ZIPOLITE, Mexico — When in mid-March “Quedate En Casa,” or “stay at home,” became the coronavirus rallying cry for the Spanish-speaking world, I had just arrived from El Salvador to the village of Zipolite on the coast of southeastern Oaxaca State in Mexico.
My plan was to continue on to Mexico City and then, over the course of the next couple of months, to Turkey, Spain, Greece, Lebanon and Madagascar.
I left the United States upon graduating college in 2003, after the giddy launch of the war on Iraq had convinced me that America was not any place I needed to be. I began hitchhiking, inaugurating a habit of haphazard and frenetic international movement that would characterize the next 17 years.
The itinerancy was, it seemed, because of a mix of acute commitment-phobia, an aspiration to omnipresence and a deep envy of people who possess more of a culture than our soul-crushing consumerism and military slaughter-fests.
For someone with no fixed address, much less country of residence, “staying at home” was a novel and initially terrifying concept. A mandatory curfew was not imposed in Zipolite, but the local assembly voted to erect checkpoints around the village to restrict access and departures. With only a few thousand inhabitants, there were no reported coronavirus cases, but the nearby town of Pochutla was said to have between zero and three, while the number of conspiracy theories was infinite.
I was issued an identity card permitting me to travel once a week to Pochutla for groceries. The Mexican police and Marines were deployed on the beach and ordered people indoors — a strategy that, mercifully, was never enormously effective.
I rented an apartment for an unspecified period and assumed I would careen straightaway into a claustrophobia-induced nervous breakdown. A coronavirus checkpoint materialized in front of my apartment, manned by cops and volunteers who would not let me step out of or, more curiously, into the house without a face mask. A thick rope was stretched across the road.
Having been in constant motion for so long, being trapped indefinitely was quite the conundrum. I braced myself and lived in fear of whatever my mind was preparing to pull. I ran in circles around a soccer field and plotted what to do in the event of a real lockdown, which involved hiding in the woods by day and sneaking to the sea at night. In a recurring nightmare, I was deported to the United States — where I had vowed to never again set foot, partly in the interest of my own mental health. READ MORE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES.
My plan was to continue on to Mexico City and then, over the course of the next couple of months, to Turkey, Spain, Greece, Lebanon and Madagascar.
I left the United States upon graduating college in 2003, after the giddy launch of the war on Iraq had convinced me that America was not any place I needed to be. I began hitchhiking, inaugurating a habit of haphazard and frenetic international movement that would characterize the next 17 years.
The itinerancy was, it seemed, because of a mix of acute commitment-phobia, an aspiration to omnipresence and a deep envy of people who possess more of a culture than our soul-crushing consumerism and military slaughter-fests.
For someone with no fixed address, much less country of residence, “staying at home” was a novel and initially terrifying concept. A mandatory curfew was not imposed in Zipolite, but the local assembly voted to erect checkpoints around the village to restrict access and departures. With only a few thousand inhabitants, there were no reported coronavirus cases, but the nearby town of Pochutla was said to have between zero and three, while the number of conspiracy theories was infinite.
I was issued an identity card permitting me to travel once a week to Pochutla for groceries. The Mexican police and Marines were deployed on the beach and ordered people indoors — a strategy that, mercifully, was never enormously effective.
I rented an apartment for an unspecified period and assumed I would careen straightaway into a claustrophobia-induced nervous breakdown. A coronavirus checkpoint materialized in front of my apartment, manned by cops and volunteers who would not let me step out of or, more curiously, into the house without a face mask. A thick rope was stretched across the road.
Having been in constant motion for so long, being trapped indefinitely was quite the conundrum. I braced myself and lived in fear of whatever my mind was preparing to pull. I ran in circles around a soccer field and plotted what to do in the event of a real lockdown, which involved hiding in the woods by day and sneaking to the sea at night. In a recurring nightmare, I was deported to the United States — where I had vowed to never again set foot, partly in the interest of my own mental health. READ MORE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES.