Photo: davichi

Oaxacan poet Eufrasio Reyes wrote, in a refrain familiar to anyone who’s plunged into a night at the cantina,

In the cantina, a man travels to unimaginable places, but the next day reality is crueler than his hangover.

Reality, legend, legend, reality: the swinging doors of the cantina vacillate between the two.

The cantina was born in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when U.S and French soldiers were attempting imperialistic explorations into Mexico. At that time, establishments serving alcoholic beverages were restricted to wine bars, for upper class Spaniards, and pulquerias (which served the fermented corn beverage pulque), for lower class mestizos and Indians. The two merged into the cantina, which surged in popularity during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Photo: Gary Denness

At that time, cantinas were mostly frequented by upper class men. However, when the Diaz dictatorship crumbled, so did the strict class boundaries attached to cantinas. In the radicalized, revolutionary Mexico of the 1920’s and ‘30’s, cantinas were frequented by bohemians, intellectuals, artists, and revolutionaries. And of course men looking, as José Alfredo Jiménez classically phrased it, for tequila and a song.

They were not, however, frequented by women; not even after 1982, when the law banning women from entering cantinas was lifted.

Mexican intellectual Carlos Monsiváis writes:

The cantina revolves around machismo, around a masculine supremacy of misery, around the ambition to submerge oneself in reality in order to forget one’s frustrations.

This “masculine supremacy of misery” is distinctly Mexican in style—it could include downing copa after copa alone, with sombrero pulled low, or it could involve belting out a ranchera at the top of one’s lungs, wiping tears from one’s eyes, or it could involve heart-to-heart man-to-man conversations about—sigh, groan—mujeres.

Photo: monocai

Oftentimes, I find, it is “masculine” only because it occurs between men—otherwise, the cantina is a place to release and demonstrate “feminine” emotions. It is a place where men are simultaneously at their most macho and their most feminine.

It is also a place where lower class men can go to release humiliation or frustration related to their place in society, and where they can temporarily abscond from their responsibilities to family, women, work. The cantinas that appeal to such men also tend to appeal to bohemians, intellectuals artists, and those who like dancing along the darker fringes of society.

Cantinas are not always pretty, and oftentimes visiting is walking the knife-edge between vivid joy and release and profound despair. Perhaps that’s what attracts writers. And what attracted me.

Eufrasio Reyes best captured the cantina in his eponymous poem:

A man loses the sense of passing time
His heart takes comfort in its beating
His mind rests in its unconsciousness
In the ultimate refuge of mankind

The cantina is the stuff of legend. And, like so many legends and myths in Mexico, it mixes indistinguishably–sometimes messily, sometimes romantically–with daily life. In the cantina poetry, beer, manliness, death, love, loss, melancholy, misery, and loneliness blend together to sink a man deep down into the soul of life, or yank him out of it.

The cantina is a socio-economic phenomenon, an illustration of Mexico’s political and cultural histories and realities, but it is also something more ethereal, soul-like or ghost-like. Stay at the cantina long enough, and the distinctly Mexican sense of doomed longing, of giving way to the grinning skeletal pull of the netherworld, creeps into oneself. And then, waking up the next morning with a roaring cruda, eating caldo or chilaquiles, one is absorbed back into the fabric of daily life.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

We wander through the sea to find a table. The ranchera music, with its overdramatic, coordinated wailing of male singers and the vibrant abandon of horns, strings, and accordions, is overwhelming.

On top of that mariachis circulate bursting into whatever songs the customers request, creating sudden pockets of loud live guitar and accordion round the room. Add to that the rowdy displays of machismo that constitute conversation here, and it is like walking through a wave of Mexican male noises drowning one out.

I’m wearing a subtle suede jacket, loose jeans, and Converse, in sharp contrast to the teeny minifaldas and half-open shirts of the other girls here. The men wear the hungry looks of predators, and I’m feeling somewhat exposed as a random blonde piece of prey that’s somehow wandered in. A few laugh and make remarks under their breath as I pass, but otherwise, no one does anything overt. We sit and order beers under their heavy gazes.

Suddenly, my friend Eleutario lets out a cry of “Ay ay ay AYYYY!”, something like a Mexican turkey call which is a mixture of drunken abandon, grief, and unleashed repression. It is common in cantina music and seems to summarize precisely what happens to the male mind in these environs. This cry is seconded by a few other friends and then washed down with lime-laced Victoria. We’re more at home now in the vibe, having let our abandon be known.

But the surreal (at least from our perspective as patrons of the nicely decorated, turquoise-tiled art bars of Oaxaca’s center) quality of the place numbs us a bit. Porno poster, intense male gaze, bustling waiters, prostitute’s laugh, and suddenly…

Mariachis!

Eleutario pays fifteen pesos for two songs, and the mariachis unenthusiastically launch into Camino a Guanajuanto, a Mexican classic.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

“La vida no vale nada…no vale nada la vida…” goes the song. Life is worth nothing…

They sing as though they’ve seen and heard it all before—the revolutionary fighters swept up by patriotic glory; the men who aren’t good enough for the perfect virginal women they desire; the valiant but overly proud heroes killed in duels; the heartless prostitutes and the ones who break men’s hearts; the solitary, tragic figures who give everything up for love and lose.

The music pours over us in the aquarium’s ebb and flow, while the prostitute at the next table grinds away on the lap of a grimly smiling man with three gold rings. Every once in awhile, she gives furtive glances from side to side and tries to pull her jean mini down to cover a little more of her ass, but then, the man’s hand slides up again.

I begin to feel a little queasy. Jorge is taking photographs of another prostitute, who’s wearing big black sunglasses inside the fluorescently lit room, holding up her silver Cinderella heel and smiling. I ask her how she got work here and she shrugs and says, “I came with my friends, and asked to fichar.” Fichar is a verb that refers to fichas, or tickets. The prostitutes earn money from beers men buy them. The normal price of a Victoria at that cantina is 13 pesos; buy it for a prostitute, and it costs 50 pesos.

Somehow, in the midst of our conversation, the woman gets the impression that I am interested in this job possibility and calls over the waiter saying, “Ella quiere fichar!”

“No, no, no!” I clarify, half-laughing, half-horrified, as several men at nearby tables turn their heads. “I’m just wondering how it is for you.”

She shrugs. Shrugging seems to be the normative behavior of a prostitute working the cantinas. I forget, I suppose, that this is their work and their daily life, and they’re not about to break down into sob stories about it because a drunk gringa wants to feel their pain. Do you want to fichar, or not? No? Then vete, get out of here.

I go back to my table feeling slightly ridiculous, but then figure, hey, this kind of humiliation is what feeds good borracheras (the Mexicans have a noun to describe partying with the sole purpose of getting drunk). People are dancing now, men making those sharp, smooth arcs and curves of salsa with the prostitutes. The noise seems to have reached fever pitch, or maybe I’m letting my body cave to my senses.

At some point, I look around to see everyone in a somewhat parallel state, rocking slightly back and forth to the music and the beer, looking a little stunned, occasionally catching someone else’s eye and laughing.

“Vamos?” says my friend Fausto, and we nod. There is a scrambling of peso bills and coins to pay the tab, and then everyone stands with clumsy movements, pushing plastic chairs aside, and we leave. Weaving my way out, I’m noticed less, the men lost in cantina reveries now, thinking of money, or women, or nothing at all.

Photo: Fausto Nahum Perez Sanchez

The night is at once new and very, very old. There are kids playing in the street and alleyways that look as though they are netherworlds containing alternate realities we’d rather not discover. The streets are much darker here, until we begin to get closer to the center and the streetlamps cast a benevolent glow on the sidewalks once more. We are drunk. We are tired. There are really two options at this point:

Sleep.
Tlayudas.

Of course, we opt for the second. Being too lazy to trek across the city to Los Libres, which has the hectic late-night tlayuda joint frequented by all the other rowdy borrachos, we head for the 20 de Noviembre market, where food vendors work ‘til late under the shine of bright yellow lamps. There, we nurse our cantina-beaten souls with huge, crispy tortillas filled with meat, cheese, and beans.

We eat with a sloppy, blissful 1 a.m. laziness, strewn about on the narrow colored benches and lit from behind by the food stand. Our night of cantinas has come to an end. We are sweaty, tired, worn out from the cantinas’ florid outpouring of emotion.

And I can barely think, as we stroll quietly through the empty streets towards home, about where the cantina comes from, and what it means, and where it’s going. Those questions will be for tomorrow.

It is a little past four in the afternoon, and Mexico’s great cobalt sky has faded to a pale blue-white, with tired clouds slipping along its domed edges. The wooden doors of the cantina give the creaaak-crreeaak of rusty springs as they swing behind us; they are the flimsy barrier between the outside world of the street and the inside world of men and booze.

Street, light, women; cantina, men, beer.

Feature Photo: Fausto Nahum Perez Sanchez. Photo: Jorge Santiago

Inside, bars of pale yellow light fall across wooden tables, and men sit drinking. There is a bar to the right, with wooden stools and white-shirted bartenders standing before a wall of tequila. There is a big-screen TV in the far left-hand corner showing lucha libre, men humping each other in elaborate silver costumes.

The tinkly strings and baleful voices of a ranchera fill the background. A few men turn their heads and then return to their long-necked beers. We choose a table.

“What can I get for you?” the waiter asks, with only the slightest glance in my direction.

We order Victorias all around. “Les gustaria una sopa Azteca?” the waiter asks, and we give faint grins and smiles and say, “Si, porfa.” Let the botanas begin.

The cantina, you see, is not just a place to drink, and to weep, and to watch homoerotic wrestling and listen to mariachis sing about troubles with women-betrayers and viejas and putas, but also, to eat. In the majority of cantinas, each beer will be accompanied by botanas, which are the Mexican version of Spanish tapas. The more beers, the more elaborate and plentiful the botanas.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

Here, there is a sopa azteca first, with fried tortillas, queso fresco, and the inevitable heaps of chicharron. The latter–fried pig skin—is the cantina staple. It’s fatty, meaty, manly and, to me, incontrovertibly disgusting. Later there are tostadas of pulled pork, then tacos made with hot dogs, onions and poblano peppers. We eat, we drink. And drink a little more. And then remember there are more cantinas to visit.

The slanting light feels softer, kinder now. Evening breezes with the faintest hint of coolness drift through the long, narrow windows, which are open save for the wrought iron that creates the barrier between here and there. I reluctantly give in to the urge to go to the bathroom.

The doors:

Left: Viejas (Literal translation: old wives)

Right: Machos (‘nuff said.)

We scrounge around our pockets for change and pay the check. The men around us are continuing their hushed, gruff, curt conversations as we leave. It is, after all, only five o’clock. The weeping is for later, and further south in the city.

Half a block down the road at the Tabula Rasa, paintings of skeletons dancing around vivid blue, red, and green dinner scenes adorn the walls. This place is slightly artsier. The walls are painted at table height in a pattern of desert, cactus, drunk Indian sleeping beneath a sombrero, desert, cactus, drunk sleeping Indian, desert, cactus…

Black and white photos of a seemingly random selection of cantina heroes adorn the walls. Bob Marley is there, as is an exuberant, naked Marilyn Monroe; Frida Kahlo, Che and Maria Sabina are present, all smoking joints, and Zapata and Pancho Villa gaze stoically from their portraits, giving off that stolid, serious, revolutionary posture.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

The jukebox is playing–as if out of a surreal, hazy dream–Pink Floyd. Men sit hunched over the wooden tables with caguamas (liter jugs of beer) between them. The question here is not “what-would-you-like-to-drink” but rather,

“Family-sized or regular?”

“Um…regular.” We have to last the night, after all. Five beers and a plate of peanuts later, we’re taking in the new ambiance. I notice a poster on the far wall condemning violence against women, and a “No Smoking” sign: indications of new waves, new influences, infiltrating the cantina. I am not the only woman here, although the other one looks slightly uncomfortable and huddles over her beer, leaning towards her male companion.

Here, as we laugh and squeeze lime over peanuts and order another round, and then another, the sky makes its descent into midnight blue, a rich, vibrant color that fills the ever more distant streets beyond the swinging doors.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

“What is the cantina?” I ask, using Jorge’s cell phone as a recording device. The responses range from anthropological analyses of social class to satirical commentary about the delicious chicharron and the refreshing beverages to a series of low, drunk giggles.

I go to the bathroom again. There is a heavy lock on this door, which the bartender opens for me with a rusty key. Apparently, it’s been awhile since a woman passed through these parts. At least they keep the ladies’ room locked until the moment arises.

Inside, there is a pink trashcan and the most basic of facilities. The walls are covered in spider webs. I wonder, tipsily, if those webs represent the lack of female presence in the classic cantina, or the gradual demise and transformation of the cantina itself. After congratulating myself on this deep thought, I symbolically brush aside a few spider webs and walk out again, sealing the lock behind me to keep the space safe for future females.

We move on to the next cantina. The streets feel buoyant with the intensity of the deepening blue light, or just with our beers and buzz. These streets are a labyrinth to me now; I rarely walk in these areas, far south of the Zocalo, where young women with scared faces hurry along with babies in their arms, and men swagger, and a certain weight and tension hang in the air.

There are knife shops and shops offering dozens of cowboy boots, and then after we wind through hold-your-breath-and-don’t-look-up alleyways, there are many, many cantinas. Most lack doors now and instead have open entryways giving onto fluorescent lights and the cacophony of drunk male conversation.

Gestures in these places are more flagrant. A man recognizes my friend Eleutario, and comes running and shouting out of a cantina to greet him. “El re-encuentro” my friends call it, laughing; bumping into that unfortunate acquaintance as you take another slug of Victoria. Caught caving into the beast.

This re-encuentro consists of the man embracing Eleutario with that unabashed male affection brought out by cantinas, and then, kindly, offering to show us his member for a photo op. He is halfway down the zipper when my scream-laughing, facing the other way, finally dissuades him. He gives another hearty slap on the back to Eleutario and we’re outta there, shaming and taunting E for the rest of the camino.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

The next cantina is an aquarium full of bizarre species of drunken male. It is a large, open, cement-walled room crammed full of plastic tables, bathed in surreal blue and green light, and adorned only with a series of pornographic posters of blondes straddling motorcycles. The attire is jeans and greased-back black hair, and a certain sleazy type of half-smile directed at no one in particular.

I am not the only woman here, but I am the only one not working as a prostitute. Unfortunately, I have to go to the bathroom.

My posse of males—who, as bearded curators and rural teachers and arts photographers do not exactly fit the bill of cantina regular here—wait for me outside the “bathroom,” which consists of a cement toilet surrounded by a shower curtain. I am mid-stream, squatting over the toilet, when the curtain is suddenly yanked open.

“Hi!” says a prostitute in a skin-tight brown silk shirt and white miniskirt.

“Hi!” I try to answer lightly, as if we’re old pals catching up on the street and not a prostitute and a peeing American chatting in a cantina bathroom.

“Your country is beautiful, isn’t it,” she says, matter-of-factly. I consider this while trying to finish up as quickly as possible.

“Uh,” I say, wrapping things up, “it depends, I guess.”

“My whole family is there,” she says, “in Los Angeles. It must be much nicer than here.” She sits squarely down on the seatless toilet and starts peeing without a second thought.

“Well,” I say, trying to make an exit, “I think Mexico has more heart.”

She shrugs in the darkness. “I don’t know,” she says.
.
“Well,” I say, not really sure if I should go on defending Mexico’s heart over the prostitute’s endless stream, “I guess I’ll see ya later.”

“Yup,” she says cheerily, “beer. Goes right through ya.”

I open the curtain and head out.