El Checo en México: First days at the border

Well, finally it´s been launched. The process of our adaptation, about twenty hours far from the world´s hugest agglomeration, Mexico City. Even though I was about to move a little bit later, I´ve been living in Tapachula since the second week of March, 2011. The city is not worse than I had been told. It´s a big difference comparing to the DF. The pace of everything is much lower, people are more kind to each other, that´s right even for Taxi and Colectivos drivers. In this sense it even resembles Europe, the pedestrians are respected by the drivers. Hot, humid, sunny, rainy two hours in the afternoon, green and with a superb view on a Volcano Tacaná. Welcome to Tapachula!

For those who don´t have a clue where Tapachula situated is, find on your map the same southeast corner of Mexico, and you´re there. The 200 thousands town (according some Mexicans nearly 500 thousands) is only about 25 km far from the Pacific ocean and driving the same distance is needed to get to Guatemala. Before I came to Tapachula, I´d been told about its inmense importance in the production of coffee, this has been already confirmed by myself..personally. During a trip around the town you´ll find dozens and hundreds of coffee farms and plantations (fincas cafetaleras), situated in upper altitude than the hot and humid Tapachula is.

Coffee, cocoa and cattle – omnipresent and visible inside or in the neighbourhood of this town. A lot of the plantations are being owned by foreigners, particularly Germans, who arrived here in the beginning of the 20th century. Plantations and its Haciendas called Bremen, Hamburgo or Alpes say more the thousands words. Local people even claim, that on one of the Haciendas with fincas (the one where a museum of coffee is, see the photo) used to live the brother of Eva Braun, Mr. Braun after being forced to leave his native Germany.

Having mentioned Mr. Braun, other migrants are also omnipresent, but for me not visible till now. Obviously there must be hundreds of thousands of South and Central Americans crossing the border in the Tapachula region and looking for a better life, above all in the US. To those guys I´ll intend to help. Not to help them to cross the border itself, but help to protect their rights as all of them have. The human rights. According to the Mexican version, the state of Chiapas has started to protect the rigts of the transmigrants years ago, is supposed to be the best protector among the Mexican states, and it boasts about it a lot. I´ll see in the following months, whether it´s near the reality or if it´s about nice words only.

By the way, even the Guatemalans who don´t intend living in Mexico nor wish to continue to the USA, visit Tapachula a lot. For Guatemalans, nearly everything is much cheaper in Mexico than in their native country. They visit the Tapachula´s mall Sam´s as well as Bodega Aurrera, some of them in cars (also of the Czech mark - Škoda Octavia and Škoda Fabia), however the majority coming on the typical, old yellow school buses, imported from the USA. They´re shopping like crazy, similar as the Austrians used to do in the Czech border region after the 1990. They even don´t need a passport, if living in the region which borders Mexico and if they´ll stay max 3 days I think.

And me? What will I do in Tapachula? I´ll seek for the opportunities, there are obviously dozens of them. To export coffee, cocoa, mango? To import high quality Czech goods and machinery, Czech beer? The descendents of Germans will love the original central-european Budweiser Bier, Pilsner or Bernard, won´t they. What about encouraging the tourists to visit this forgotten part of Chiapas? Definitely, I want to get involved in the matter of human rights protection. Too many ideas which I need to put to earth, and I´ve already started.

At the beggining, I will probably impart classes at some of the local schools, among them universities. Classes of what? Of anything. For them, it´s a secondary concern. Ridiculous? Not. Just the reflection of being a European with some (actually few) experience and living on the southeast Border.
Anyway, keep your fingers crossed, please! I will need it. Thanks folks...