breaking the bank rather than the bronco

I should know better.

But after six years of living in a house that requires me to make annual "trust deed" payments, you would think that I would have learned to ride the bureaucratic bank bronco.

So did I.

Because I live within the restricted zone where the Mexican Constitution prohibits foreigners from owning property outright in fee simple, I must pay annual tribute to a bank to maintain the legal fiction that it is the bank that owns my house rather than some nefarious outlander.

It is an interesting fiction.

Rather than amend Section 27 of the constitution that prohibits foreign ownership of land within 100 kilometers of the border and 50 kilometers from the coast, the Mexican congress passed a foreign investment law in 1995 that created the legal chimera I now indulge in -- along with many other foreigners. My bank (Bancomer in Cihuatlan) and I have an agreement called a fideicomiso.

I paid all of the money for the house. I insure it. I pay the taxes it generates. And I maintain it. But I do not have a fee simple interest in the property -- at least, not as we northerners use that term.

I pay the bank an annual fee and it lets me live here for 50 years. That agreement is then renewable for another 50 years. When I asked my attorney what happens then, he smiled and asked me if I had many any other plans in 2105. He had a point.

Last week Bancomer sent me an email reminding me my fee for 2019 is now due. If I wanted to keep living in the house with no name, I had best hie myself to Cihuatlan with my homage in hand.

Mexico, having a modern banking system, gave me a number of options to meet my financial obligations.

1. Pay at the bank in either US dollars or pesos. (The fee, like many bank international charges are denominated in US dollars. $522 in my case -- including VAT.)
2. Pay at the bank with a check. (I tried that once. My American bank account was found to be unsatisfactory for the task.)
3. Send a check to an address in California. (Or maybe it was to a prince in Nigeria. Too time sensitive for me.) An address in Mexico City is provided as an alternative.
4. Use a credit card. (That process is initiated by email. I have never tried it.)

The only option I have used with any success is driving to Cihuatlan and paying in US dollars. I just happened to have the exact amount handy because I was in The States recently and knew the fee was due.

But this is Mexico. And my task involved a bank. I stopped before I left the house and thought of everything that might go wrong. The most obvious bump was if the bank refused dollars, even though it has never done that in the past.

So, I took along my debit card. When none of the local ATMs are working (and that is not an uncommon occurrence here during the past year), Bancomer is where I go for cash. I could get pesos there if I needed them.

I thought I had outfoxed the system. (Please cue the hubris trombones.)

Yesterday I drove through Cihuartlan on another mission. The place was a mess. Traffic was snarled because the bridge was closed and the streets were clogged with sand washed down from the hills during our tropical depression on Sunday night. (The sand is a problem during our normal summer rains. Yesterday it was bad enough that cars were getting stuck in it.)

This morning, the bridge was opened, but the traffic was much worse. I knew why. A lot of people could not get to town yesterday because of high water. They were now in town doing what they needed to do.

One of the things they needed to do was go to the bank. There was a large line in the lobby waiting to use the bank's four ATMs. But that line was short compared to the people waiting for cashiers. My number was 47. Number 3 was being served.

The customer representative operating the new number machine was kind enough to ask why I was there. He took my letter to a cashier and returned with what he thought was bad news. I could not pay with dollars -- despite my payment history and what the letter clearly said.

I did not have that many pesos with me. Undeterred (because I had thought of this option), I retired to the ATM line. A line that had not moved since I entered the bank.

One machine was marked "out of service." But the same three people kept trying the other three machines. Over and over and over.

Finally, a very pleasant young lady informed us that the bank's system had crashed. Please come back tomorrow. And thank you for being a customer.

Everyone departed. Glum, but without grumbles.

I now need to gather up pesos to take to Cihuatlan tomorrow. I stopped at the Banamex ATM in Barra de Navidad. I did not need to even try. A notice informed me it was incapable of providing any cash -- for the moment. Come back another day.

I did learn a lesson, though. Next year I will have both US dollars and the equivalent in pesos in my hand. Mind you, I do not for one moment believe that some other requirement will jump up and send me home for another try.

What surprised me is that I did not have a northern fit -- even internally. Like the Mexicans in the ATM line, I left glum, but without grumbles.

And that is something Mexico has taught me. I may not get my way all of the time, but everything will turn out just fine.