Making a Living

     We were driving across Jalisco and I asked my friend Luis, who had grown up in nearby Guadalajara, a question.
     "This may be a stupid question, but I'm wondering - are there still people in Mexico who dress in the traditional white clothing, with a serape and a sombrero?"
     "Yes," he answered, "But not like they always show, with a lazy guy sleeping under a cactus."
     There was an edge, a defensiveness to his usually easygoing manner.  "You see how hard these people work - look at them here, trying to sell things on the street."
      And that's what we saw.  All along the road you would pass little stands where tacos were being made or fruit sold.  At a railroad crossing, a woman with a baby bundled to her chest would offer to sell you flowers as you stopped.  At one stop light in the city, a full array of products and services were offered, from window washing to bottled water and cell phone plans.
     Nowhere was this drive to eek out a living in whatever way available more evident, though, than when we were back at the home of Luis's parents in Guadalajara.
    All day and into the night you would hear a distinctive horn, a recorded jingle, or a tune from a passing car, truck, or bicycle. The residents had them memorized and knew without looking outside if it was the propane delivery truck, the ice cream man, taco vendors, or the guy who collects empty bottles. Some of the purveyors looked like organized, official businesses - the propane people would stop their truck, remove a ladder and scamper to the roof to change a tank, or wheel it through the front door and exchange the new one for the old one. Others were much more informal - the recycling man had three homemade metal cylindrical holders on the back of his motorcycle, each designed to hold one five-gallon plastic bucket, containing exactly 20 beer bottles. Once, there was a knock on the door and two young men asked if they could trim the tree in front of the house. They had just completed work on a tree next door, neatly shaping the branches into a cube and then loading the trimmings into the front basket of a three-wheeled cargo bicycle. Luis's sisters politely declined, saying that their dad would be disappointed if he couldn't do the work himself. The tree trimmers laughed and agreed that it would be best to let dad handle the job.
    That was typical of the interactions that I observed time and time again between those offering unofficial services and their potential customers. Never was there a sense of overbearing high-pressure salesmanship nor a rude rebuke from the customer. Even the persistent squeegie men at red lights could usually be dissuaded with a shaking of the head and a waggling of the fingers.
     What was unsaid, but obvious, was that these people were hustling, in the best sense of the word, were working hard to make a living in whatever way they could.
     No one sleeping under a cactus here.