DAILY PENANCE No. 1: Calle Santa Trinidad, San Onofre, Sahuayo, Michoacán, Mexico

From the Desk of the Damned

They have given me a quota. One property a day, in perpetuity, a word I used to have to teach to brain dead undergrads and now find myself living(?) in. (And I thought Religions 101 was torture.) This morning's assignment arrived on the usual slip of warm, somehow slightly damp, paper. A two-bedroom house on Calle Santa Trinidad, in the San Onofre district of Sahuayo, Michoacán. I note, because I cannot help noting, that I have been sent to write about a street named for the Trinity in a neighborhood named for a fourth-century Egyptian hermit, and that whoever runs the assignment desk down here has a sense of humor I would have failed for being too obvious.

The house is 72.6 square meters of construction on a 96-square-meter lot, one story, one bath, one car. The listing describes the neighborhood as tranquil and close to a shopping center, supermarkets, and hospitals, and having never been there I will take their word on that. It is, unsurprisingly and simply, a house. People have lived in houses like it for a very long time and have been happier than most of the people I knew with larger ones.

A word about the agency, because I am obliged to say it and, unusually for me, mean it. Ve-X-Ti Bienes Raíces keeps their office on Calle Guerrero in the center of town, and their description of this property is a model of a form I never mastered as I deigned to even lurk on social media while alive and still find the concept horribly mundane and gross. As to their listing, it says precisely what the house has and nothing it does not. Cochera, sala, comedor, two habitaciones, cocina integral, one full bath, patio de servicio. There is no "sun-drenched," no "entertainer's dream," no "bones." The emojis are, of course, not to my taste, but I taught undergraduates for three decades and I recognize a clear outline when I see one. I would have given it high marks for structure. They also seem to know Sahuayo the way one knows a town one has rarely if ever left, which is the only way of truly knowing a town.

Now for you. Let us be honest about who you are since the agency is too polite to be. You are either a young couple from the huarache trade making your first purchase, in which case you may skip the rest of this paragraph and go directly to the phone number, because you already understand everything I am about to explain to the others, or you are a person from somewhere north of here who has heard the words "Lake Chapala" and "affordable" in the same sentence and has begun to have ideas.

You will probably look at $1,780,000 MXN, see the commas, and feel something. Breathe. It converts to something under $100,000US depending on the peso's mood that week. You will then ask whether the house has "character." It does not have "character" because it is a building. It has walls. You will ask about the "vibe" of the neighborhood forgetting that the agency has already told you: tranquila. (Seriously, if you need a translator for that then humanity has fallen even further since my death, and I truly cannot fathom how that could possibly be true.) You probably will not believe them, because you do not believe anyone who answers a question directly, which is why you will spend the next four months "doing your own research" instead only to miss out. I have graded papers from your kind before. If you choose to act, you will be fine and enjoy the new life you're embarking on. If not, your loss and, frankly, exactly what you deserve. I'm sure I will see you down here soon being forced to create something equally mundane and pointless.

Moving on. The town, if we're both honest, deserves better than you. I, at least, intend to give it that attention as I have nothing else to do until the next warm, damp page is left in my inbox. Sahuayo was founded around 1530 and its name, in Nahuatl, means something like "turtle-shaped pot," which is an interesting and entertaining image and more than I can say for the names of most municipalities' names, so at minimum, it has that going for it.

It is the commercial center of the Ciénega, the marshy country at the eastern end of Lake Chapala, and it is, by universal acclamation and one Guinness certificate, the Capital of the Huarache. Some five hundred workshops still cut and weave leather sandals here, and the town's monument to itself, a 7.45-meter huarache in the Plazoleta del Huarache, is exactly the kind of civic sincerity that would have made my colleagues smirk in their effected arrogance, and makes me, now, want to weep for my own undeserved haughtiness and the afterlife I earned through it. Buy a pair from a stall on the streets around the Plaza Principal. Do not haggle. These people are likely to be your neighbors soon and you cannot afford to be that person whereas you can afford the shoes at their listed price and everyone involved in the transaction is aware of that.

I must, ok not must by I will choose to, dwell for a moment on the Parroquia de Santiago Apóstol. (I was a religions professor and this is a religiously based event, so allow me to enjoy something where I can here.) For nearly three weeks every summer, peaking on July 25, this town does something no other town on earth does. Several thousand men and boys, the Tlahualiles, put on armor, two-meter (~6ft) feathered headdresses and plaster masks. They then dance the saint through the streets until midnight, culminating in a mock battle called the matanza in which a rider in white, the mulita, stands in for Santiago's victory over evil. It is Moors-and-Christians grafted onto something much older, the kind of syncretism I spent a career explaining to sophomores who thought religion was a set of options and opinions. It is not.

You should, but probably won't, understand that this event, this celebration, this pomp and circumstance and heraldry and exposition and joy and promise and desire and announcement and there are no words because it is more than words and feelings it is, in fact, what it is and it is community and faith at its most pure represented in physical form. It is, in actuality, thirty-five kilograms (~80lbs) of costume and five months of sewing, stitching, molding, plastering, testing, reshaping, painting, and countless other forms of detailed and time-consuming manual labor. If you are lucky enough to be there during these festivities, enjoy them. I didn't when I had the opportunity and am less for it.

Nearby, the Santuario de Guadalupe, finished in 1882, is worth a quiet hour, and the Centro Cultural del Colegio Salesiano keeps paintings by the local artist Luis Sahagún. Take the time to climb to the Mirador de Cristo Rey for the view over the valley, and consider, as one should, that the town's most famous son is a fourteen-year-old named José Sánchez del Río, who was killed here in 1928 during the Cristero War and canonized in 2016. The caves outside town, the Barrancas de Sahuayo and the Cueva de Espinoza, sheltered Cristeros in those years. I will not bother to draw the moral of the story for you. I have had drawn for me, at length, what happens to people who do that for a living.

If you must eat, and as you are alive and want to remain that way, you must, the tourist bureau will point you to Puerto Don Pedro which I assume they get a kickback for and I'm sure the fare provided will be perfectly good and likely better than any you'd find in a Mexican Restaurant in the states. The locals, on the other hand, will point you to birria, which this town takes as seriously as its footwear. Options are numerous, and if you want to take my advice, if they don't have a formal menu and you can't understand their Spanish but the beer is cold and the people are laughing, you've chosen well.

Drive out to Isla de Petatán on the lake in the cool months to watch the white pelicans arrive from the north, an annual migration of large, loud, raucous and well-fed creatures that I am told is very "moving," (I mean, they're water fowl so I'm not sure what that can possibly mean) and in which you will feel right at home being a large, loud, raucous and well-fed individual yourself. (Yes, I am, and you are, and we both know it.)

The Rincón de San Andrés still makes mezcal the old way, and offers bicycle tours through the maguey, should you require exercise (you do, see my previous paragraph) to justify the mezcal. Also, bike riding and alcohol, what could go wrong? Maybe I'll see you sooner than expected.

Because I was who I was and did what I did while living, I cannot help myself to explain that Saint Onuphrius, for whom your prospective neighborhood is named, lived sixty years alone in the Egyptian desert, wearing nothing but his own hair, speaking to no one. I think of him often. Wistfully. He had a smaller lot and no service patio, and he is in a considerably better place than I am.

The house on Calle Santa Trinidad is listed with Ve-X-Ti Bienes Raíces, Calle Guerrero 114-A, Sahuayo. Call them. Be brief. They have work to do, and so, somehow even in death, do I.

Also, how can paper be damp?

Listing information is provided by the listing brokerage and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Property details and description are the copyright of the listing brokerage and reproduced for commentary. Land in Hell is not a brokerage and does not represent any party to this transaction.

The Listing, As Written

Description by Ve-X-Ti Bienes Raíces, Sahuayo, reproduced unaltered from the source listing. All property claims are theirs.

🏡 CASA EN VENTA💲 📍 UBICADA EN CALLE SANTA TRINIDAD,COL. SAN ONOFRE , SAHUAYO MICHOACAN. 👏🏻 UNA COLONIA QUE SE CARACTERIZA POR SU TRANQUILIDAD ✨ ,CERCA DE 🛍️ CENTRO COMERCIAL, 🛒SUPER MERCADOS ,🏥 HOSPITALES , Y DIFERENTES TIPOS DE SERVICIOS Y COMERCIO‼️ CUENTA CON: 🚗 COCHERA PARA 1 AUTO 🛋️ SALA 🍽️ COMEDOR 🛏️ 2 HABITACIONES 🍴COCINA INTEGRAL 🚽🚿 1 BAÑO COMPLETO 🪣🧹 PATIO DE SERVICIO