On Mexican Time: a new life in San Miguel by Tony Cohan: book review

Tony and Masako, an American couple, holiday in Mexico in January 1985 for three weeks. By June, they had sold their house in California and moved permanently to the sixteenth century hill-town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. On Mexican Time (2001) is a true story by a travel writer as he leaves a hectic and jaded life (where people “are busy climbing up, clinging to, falling off career ladders”) for the leisurely pace and warmth of a neigbouring land.

It is a place of bougainvillea, cobblestone streets, siestas and fiestas. It’s a place of margaritas, licuados, tortilla chips and steamed tamales. It’s a place where tourists repeatedly return to capture the seductive and charming ambience of a simpler life. It is here that Tony and Masako find and refurbish a dilapidated 250-year-old house (for the equivalent of a year’s salary) and become subsumed into the everyday activities of the town. The frustrations of any house renovation are magnified by the pace of “Mexican time:” “Ahorita doesn’t mean right away, pronto doesn’t mean fast, manana may not mean tomorrow. And if somebody says quince dias, two weeks, you’re out of luck.” These irritations are interspersed with life’s unexpected occurrences, such as earthquakes, murders, water shortages, and the filming of a Julio Iglesias video.

The historical richness of two civilizations: Mesoamerican (Aztec, Mayan, Toltec, Olmec, and Zapotec) and Spanish colonial are barely mentioned, giving way to solely an account of the contemporary life of European and American foreigners interacting with local gringos. Many events that could have been interesting, and expanded upon, were given limited space. Due to this, the novel tended to be rather a fragmented portrayal of their life. It’s more of a diary of transition, from living in a dilapidated house to a comfortable home and their day-to-day existence in a country that both fascinates and frustrates them.

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