Juchitán Noir: Jake Sandler

Photograph courtesy of Jake Sandler.

Beds are hot; I understand why no one uses them here – hammocks allow the wind to find you, and for the sweat to dry as quick and gentle as it rises through the skin.  They sell hammocks of all sorts and sizes: for two, for one, for infants, for the elderly, indoor, outdoor, for travel, for home.  For now, until I find an apartment, I’ll have to make do with this hotel room. I could hardly sleep.  The muggy heat leaked through cracks in the broken air conditioner, mounted high on the wall with loose screws, rattling as the condenser bucked and whistled with the first of the waking grackles.

The streets of the Cheguigu neighborhood are weightless at this hour.  A blue-grey as deep as the ocean and as silent as a blade of grass washes over everything.  Not until noon will they begin baking off their dust.  For now, last night’s discarded mango peels are moist and unwrinkled in the gutters.  Crows stand still behind a veil of dew in the Cacalosúchil trees.  The tire-flattened lizards, and their last efforts to blend in with the grey pavement, are barely visible among the loose gravel and debris until you step on them.  At this hour, the middles of the roads are for walking.  At the cross streets in the flattening distance, the meandering shadows of street dogs hunch towards the marketplace, punctuated only by a drunk staggering, or the faint squeal of rusted pushcart spokes.

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