June 16th – The Ritual of Corona Tradiciona

Arturo Sanchez is an 80 year old man. Skinny and sun spotted he always dresses in a dark blue jumpsuit that may have fit him 20 years ago. He lives alone now since his wife, Marta, or Tita as he lovingly called her, passed away from colon cancer almost ten years ago.
His hands, swollen and rough from the years working in construction, look absurdly too big for his body. Behind each of his scars is a tale of the city’s expansion throughout the waves of economic booms and busts. The periferico that I took to get to the place I am staying in la Roma, he helped build it. Currently Arturo uses these beautifully tarnished tools to do odd jobs around the neighborhood when willing shop owners may have little chores or errands. He’s a quiet man but has always been honest and hardworking, this is where his impenetrable pride comes from.
Every Saturday afternoon at around exactly four, he makes a trip to the supermercado on his bike with a hand built wooden basket, almost half his size. That’s how I noticed him first. Riding a bike in la Roma is no easy task and after having walked around for quite awhile I’d yet to see anyone using one.
At the super he picks up exactly eight 40’s of Corona Tradicional, huge, especially compared to him, bottles of amber liquid. His wavering high pitched voice repeats to the cashier que hay ocho, so as not to have to lift the heavy cardboard box, that he brings and uses instead of the metal baskets to check out. He scoots the box gently, so as not to clang the bottles, to this bike. Placing each one tenderly into his basket he moves the bottles as if they were the treasured body part of a loved one. This ritual is interrupted as the boy who works at the exit of the super, paid by the tips of the shoppers he helps, grabs one of the bottles. Arturo scathingly scolds him and chases him off. It is unclear whether Arturo yells out of fear that the boy will take his precious cerveza or if it is out of frusteration for having this ritual interrupted every Saturday after having made it clear before that he does not need help. Perhaps his high pitched crys, giggled at by the other customers in line, are his way of reasserting his incredible independence. Mumbling to himself he walks his bike away with the wooden basket now full of eight 40’s of Corona Tradicional.