Lida is an accomplished author and journalist who has lived in Mexico City for the last 15 years. He has written a number of books, which you can read about here on his website.

David Lida. Photo by Federico Gama

The following is a short chapter about a dollar-a-dance hostess known as a fichera in Mexico City.

Paty
The Villa Rica is a low-lit bar with amber lighting, wood-paneled walls and a jukebox that doesn’t have a single song recorded after 1980. It is an example of what are known as antros de ficheras, and I have never seen them outside of Mexico City.

A fichera is a woman who, despite what is usually a boiler-shaped body, dresses in a short skirt and a snug blouse, and sells her company to a male clientele. Most of a fichera’s clients are after nothing more than her sympathetic presence: a woman he can flirt with who will not rebuff his advances; a woman to whom he can recount the various misadventures and misunderstandings of his life; a woman with whom he can dance to the familiar ballads on the jukebox. Ficheras earn no salary, but are given tips as well as a percentage of the price of the drinks the customers order for them; hence, most have cast-iron constitutions and, as they say in Mexico City, toman como cosacos (drink like Cossacks).

Some ficheras are game for further adventures; if the customer pays an exit fee to the management, she will accompany him to a nearby hotel. Still, most customers prefer companionship; ficheras are closer to geishas than to prostitutes.

Many men like to visit ficheras when they are feeling low. Mexican males, the weight of machismo on their shoulders, are emotionally diffident and cannot express their feelings to the people with whom they are supposedly intimate; a fichera is a convenient receptacle for their sorrows and shames. There is a particular fichera at the Villa Rica named Paty that I like to visit, but not to recount my anguish. Like Sheherazade, Paty has a thousand and one stories, and listening to her invariably makes whatever troubles I may have recede in the rearview mirror.

Paty wears enormous eyelashes and thick makeup, changes her hair color on a regular basis, and flaunts her enormous breasts with low-cut blouses. About five feet tall, she tends to sport nine-inch heels. Her smile is wide, perpetual and, as far as I can tell, genuine. She has been working at the Villa Rica since 1985, her anno horribilus, when not only did the earthquake leave her and her family homeless, but her husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (a disease she refers to as “European”). Her salary as a waitress in the coffee shop at Sanborn’s wasn’t enough to sustain them and her two children, so she began her career as a fichera.

One of Paty’s regular clients is an ancient Spaniard who owns the Hotel Toledo down the street where the ficheras take their customers. He only likes to watch – Paty assures me hasn’t had an erection in the 20 years she has known him – so he takes her to swingers’ clubs, where men are not allowed to enter unaccompanied by women.

“But he makes me take off my clothes, and in those places if you’re naked, you have to let anyone do what they want. You can’t say no. Even when you have your clothes on, they still get handsy with you – with their fingers and everything.” She made a face like she had sipped spoiled milk. “Having sex is better because at least they’ve got a condom on. That guy’s fingers …” She uses the Mexican’s universal expletive for disgust: “Guácala. I couldn’t sleep that night.”
Another man, who always dressed in a suit and tie, would take her to a four-star hotel. Before entering, he would buy a bunch of roses on the corner. He would ask Paty to strip and eat the rose petals. “And that was that. He never got naked; he always kept his boxers on. He’d let me have whatever I wanted from the minibar and would pay me more than three times the going rate.”

After losing the 2006 presidential elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who had resigned his post as mayor of Mexico City to launch his campaign) arranged mass demonstrations on Avenida Juárez and Paseo de la Reforma, the two biggest streets near the Villa Rica. Getting around that part of the city became close to impossible, and nearly all the bar’s customers disappeared. Paty, who usually earns about $45 a night, was coming home with less than ten. “The other night a guy came and bought me 40 tequilas,” she said one night while the protests were in full swing. Not knowing when the next time a big spender would arrive, she drank them all. “After all that, I vomited through my nose, but at least I made some money.”

Paty didn’t blame López Obrador for her hard luck. “It’s God’s will,” she said. “In the Bible you’ve got the years of the fat cows and the years of the skinny cows. Right now it’s skinny time. God squeezes us but he doesn’t strangle us.” She put her hand on my thigh. “You want to go to the Señorial steam baths? They remodeled them. You don’t know how beautiful they came out. We can go to a private room. They have cable TV with a porno channel.”

Nothing was left to the imagination in what is one of the world’s biggest Passion plays. Holy Week, or Semana Santa, sees the staging of a number of scenes from the Bible on the streets of Iztapalapa, including Palm Sunday and the Resurrection. But none are as dramatic as the reenactment of Good Friday.

An estimated 2 million people descended on Iztapalapa on Friday to witness the 166th annual crucifixion, this year of Diego Villagran, the 18-year-old local playing the role of Jesus.

The sheer number of people taking part in or watching what was well-organized chaos was similar to portrayals of the crucifixion one might have seen in films such as “Ben-Hur” and Mel Gibson’s controversial “The Passion of the Christ.” Babies and young children sat atop their parents’ shoulders, crammed into crowded streets and pushed up against police barriers as some of the 4,000 actors in the street play bayed for the blood of “Christ”.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s ubiquitous street vendors showed no shyness in taking advantage of the religious event. They were everywhere, flogging sunhats, bottled water and stamps of the face of Jesus, while offering to imprint the faces of those willing to pay five pesos.

The heat of the April sun, combined with the severe water shortages that the borough also experienced over the week, made the setting feel uncomfortably real. When the blood-soaked “Jesus” staggered past, surrounded by a jeering crowd that kept pushing him to the ground and laughing, it was hard to resist the urge to wade in and save him from his violent destiny.

But Villagran was well prepared for his ordeal. He has been in training for the role since January, when he was selected during a casting process from 20 young men from the neighborhood (watch the video above, filmed over a period of three months, to see Villagran prepping for his big day).

Playing the lead made Villagran into a temporary celebrity here in Mexico, and he says he has had at least one media interview a day since he was given the role.

Over the last few months in the build-up to his big week, Villagran trained daily on the Cerro de la Estrella, a steep hill that doubled as Mount Calvary on Friday. His preparation included dragging a 190-pound cross around a 2.5-mile running track and doing push-ups with a brick on his back.

But he also said that he had to do some spiritual preparation for the role that included, naturally, regular visits to church, but also what he described as “finding himself, within himself,” and asking himself at every step of the process why he was doing it.

“It doesn’t scare me to play this role – it makes me feel proud and gives me confidence,” says Villagran, who is unusually tall for his 18 years and stands head and shoulders above most of the men in the neighborhood.

Although a big guy, Villagran is still boyishly handsome, and he was striking in the role of Jesus. But he says that acting isn’t something he’s planning to pursue, adding that he’s more interested in becoming an engineer at the state-owned oil company Pemex.

“Since I was little, I’ve watched the procession, and I always wanted to see myself there – I always wanted to play the main role,” says Villagran.

“And now that they’ve given me the chance, I’m going to make the most of it.”

Well, he certainly did.

Click here for the New York Times coverage of the event, and here for the Washington Post piece.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Video: Diego Villagran trains for the role of Jesus on Iztapalapa’s Cerro de la Estrella. Photo image: A video still taken from the above film. Click here for more images on Flickr. Video and photographs by Deborah Bonello

Julio Cesar, a 19-year-old metalworker, crawled on his knees for five hours to reach the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Surrounded by four of his friends, who had to physically support him in the final meters as he scaled the steps of the huge church, Cesar was fulfilling a promise.

“I asked the Virgin to look after my children,” he said, his young face burned red by the sun on this December day. His prayers were answered, he said, and this was his act of thanks to her.

Cesar was one of an estimated 7 million Mexican Catholics who made the annual pilgrimage to the basilica in Mexico City this week. Today is expected to bring the largest numbers of people to the spot that tradition holds is where the Virgin de Guadalupe, Mexico’s most revered saint, first appeared.

Bertin Nava, a salesman, and his girlfriend Mayra Sanchez, a hairdresser, both from the working class Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City, walked hand in hand towards the church. Each of them had a small statue of the Virgin tucked under an arm.

“This is a family tradition. My father started coming when I was small and started the custom of coming every year, walking from the house to here,” said Nava.

He and Mayra had been walking for six hours. Nearby, Ricardo Lozano walked for two and a half days from Atlixco, in the central state of Puebla. He arrived Thursday. He had a thick blanket rolled and tied to his back, and walked gingerly on feet rubbed raw by his boots.

But he was in high spirits.

“I have a strong faith and wanted to make the journey to the Virgin,” he said.

Two churches actually stand on Tepeyac hill in the north of Mexico City, known as La Villa de Guadalupe – the old and the new basilicas. Both were besieged by visitors Thursday, many of them with heavy, wooden-framed effigies of the Virgin tied to their backs.

The show of faith was a formidable sight.

This post was written and recorded for La Plaza.

Image: Julio Cesar, a 19-year-old metalworker, crawled on his knees for five hours yesterday to reach the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times. Go to Flickr to see more photos of the annual pilgrimage.

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The religious icons are being bourn by Mexico’s millions of faithful, who for the last few days have been making the annual pilgrimage, many from miles away, to the city’s two Basilicas de Guadalupe.

Today is to many Mexicans one of the most important days in the religious calendar, and millions will make the trip to the city’s Tepeyac Hill, where the Virgin of Guadalupe is believed to have first appeared nearly five centuries ago. People come from all over Mexico, many of them traveling- some even walking – from states such as Morelos, Hidalgo and Queretaro.

The usual Mexican street fare mixes with the pilgrims along the avenue; homeless men nattering to themselves and Mexican families selling steaming tamales and tacos. Hundreds of ‘puestos’, the makeshift stalls that crowd Mexico City’s streets, are piled high with more religious merchandise a person could ever need; statues of the Virgin, Jesus and all manner of saints, rosary beads, mantels, shrines, icons to hang on the wall….even T-shirts bearing the Virgin’s image.

To pass through the gates leading to the Basilica of Guadalupe in the days surrounding this festival is to get an insight into the strength of many people’s religious faith in Mexico. Tents are dotted around the churches where people have been camped for days. People shelter from the sun under blankets attached to the surrounding fences as they await today’s religious ceremonies. Whole families sit on the ground in clusters, eating tamales and leaning against each other to prop themselves up.

And as the Basilica gets closer, it becomes apparent that there are people approaching it on their knees.

A man with a small baby in his arms shuffles up to the church stairs, only getting to his feet when reaching the base of the Basilica. Behind him is a young girl with a bunch of flowers clutched to her bosom, walking on her knees towards the church.

And to my side, a girl in an orange T-shirt clings to the forearms of a friend standing in front of her as she struggles along painfully.

Towards the gates is a young man of no more than twenty with the legs of his jeans rolled up so as to bare his knee-caps for the concrete ground.

Around the side of the Basilica people cluster in front of a make-shift altar behind which stands a priest. They hold their pictures of the Virgin aloft as the priest carries out group blessings, scattering holy water across the crowd.

Today was the scene of masses and other religious ceremonies through with the faithful pay respects to the Virgin and reaffirm their faith. Whether you’re a believer or not, the proof of faith is awesome to behold.