So finally my time ran out, and I would have to return to Douglas for about 5 days to log off from the Americas before taking the plane back to Europe. So I flew from Panama city to Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico and took a night bus up to the border.
When going Douglas, one enters a kind of time less zone. And so also this time. I first met Blue at the Gadsden. “Oh so we’re you staying at now?” he asked. He had not noticed that I had left Douglas, just that I was no longer staying at the Lerman any more. I spoke Spanish with him, and he spoke Spanish with the waitress at the Gadsden in whose cafeteria we were sitting. But to me he constantly answered back in English. The status of Spanish is not the same n Douglas. A little while later Angel entered. He only speaks Spanish and so he had to use it with me. “I’m staying at no. 7,” he remarked. He expected that I would claim no. 8 now that I was in town. However, Mr. Fernandez had been run to the hospital with a heart attack and had stopped working at the hotel, so I would now have to go and trick me in through the office of some housing office. Therefore I stayed with the head librarian instead.
Some in Douglas had actually followed what was going on in Mexico, and the political allegiances were as I have grown to expect them: The pensioned, educated, white, US American, non Spanish speaking husband of the librarian had followed the Obrador campaign and what had happened all fall through his minimal understanding of the Mexican TV news. But in Sonora he had not fund anyone who would support Obrador.