I turn a budget hotel room into a metaphor for Mexico

Reentry was easy.

I swept through immigration with a Spanish greeting to the officer, I pressed el botón before a customs agent had a chance to ask, the entreaties of the unauthorized taxi drivers scarcely cracked my calm, the bus agent didn’t once give me a what-is-this-gringo-saying look and during the pre-bus ride search I was not, I am happy to report, the cause of humor—though unlike last time, the screeners simply walked me and the rest of the passengers through a metal detector. Nevertheless, I was walking back into Mexico.

I write this from a hotel room in Puebla, Mexico’s fourth largest city and, as is so often the case, the capital of the state of the same name. My room is perhaps eight by 12 feet and yet manages, in my traveler’s conceit, to house a metaphor for Mexico.

A rug-like array of green and yellow tiles carpet the room and extending halfway up the walls. A couple sturdy, semi-ornate wooden chairs upholstered in convincing faux leather sit along the wall. And out the window there is an open air shaft reaching from the first floor to the sky. In these you have colonial Mexico. Yet, from above shines a circular fluorescent tube in the middle of a plastic-paneled ceiling. And to look into the air shaft, you have to open a sliding frosted pane with a faux wood handle. So, modernizing, mid-80s Mexico is here too. But we’re not finished. A black wire tied in a loose noose protrudes from where the pristine ceiling meets the left wall. This wall also holds the room’s only electrical outlet. And all over the room, white plaster gapes from holes where tiles have fallen from the walls. Thus, Mexico imperfecto* has a grip on both eras. So besides me, my laptop and my huge backpack, I fancy the room holds history, modernity and disorder. It’s missing any trace of Mexico’s indigenous history, but you can’t have everything in a third-floor budget hotel room in Puebla. (And if you’re really into the metaphor, you might say the absence is telling).

False metaphor? You tell me.

*My original post had 'basico' in this spot which, as I realized after posting it, is a false amigo, or a word that does not have the same significance in Spanish as in English.