go home, tapatios

I have used the Jaws analogy so often, I feel like I am beating a dead fish.

But here I go again.

In Peter Benchley's mind, Amity Island was one of those places that existed solely because tourists were willing to shovel money out of their pockets in exchange for a good time. When the tourists came, the good people of Amity Island survived. When they didn't, they didn't.

In Benchley's Manichean world, the universe of Amity Island was populated by two groups of people. The people who earned a living off of the tourists and the couple of people whose job it was to secure the peace. The appearance of a shark set them head-to-head in a zero-sum confrontation.

The little villages where I play and live have a lot in common with Amity Island. Though, the local livelihoods here are not one-trick economic ponies, Mexican and, to a lesser extent, northern tourism plays a major part in the daily struggle for people who live here.

That is why I was a little surprised to see a series of videos and photographs posted on our local Facebook groups. Some of my Mexican neighbors (many of them dependent on tourist pesos) took to the streets with signs warning people to stay in their houses. They were stationed at the entrance of Barra de Navidad and at the traffic circle near the bus station. High-Attention locations for tourists.

Even though the reminder could equally apply to residents of Barra, the signs were there to discourage Semana Santa revelers from decamping to the beach as if the coronavirus was still only hanging out in south China.

I had to make a supplies trip to San Patricio yesterday. The sign-holders were gone, but the sign was still there -- chiding those who were so bold to violate the health of the community.

Something similar happened in Oregon during Spring break this year. Oregon coastal towns are similar to Amity Island. They need tourists. But not now.

The residents of several small towns harassed the tourists until they left. For some reason, I have visions of pitchforks and torches, but that would simply be how I would film it.

In both cases, people with economic motives to act differently were willing to look beyond the immediate to a pending disease, and will end up paying for it with reduced incomes.

I am tempted to call it heroic. But it is not. It is simply how we humans act at our best.

Because this is Mexico, none of the demonstrators had that hectoring high-moral-dudgeon that some northerners have been demonstrating. There was no finger-wagging. No insulting. No questionable reductionism.

Yesterday I had an exchange with a reader who loves Mexico, but who flew north to be in his country during this episode. I told him that people here are generally complying with the stay-home order, but, when I went to Melaque yesterday, I was surprised at the number of people on the streets and in the shops.

His response shocked me. "You can't fix stupid."

I knew only a few people out and about yesterday, but every person I talked with had a reason to be there. One was picking up her final paycheck. Another was headed to the hardware store to fix the water connection to his house. Several had run out of food and were in town quickly to replenish the larder. "Stupid" would not be an adjective I would have chosen for any of them.

And that gets me back to Benchley's Manichean screenplay with his world of The Good and The Evil. That division is far too common in our discussions about daily life -- part of the sewage I suspect that slops over from national and international politics. And I am just as suspectible to it.

I have discovered I cannot escape that intellectual cul-de-sac unless I indulge in a very simple exercise. Every time I see someone doing something that my judgmental-self starts to rail about, I try to see life through their eyes.

Maybe the rudeness I perceived was simply a father's concern for his daughter who has gone missing. Maybe the 12-year old on the moto is not being reckless with his health; he is on his way to the pharmacy to buy medicine for his grandmother.

The best thing about the exercise is that I get to take myself out of my anger and prejudice, and to once again learn that I do not control the world. I am simply a passenger with the rest of you, and we are all going to get through it together.

Eventually.