Where walking and driving can be hazardous to your health

Some have accused me of being a Centro snob, an urban elitist, an old town agoraphobic. The truth is, I’m captivated by living within the mass of concrete and humanity that comprises downtown Mazatlan. Having spent 90% of my life in sparsely populated places that are dark and quiet at night, my level of continuing culture shock runs deep. However, life in Centro has stirred my juices, elevated my spirit and has become as culturally comfortable as pair of old sandals.

Centro can be a confusing maze of traffic-choked streets teeming with carts and loose pedestrians or a very entertaining cultural circus, a circus where the people and traffic become the clowns and elephants, the carts and shops become the sideshows.

Take the loose pedestrians for example. These people must be suffering from some type of sidewalk phobia. Everywhere in Centro there are people who’d rather dodge traffic than set foot on the perfectly good sidewalk provided for them. The local term for these people is “burro sin reata,” or donkey without a rope. I find it amazing the streets aren’t littered with the broken bodies of these nonchalant jaywalkers.

The buses that ply the streets of Centro can be new and shiny with all windows intact or old and dilapidated, belching clouds of carbon. It was one of these older buses that caught my attention the other day. The back end of this bus had the word “siga” above the left tail light and “alto” above the right, to signal drivers behind the bus when it’s about to stop or when it’s safe to pass. When the turn signals are activated, you follow the instructions above the blinking light, either stop or pass the bus. Don’t you love a society that comes up with such a creative, alternative use of something as practical as turn signals? But the real kicker is that this bus was driving in Centro and using the turn signals as they were originally intended...for signaling turns.

This was obviously a bus that had spent its life on a two-lane highway where siga and alto would be far more practical than turn signals. However, when this battered behemoth was retired to city duty, no one bothered to remove the directions above the tail lights. If this convoluted situation ever existed north of the border, it would spawn confused drivers, tangled wreckage and a million lawsuits.

Watching people park in Centro is a true lesson in urban survival. Where parking is tight and in very short supply, people will use sidewalks, driveways and sometimes the middle of the street. One of my favorite things to watch is someone attempting to park in a tight space using what I call the Braille method. This consists of testing the size of the space by making direct contact with the car behind you and then again with the one in front. Sometimes multiple contacts are needed as the driver nudges their way into the space. At times, the contact is forceful enough to turn heads and draw stifled chuckles.

The stop sign is probably the most common traffic control device in the world and Mazatlán has its share. However, there are several stop signs in Centro that are absolutely and completely ignored by cars and buses alike; an octagonal icon that has been deemed invisible by local drivers. I’ve had people honk at me if I dared to even slow down when approaching one of these offending symbols of orderly progression.

I do believe this cultural immersion thing takes a while to come together; “going native” isn’t easy. Since I now have a vehicle with Sinaloa plates, it’s hard not to mimic the acts of madness executed by other drivers - but I still can’t get used to walking in the streets.