35 pesos a kilo. Everything is 35 pesos a kilo. I grab three fish. Somebody hands me a plastic shopping bag. I dump them in and try to get the guy’s attention. He hooks my bag to a very weathered brass scale and asks me what it says. The letters are tiny and the whole thing is so corroded that I have to grab the scale and turn it in the daylight to make out the numbers. Finally I see the numbers—it’s in pounds, and my fish weigh about four of them. “Ah,” I say, “I guess it’s two kilos.” Turns out the fisherman can’t see his own scale and has to rely on the testimony of his customers to tell him how much to charge. “Seventy pesos,” he states, then throws one more small fish into my bag to seal the deal. “Sale,” says I. “Done.”
Our buying done, we get in line in 8” deep sea water sloshing around our tires, but something’s wrong. Nothing’s moving. I get out of the Jeep and go to investigate. The funnel point of the entrance to the beach is blocked by a Cherokee trying to back one of the pangas up the steep slope next to the entranceway, finished for the day. Finally, the panga is put away and the Cherokee pulls out. But we now have a new problem. The cars trying to get in and the cars trying to get out are beak to beak, with no room to move.
I wander uphill along the line of stuck motorists. Oh there’s something different. A Ford Explorer carries a carload of happy revelers, but wait, that’s odd. The driver and the passenger are both very large-boned in the face. Unlike most of the women on the beach, these two wear nice makeup and have their hair up. Elegant earrings dangle, the baubles show off the lovely brown skin of their perfect complexion and bare shoulders. But that’s strange; something just a little too large and rough gives them away; they are both rather good-looking men. In the spirit of Popotla, I smile.
Moving further back into the clot of cars, I see the problem: folks trying to get in have taken the entire middle lane, so no one can get by to get out. I start telling motorists to move over. If everyone cooperates, the wide two lane road (with cars parked on both sides, aimed in both directions) can be a perfectly serviceable four-lane road. The security people seem befuddled; it’s not until I move down the line of cars trying to get recalcitrant motorists to move over that they follow suit.
I return to the top of the cove, where a hawker waves a menu at me and invites me into the corner restaurant. A short swarthy man in his late twenties or early 30s, Pedro assures me that the chef in his restaurant is special. “You’ll find dishes here that you won’t get anywhere else,” he tells me in good English. “Look at the house special.” Cars are coming in now, and he interrupts himself to invite them to turn his way and come inside. Others are doing the same. “They don’t know what to do,” he says with disdain. "They’re too pushy. I just tell them what we have. Once they come inside, they’ll be back.”
“How did you learn English?” is my obligatory question.
“I used to live in LA, had some trouble, came here. Now, I’m not leaving. I love it here. There’s good money to make here. People are doing well in Popotla.”
We’re on the way out with our clams and five fish, full of oysters and the unbridled entrepreneurial energy that is Popotla.
bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 08.11.09 @ 06:25 PM PST [link]