No one deserves to die the way local U.S. resident Robert Leon Wickard apparently did. Stabbed to death in his own home, buried in his own garden. Wickard's brutalized body was left to rot by five young Mexican men, who casually sold off his worldly possessions while sleeping feet away from his decaying remains for over two weeks. They took not just his property, but all that any man has: his life. If their statements to police are true, Wickard brutalized them as well, robbing them of all they had: their dignity as human beings.
I’m a single person, once upon a time married, and the very proud father of a 26 year old daughter who is the center of my life – truly my raison d’etre. (thank you, God). I'm happily heterosexual, but I’m no crusader against gays (or any other particular subset of humanity). With those preliminaries out of the way, we can proceed.
I eat in restaurants almost every day, 99% of the time alone. It’s no fun to take your meals at home when you’re a single person. I’ve done this for years, even when I still lived in the U.S. Many people have said to me, "it must feel weird to go out to dinner by yourself." Not to me it doesn’t. To me it feels entirely normal.
I have a favorite restaurant in downtown Mérida which I was lucky enough to discover within days after moving here. I like everything about it. The food is great (and reasonably priced), it’s clean and the service is always friendly. But what I like most about it is that it’s a Mexican joint. The vast majority of the customers (about 80%) are locals. Families with kids, young couples on dates, laboring people who stop by on their way home from work.
Best of all, I don’t have to speak English there. If an occasional tourist approaches me to talk (my face leaves no doubt that I’m not a Yucatecan), I assume a very confused look and either respond rapidly in Spanish, or perhaps just mutter with a feigned heavy accent: "Sorry, I am no speaking the English so good." I visit this eatery often enough that all the waiters call me a socio of the owner – a business partner.
But there is one thing about "my restaurant" I don’t like. The other 20% of the cientelte consists of tourists from afar wearing absurdly bright clothing and goofy hats, and not a few members of the resident foreign communtiy – expatriates, as they're called. On a very regular basis, solo males about my age (60), or maybe 5-10 years younger or 5-10 years older, enter the joint with their boyfriends in tow. Almost invariably, those boyfriends are much younger Mexican males. Some could pass for the sons, or even the grandsons, of their senior escorts. It’s completely obvious to everybody what’s going on. And there's never any doubt about who's going to pick up the dinner tab and leave the tip.
So much of this activity takes place in “my restaurant” that young Mexican males hang out there alone at times, trolling for new estadounidenses (or canadienses). Mind you, this emphatically is not a gay joint. But it affords strong anecdotal evidence of another side of local expat life. The other night, just as I was finishing my second beer and calling for la cuenta, a young Mexican of perhaps 25 quickly stood up from his table, walked across the room unbeckoned and introduced himself to me in almost perfect English. I responded in a little less than perfect, but still very competent, Spanish, and so our inane chat continued for a few moments: he in my language, I in his. He insisted on my phone number, until I finally told him in the most obscene castellano I could muster where to stick his request. It’s amazing how one’s subconscious enables one to summon up foreign language insults which one didn’t realize were in the active vocabulary file. I was proud of myself, and so too, I think, were my Mexican waiter friends, who winked at me as I got up and walked out.
Switch gears. One night last summer, I enjoyed a few cocktails with an American expat couple. The man, who has years of experience in local businesses and who knew I had been in Mérida only several months, spontaneously and apropos of absolutely nothing offered up some totally unsolicited advice: “Whatever you do, don’t piss off the gay expatriate community, because they run this place.” I dismissed the comment. It meant nothing to me then, nor does it concern me now, other than to offer up this observation:
Mérida has been here much longer than either the United States of America or Canada have existed. Mérida belongs to Meridans, to Yucatecans, to Mexico, not to the highest bidder with cash in hand who comes here brazenly determined to acquire something which may not be so readily available in his own country or culture - be it cheap land or cheap love. A retired man from Pennsylvania paid a very heavy price for trying to buy the latter from five young men who, in the final analysis, found themselves with few other options in this hardscrabble terrain. It is a sad finale for all six. But who, ultimately, manipulated whom? Who was the exploiter, and who was the exploited?
It was a revolting way to die – and to live.
Feb. 15, 2013 - American expatriate murdered in Mérida had sex with 17 year old boy before dying
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