El Grito Venezolano y El Grito de Dolores
A stop on the night bus from Oaxaca to Mexico City a week before Mexican Independence Day.
Last month I visited Mexico for a little over two weeks around Independence Day. I stayed with some family, friends, and my Spanish teacher’s family mostly in the southern part of the country but also in the capital (CDMX). I’m going to write a few posts about the Mexican bus and public transportation system and the parties held around the national holiday celebrating Miguel Hidalgo and other Mexican revolutionaries. Hopefully I can make it a little more interesting and a little less cringe than your average gringo travel blog. This first part is about taking the night bus and struggling to comprehend the injustices happening in front of me in real time.
ADO: Oaxaca -> CDMX; Sept. 8, 2023, 12:50am
The bus stop was a 45 minute walk from my hostel. Originally I had thought the station was in the center of town but overnight buses were moved to another smaller station a neighborhood over. So I lugged my massive backpack and made the trek. It was dry and warm in the early evening, I didn’t see a single pedestrian except for a dog walker and a limpiador with a massive palm frond broom sweeping the cobble stone street next to the police station. It was half past midnight when I arrived at the station. With twenty minutes to spare, I bought some water and gum at the OXXO next door. The rest of the bus riders looked far less like tourists than I, let alone gringos. A Black father wore a heavily worn green Mexico national team jersey and held tightly onto his son’s hand as he watched a Spongebob dub in the lobby.
I decided to put my bags under the bus this time as someone at the hostel had just told me he had his wallet stolen from his bag under the bus seat a week ago. I never experienced any problems like that, but I figured I would try it this way, and fell asleep in the large recliner chair before the bus left the station. My body was ready to collapse into the cushion, no need for neck support.
Two hours later I awoke to a sudden halt and a man coming onto the bus, “¡Despiértense! ¡Despiértense!” The lights were still off inside and the bus driver sat at the wheel. It was pouring rain, the headlights illuminating a temporary road block and what looked like road flares blaring red as if there were construction ahead. Though, instead of men at work in hi-vis vests there were two camo clad men with rifles.
“¡Despiértense! ¡Despiértense!” the man repeated, his outline was dark and facial features hard to make out but he started walking up the aisle, “Pasaportes, papeles e identificación”
Panic set in. Everything I had was underneath the bus. The teenager sitting next to me wore an oversized Naruto hoodie and he shifted in his seat, seeming far more anxious than I, which was cause for me to start panicking more. Scrambling to touch every pocket of my pants and coat even when I knew all I had on me was my phone and gum. The front rows of the bus were mostly lighter skinned Mexican women who didn’t stir at all or even bother reaching for IDs. The man just slowly passed them scanning the seats sternly repeating, “¡Despiértense! ¡Dame pasaportes, papeles e identificación!”
As the man approached I noticed a few people start to get up to show him some papers, before he instructed them to get off the bus. I reached for my pockets one last time as if ready to pull out the tongues and some dust and a little fly would come out and disappear. Communicating like a cartoon character would be much better, while dreading my ability to explain myself in mediocre Spanish. Even though this man probably worked for the government—I’m a White American tourist. Perhaps, the person the state catered to the most, therefore I shouldn’t be worried. And yet, I was fidgeting. The woman in front of me was one of the light skinned Mexican women. I told her my passport was with the luggage below.
“No te preocupes, joven,” she assured me. “Esto sólo para Venezolanos.”
My face must have shown that I didn’t understand. Because she pointed behind the man from the government at the Black father now carrying his kid in his arms as they started down the steps of the bus and out into the rain, “Sólo venezolanos.”
The last time I went to Mexico City was in January. I was walking around the center with a few guys from my hostel looking for food when a cop placed a red flashing barricade right in front of us on the crosswalk. A procession of black cars started zooming by. We joked that it must be the president. AMLO had a meeting with Biden and Trudeau that day to talk about a possible new trade agreement and immigration. Only it was. After a line of SUVs, a limo with American flags waving in the front rushed past. Inexplicably the back window lit up and there was Biden’s face. He wore an ear to ear smile like a happy puppy ready to stick his head and tongue out the window at the bright city lights above him. None of us managed to take a picture or video and we figured nobody would believe us.
In the morning I bought a paper and saw the trio had been discussing the Venezuelan migrant crisis1 and how they would collectively deal with the mass migration. The tone of the article felt like the migrants were a horse trade between the countries. Even as AMLO criticized Biden for continuing policies of sanctions on Venezuela that fuelled the crisis, the United States and Mexico had brokered a deal. Mexico would accept some Venezuelans who crossed the US border by foot or by swimming and were rejected asylum since they crossed “illegally.” But I admittedly didn’t really understand what was going to happen then. All I saw was an old golden retriever in a limo, while the Canadian guy I was with said, “that was awesome! Literally nobody would care if we saw Justin Truedeu unless he were in Black Face again.”
“¡Levántate joven!” The man was now at my aisle, breathing down a whiff of tobacco. I reflexively reached for my pocket again, still nothing. Only I wasn’t the joven in question. The guy in the Naruto hoodie got up and joined a super short darker skinned woman from across the aisle who was now showing the man some papers that he inspected with a tiny flashlight. The man gave the papers back and continued up the aisle, then the two slowly exited the bus leaving their bags and a blanket behind.
Outside a crowd of people from the bus started to amass under what looked more or less like a wooden tent that could somewhat protect from the rain, if it weren’t coming in at an angle and the ground wasn’t already turned to mud. A flood light illuminated them as if this were a makeshift interrogation room. Most were in pajamas or sweatpants, but a few wore soccer jerseys, t-shirts, and jeans. The group was also notability majority black or much darker skinned morenos.
“Sé que eres Venezolana,” the man said. He was now returning from the back and stopped about five rows behind me. “Eres Venezolana, guapa. ¡Identificación y dejate el autobús!”
A young woman was sitting in a window seat. She wore big wire framed glasses, had straight light brown hair, and was a lighter complexion as the rest of the people exiting the bus. She shifted in her seat and started looking out the window, hiding her eyes from the man staring down at her. “¡Sé que eres Venezolana!”
She started crying, but reached for her purse and got up right before the man could grab her arm over the passenger between them. She marched past me. What was a few tears became sobs as she joined the rest of the Venezualans on the side of the road. Once the man followed behind her and got off the bus the Mexican ladies got out of their seats and leaned over to the right side window to see what was happening. I joined, only the bus driver remained sitting with his hands on the wheel looking forward. The driver rolled the window down and I started to hear the rain hitting the asphalt and bus outside. The voice of the man was not quite loud enough to make out any words, and I felt like I’d hardly be able to understand him anyways. But the driver also kept the door open as if to ensure the ladies in the front rows could hear. This didn’t feel like chisme. Everyone, completely silent.
The man who wrangled everyone lit a cigarette, inhaling between pauses in his monologue. Nobody in the crowd of Venezualans said anything. They simply wore the storm. It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. Once the man finished his cigarette he stomped out the butt and ended his speech, motioning to the two soldiers behind them. The soldiers moved the red flashing lights and the blockade barrier out of the road, then started to lead the Venezuelans back onto the bus. The Mexican ladies at the window scurried quietly back to their seats as if to ensure nothing was seen or heard before the man and the Venezuelans returned. They filed in one by one in silence, slowly reoccupying their seats. The woman in the glasses was first in line and sniffled as she walked by me. I looked for the father and the spongebob kid, they were in the back of the line. The boy looked huge wrapped in his father’s arms, but he still lifted his son high with his back straight. When they finally got back on the bus another young woman broke the silence, “¡Soy Venezolana!” she exclaimed with a laugh then repeated. “¡Soy Venezolana!”
The woman in the seat in front of me pretended to be asleep, only to have just been woken by the Grito Venezolano. A few joined in a nervous chuckle. Most didn’t respond at all.
A week later hundreds of thousands of people would gather in the Zocalo in Mexico City, with millions more watching on TV, to hear El Grito de Independencia. There AMLO would say, “¡Vivan los migrantes y pueblos indígenas!” and the crowd would shout back, “¡Vivan!”
But then, the Naruto guy sat back next to me without a word, just wet and struggling to get comfortable enough to rest. The bus started up again. For about thirty minutes the only light on the highway was our headlights, the engine’s dull hum the only noise. I eventually managed to fall back asleep, waking up to Mexico City traffic and the sunrise over La TAPO station. My seat partner stayed sleeping till we got off the bus. In the night my phone charger had slid under his seat and he handed it back to me with a smile before getting up. I thanked him and he left with the woman across the aisle, they had no bags beneath the bus.
The Mexican woman who sat in front joined me in grabbing our bags and left giving me a nod, “Cuidate joven. Ten un bonito viaje.”
I didn’t take this as an opportunity to ask her about what happened earlier. I gave another hapless confused smile and waved, “gracias, igualmente.”
All my things were in order: clothes, little camera, passport, wallet with a few hundred pesos and bank card. Just as I should have expected, completely untouched. Outside the station I ordered some morning birria tacos and a coffee then sat at the food cart as I logged onto the TAPO wifi. People passed by, off someplace else. Everyone from my bus ride had left. I sent a WhatsApp message to my Spanish teacher in Chilpancingo that I had made it to CDMX safely and would see her soon. I asked about what had just happened. She just told me that the government was having all kinds of trouble with immigration but she didn't really understand my description. I sipped my coffee and resolved to appreciate that all I was, was confused.
Venezuelans being the largest group of refugee asylum seekers in the US this year, Biden just last week announced that they will begin deporting refugees once again (around the same time he announced they’d continue illegally building Trump’s border wall on indigenous land in the Rio Grande Valley).