Down in the dumps

My rose colored glasses were throbbing red yesterday as I developed a flu-ish chest cold and reconciled life here.
It has been a difficult year with no end in sight. It took a sharp turn for the worse in December. Government subsidies to the gasoline industry had been cut, so moving produce is more expensive than ever before. Most of those products are also more expensive because of a 70 year drought.
Government support of the government-owned electric company has been cut, so power is more expensive than ever before. I stared at a bill yesterday that said 24 pesos a kWh and could not tell whether a 1500 peso "transfer of power" charge was part of it.
We have a "progressive' system in which you are charge in usage levels. Both properties hit level 3.
We are coping with a rise in natural gas prices. The supplier no longer plays a happy tune off the trucks as they roll into neighborhoods. I have three tanks, two of them full. And I will manage. But people without refrigerators use gas to recook their meals several times a day. Factories that produce canned goods have also raised their prices as a result.
Gasoline has gone up a big chunk of change per litre as well. The ferry prices are so high many locals have had to give up better paying jobs on the mainland because they couldn't break even.
As a result of this, the market basket has gone up 20-45 percent in the last month. That's the measure of the cost of 45 essential items ranging from milk and oil to flour and corn meal. The price of tortillas alone rose 33 percent last month.
I am grumpy over all this. I am was even more grumpy when I got an email from 8 women who wanted to stay to two weeks and asked if I could discount further when one of them stays on.
Now, the apartments were never meant to house 4 adult women for two weeks at $300 and change a week. Two adults and two children willing to make adjustments works. Not four sets of towels, four showers a day multiplied...lights and hair dryers running, not thinking.
The tax we pay on rental income, before we pay income tax, has gone up from 12 percent to 16 percent. That is before all taxpayers, Mexicans and foreigners, pay a general income tax.
I am sorry for being so blunt. But several property owners and I have been whispering over the last month or so about how difficult it is and how selfish the prospective vacationers are being, making deposits, canceling and demanding their money back, for example. I won't carp about this, but I do want people to know that we have a serious gap in paradise here.
I hope it feels a bit better after my fever drops. But it won't change the reality.

Survival mode in Isla Mujeres, Mexico

My mama raised a survivor who during the worst financial crisis since the Depression, finds herself in Mexico. Even without renters, given the cost of living here, I can still probably make it on my disability pensions and probably continue to pay a couple Mexicans a fair wage. Only two cancellations so far.

A trip to the US for a medical procedure - endoscopy with biopsy - is out of the equation. I met with Dr Salas on Saturday night for pre-procedure blood orders and a prescription for the ultrasound the gastroenterologist wants going into it. Target date for ERCP, Friday.

Cost to me: $500. About a 10th of the cost of the same in the US healthcare system, or the price of my co-pay. Nice to have a gastroenterology problem 7 miles from where the lapband was developed. The technology transfer is here, too!

Jose began is one month unpaid furlough working on his microgarden in the window box of one of my apartments. He got other planters ready for vegetables and lettuce. I made tuna noodle casserole, and then in my role as his mamita, told him about survival mode and being ready for the worst. While he enjoyed one of them, I also told him what typical American comfort foods are. The pozoles of North of the border.

He was heading out for a week at his parents pig ranch, 1000 head of hog, and I encouraged him to act interested in working for the family. He hates pigs and his younger brother has taken the role of operations manager. "You must be prepared to go back if tourism does not pick up," his mamita told him.

As Bloomberg News reported yesterday, "Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Sept. 25 in New York that his country could weather the global credit-market crisis, the central bank has drawn on near-record foreign reserves to prop up the peso, the benchmark stock index dropped 22 percent and the government unveiled a 65.1 billion-peso ($5 billion) stimulus plan to help tourism, energy and construction industries overcome an economic slowdown.

"People say that when the United States gets a cold, Mexico gets pneumonia,'' Calderon told a gathering of the Economic Club of New York on Sept. 25. "This is not exactly the case today.''

But one wonders. The peso is trading nearly 13 to 1 to the dollar, a record. It is an unnamed devaluation that looks good to incoming tourists, but is evidence of a faltering local economy.
The nation's largest retailer, and largest purveyor of US commodities, Comercial Mexicana declared bankrupcty on Thursday. The Soriana chain was bought out by Gigante.
Felipe Calderon's plan to privatize Pemex, the government petroleum monopoly, is moving ahead, with prices scheduled to go up 2 percent a week until they reach world market prices over two years. Hard to explain how this frees up government assets to a poorly educated electorate and its press, prone to merging his name into FeCal. The headlines are not pretty.
Eriso continued to work on my garden wall and fence project and clued me into his fried fish. Instead of pulled pork on Sundays, he sells fried fish for less than half the price of fish downtown, a third of the price of pulled pork here in the neighborhood.
Lucky for Jose's family, this is a pork loving nation.
I told Miguel of my talks with Jose. "Good. But we all hope it doesn't come to that," he said. Miguel, who a decade ago coined "Two for one, almost free" at Posada del Mar, came up with a new one for new times. "Best prices in the crisis."
But there were hardly any people on the street to hear him try it out.
And I came home after a quick stop at the Super, with $25US in cleaning products, milk, bread, eggs, cheese and a head of romaine.
I'll buy Eriso's fish today instead of conchinita and thank God mom and I had gone into survival mode together during the Carter Administration and that she passed her World War II and Depression survival skills on to me.
Note to Miguel: The saying is yours! This site is copyrighted. Best prices in the crisis. Very smooth.