A brief recount of what happened the last 2 years

[Version 0.1]

Okay.
Facebook is being shit as usual, on top of that, the phone network is being shit, as usual too.
It's been quite a while since last time I tried to write anything sort of seriously, so please forgive my rustiness. Consider it a kind of engrish.

Some people[citation needed] claim that in order to know where you are going, first you must know where you came from.

For that reason, I'll attempt to put down into text what the journey has been until this, rather difficult, situation.

To begin, a few words of where we are in this whore warez work with the worst worn out humor. Also, German sausages.
For now, selling in the street at most any hour is forbidden, with a penalty of attempting to sell. The government workers are staying in the plaza until after midnight, which basically means I cannot sell at any time during the day.
The only places where anybody is allowed to sell, are flea markets called Tianguis. Unfortunately, I've been to many of these and they're not a good spot for selling my crafts. Most people who go to a tianguis mostly to buy food and look for offers and cheap prices.
In my business, they seem to ask for extremely rare things, like relics, things made of silver, rare stones like meteorites or expensive pieces sold cheap.
Most of the people who go to a tianguis are largely uninterested in the artistic value of what they find. That means it's quite difficult to get a good price, EVEN if the work itself is extremely well made.

My current skills and materials are quite mediocre. So doing anything extremely well done is difficult without investing a bit more than what I dare to.
For example, I've been doing stone work, and it's getting to a very professional level (despite being made with cheap tools), or so I've been told. But people want things like opal, amber, african stones, stuff that even raw is much more expensive than what I can realistically expect people to afford. Of course there are miracles and some people might go ahead and buy an expensive piece ONCE.

In order to get some decent sales in a tianguis, I must figure out a way to make very expensive looking pieces with very cheap materials and quickly.
I should be able to make about a dozen of pieces in a day, at least. And figure out what people want, of course.

Part of my "artistic" journey, has been learning to figure out those hidden strings of aesthetic pleasure that people carry within their cultural makeup.

For that reason, I've been observing a lot, trying to exert more effort than I knew I could, into figuring What People Want(TM)
And all I can see, people don't want anything. Immediate flesh pleasure but nothing of depth, as far as I can tell. Most people are unable to dress beyond the local socially-accepted garments. It's very very difficult to see people who go outside of the norm, even goths and furries seem to conform to certain paradigms from which they seem unable to diverge.

This detail makes me feel discouraged. It implies that my craft work must go in traditional styles and become much less "unique", if I could claim such, and look like any other craft work you could see in any store. Because people in here do not enjoy going out of the way.
I've seen some individuals who literally always walk on the same side of the street with the same speed, almost as if doing anything differently would hurt them.

There are exceptions to anything I can possibly say, of course. Most of the people who I've found and who actually enjoyed my work, were very happy with it and that gave me courage to keep trying.
This brings me back to the start: In order to find those odd individuals, whose appreciation of my work will feed my ego, I need to exhibit in the places where this tiny minority will hang around.
Unlike other places where I've sold, in here, most streets are not a good place to sell. In many barrios or random streets I was able to pick a couple of sales. Here at most I could expect to pick up a mugging. Most people you could see in the street seem to be afraid, and display their dislike of having vendors offer their warez to them.
So the strategy of walking and offering has very low success. And if I got my shop all set, I've seen people cross the street and go through some effort to get to my spot and see my wares: Those are the people I need to reach. Unfortunately, I cant see any way to distinguish who are interested and who couldn't care less.

So to make the story short, the best strategy to sell in this place, is to exhibit my work in a spot and wait for people to find me.
The best way to be found is to always set up in the same spot. The problem is that the gov't workers will not allow me to set shop anywhere where people actually go.

...

I came to Tonalá about a year and half ago, in January last year. Before that, I was in Lagos de Moreno where its also known as That Shitty Town. Sales in there were very variable and for the most part good enough. Unfortunately, rents were very rare. I was left homeless for about 2 or 3 weeks, having some money in hand, simply because I could not find any place to rent.
I suspect that the owners of the rents simply choose not to allow me to live in their place, some kind of discrimination. People in there were very xenophobic, blaming all crime on foreigners (i.e. anybody not born n' raised in the shitty town), despite all evidence showing with little doubt that most crime was by townsfolk.

Through some luck, husband made friends with an itinerant group of artesanía vendors, they happened to be from Tonalá. Husband decided to hop along their route and see how it would turn out. So we traveled to a bunch of towns until the group leader decided to come to rest in his house for a couple of days, and we decided it'd be kinda nice to try this town.
So we brought all our stuff on the group's trucks. It's not too much stuff, actually almost laughable stuff size compared to what my parents used to move when changing house. It's a quite too much stuff to carry on one's back without a car or truck.
So, after arriving, we went and tested the plaza (the one where I can't work now) and found that we could actually get some sales, and there was much more people coming and going (a very good indicator) than in the other town.
So we decided to stay.
The group went to another state, Michoacán, and husband went along. I was left alone in Tonalá for about 2 months, and I managed to find a place to rent, and got some approval from the street vending area leaders and could actually do something. It was difficult but I believe I had a pretty decent success.

So from that time on, I went to work on the plaza daily, trying different spots, annoying people everywhere, and somehow making ends meet.
I quickly realized that I didn't like it in here. I told husband so, and he got annoyed and said he didn't wanted to be running away (which he implies that I do). So I sucked it up and we stayed.

During the time husband was traveling elsewhere, he seemed to enjoy himself. After he came to me, he seemed to be mostly upset.

My relation with husband has been quite difficult, to say it somehow. For the most part, I let him do whatever he wants, while he seems in my opinion, to be against anything i want to do by default.

So I've been telling him that we should leave this state for good, and he insists on staying, arguing some stuff about government institutions helping people and stuff, which in MY opinion is bullshit. Nevertheless, I have given up on doing much anything with him along. It seems that he's just not interested in knowing other places and is just happy watching movies all night forever.
After he returned from his trip in Michoacán, he would set his shop alongside mine, and we got pretty good results that season. But then the rain season started.

We lost the rent were we had been at first, I went and found another place.

I forgot to mention that the first rent I found in Tonalá was actually not a real room for rent place, it was actually a crack house and the renting landlord was a crackhead. Pretty much everybody who ever went there smoked Crystal meth. IT SUCKED. Then one day out of nowhere, the landlord decided that he didn't want to rent to us anymore and asked to leave right now. I told him to fuck off and we stayed for a couple days, while i found another place.

The next place turned out to be a sub-rent by a friend of this guy, who was also a crack smoker. Very fine people. Then the original owner didn't like the crackhead renting to us, and a lot of trouble happened, and he told us to find another place within 2 weeks. So we went and I found this current place. That was in January this year.

When we arrived here, the government people weren't being shitheads yet, but that lasted too little and by the end of the first month, I was having a lot of trouble setting shop in the plaza. At first they had some tolerance, and would leave by 8pm or so, after that I was free to set up shop wherever I wanted.
At first that was ok, I was still getting some success and I had been working in getting known the whole last year so a lot of people went to look for me.

May came and there was some sort of fancy dress event about a beauty pageant.

Apparently, a bunch of higher ups were there and they seen us, vendors without permit, and got angry and sent a squad of government workers to tell us to leave. The rest of the week was uneventful, but by the weekend they came and told every one of us that they would be staying until 2 am. And they did.

Since May, I've been able to set up shop only a few times, and for a short time only. Still I managed to get /some/ sales but nowhere near enough, basically just food money.
Since the trouble started in January, I told husband to forget about working the plaza, for the obvious reason that getting his work confiscated would make me super angry and I'd probably end up doing something very very stupid (which I'm known to do). So I'd rather have my stuff be stolen. To begin with, I can make it again, it's not the first time it would happen, and it's much cheaper on me and my patience than having him lose something.

This recount is all over the place.

...

About 4 years ago we arrived to Guadalajara, Jalisco, for the first time since we're together. I had already been here before, about 15 years ago or so. Back then in the first time I was here, everything was very different in many ways. Perks of the big cities, they're always changing.
So when we just climbed down the bus, we found a lady vendor of artesanal wine, whom told us that it was pretty difficult to do anything because the new government's crackdown on informal vendors. That was a very bad new and seemed like a fate reading. For 6 months we struggled attempting to get a permit, trying to sell, i had my stuff confiscated and ultimately couldn't make rent and we spent some days camping outside the city hall in a protest camp.

Afterwards, we moved to Lagos de moreno because an old time friend of mine lives there and he said we could stay at his place.
Husband hated him and it was shit. About a month after we first arrived to Lagos, husband managed to get a miracle sale and earn enough money to rent a place, to which we went straight away. We stayed for about a year and a half in that rent.

Then I decided I wanted to do computer work again, and I asked on the failbook if there would be someone willing to help with a donation to get a computer, and Brenda replied and sent me a laptop. That was probably the second happiest day of my life (the first happiest day of my life will be when I finally get to die) and I was overjoyed, super optimistic, I almost could feel myself getting in a different world altogether.
I managed to get a job with coding android apps, which was extremely awesome. I was making ok money, but I was completely unable to manage and save. Husband hates saving money. So, after about 4 months, the android dev work stopped paying - even though for two months they said they WERE going to pay. If they had just said "sorry, can't pay" since the first time, I would have been able to do something.

But they were shit people and I hate them.

So, with two months due, I started going out to work and it was the middle of a very slow season, I think it was around September. We call september as septihambre, hambre means hunger.

So the renting lady from Lagos de Moreno was all hurting for money, I was trying really hard to get sales in the street and I was getting very little success and on top of that, I was having a lot of fights with husband. Then the renting lady asked me for money and I had 80mxn, literally ALL i had. I told her so and she got super upset and went to yell at husband, resulting in she booting us the next day. It was horrible.
A few weeks before losing that rent, I met another artesana, a Honduras immigrant who went by the name of "La morena" ("the darkskinned woman"), at first she was very friendly. I was having the same trouble of government not allowing me to set shop in the plaza, but somehow I managed to convince them to allow me to set shop on the adjacent street, where the bar store fronts were. It was kinda alright for a while.

When I told to La Morena about the house situation she immediately told me that I could stay in her home for a time, paying rent of course. So without any other chance we moved to her home. There it was kind of interesting, but she quickly revealed herself to be a control freak, super nasty kind of person.
We stayed about 3 weeks in there, and one day she told us WE WERE going to an expo in another town nearby. The day came and she was yelling all manic like since very early morning, and we went to a 15 days expo. It sucked. By the second week, husband and La Morena had a fight and were not talking to each other.

About three days before the expo was over, La Morena told me that something had happened to the cat and that I would go to attend the cat. I realized those were pretty bad news, and once I reached her home, she called me to get all my stuff out of her house right this moment.
I tried to find some people I've met who said would help me and nobody could keep any of my stuff. I got desperate and started crying, and a Bar owner saw me and told me that I could leave my stuff there for as long as it was necessary, though she couldn't let us stay the night there, being a bar and all.

So I went and packed everything and moved it into the bar's back room, where it stayed for about 2 or 3 weeks while we camped in the plaza during rain season. Despite that, it was actually kind of nice, and since we were in the plaza, I could work from early until afternoon making my carvings and stones while exhibiting the rest of my stuff at the same time. It was actually a good season. We quickly got money to get a new rent, and I went literally from end to end of the town asking everybody about rooms available for rent, and had absolutely no luck.

The bar owner was pretty well known, obviously, and she told me that an old lady living nearby had a few spare rooms in her unnecessarily large house. I went to talk with that old lady, Meche, and at first she said she was not renting and was rather rude.
After I left and was working in my spot, Meche came back and was saying that she was not a stuck up lady (she was) and that she would let us stay in her house for rent. At first she asked 700. The next month she asked 800. Then 1000. By that third month was when Husband met the itinerant group who would ultimately bring us to Tonalá.

Before coming here, we went to a "weekend trip" which lasted two weeks. In that time, I left the cat in Meche's house, since I thought we'd be back in a couple of days I didn't think much of it. Turns out we moved kinda far, and the bus fare to return to Lagos de Moreno was kinda expensive, about 100 - 200 mxn with only a couple of buses leaving each day.

Meche was completely unhappy with that. One day she dialed to my phone from a friend's number (she never gave me her own number) and told me that I needed to return and take out all my stuff as quickly as possible, or she would just thrash it on her own. So I managed to afford the bus fare and arrived at Lagos de Moreno with almost no money. Meche wanted rent AND taking out my stuff. No more time to get money. So I started taking out all my stuff and asked a friend couple I've met before to keep some of my stuff, two large boxes.

When I arrived to Meche's house the first thing she told me was that she needed money. Not even asked or said hello or any such amenity, just straight away "where's my money" kind of attitude. I told her that if she wanted money she could've said so and I could have sent her money, but she asked me to take out my stuff instead so that's what I did. The nasty part was that Meche not only wanted 1000mxn of rent, she also wanted extra money for keeping my stuff in her place (isn't that rent?), safe keeping my cat and some more stuff i don't remember at this time. Basically she wanted like 3000 mxn right now.

Meche then took my laptop as ransom for payment of rent. I stupidly thought that I would be out only a few days so didn't think of bringing it with me to the trip. I did disassemble and remove the hard disk and ram sticks and kept them separate, for some reason seemed like a good idea. I expected some drunk friend of Meche to steal it instead of Meche.

About Meche, she was a heavy drinker (since she would wake up until she would go to bed) and she would smoke weed every day. She even asked me to make her weed cigarettes. Crazy. And she was like, 65 or so, actually old. She never married and had to keep care of her older brother who was allegedly insane (Or so she would say several times each day every day) Her height was like she had been a pretty tall woman in her youth, her hair was still black and healthy, and some time after we arrived to her house, she did herself a makeover and actually looked pretty decent for an old woman.
Her attitude was rotten as hell though. She was the kind of person who couldn't avoid criticizing you for anything at all. Even things that made no sense. She seemed to keep a resentment towards the world, which she would mindlessly beat anybody with.
Turns out that a lot of people in the town had had a fight with her at some point.

The real mystery is why the Bar owner lady thought it would be a good idea to tell her to house us.

So the itinerant group with whom we were working decided they would allow us to accompany them for a while.

First they came to Tonalá, then they went to Michoacán, where I didn't go but Husband did.

...

End of Part 1