Hating the Grand Poobah and the Ha-Ha

Shortly before the start of the Ha-Ha, we mentioned that there are certain people who appear to be obsessed with hating the event and/or the Grand Poobah. Those who doubted us should have been at the Baja Cantina Beach Party for the Ha-Ha fleet last Friday. As we were getting set to be the target of the ‘Anti-Authoritarian Water Balloon Attack on the Poobah’, one of this year’s new events, we were visited by three officials from Migracion. Over the course of the next hour, they informed us that we were the subject of a denunciation by person or persons unknown, and that we would have be present for an investigation the following Monday. It was unfortunate, because it meant the water balloon attack on us had to be rushed so the Ha-Ha group could clear the area for a previously scheduled wedding. But that’s life.

We showed up on time at Migracion on Monday, accompanied by the General Manager and Manager of IGY’s Cabo San Lucas Marina and Ismael of Baja Cantina.  Victor, the Cabo ship’s agent, had hoped to be there also, but had pressing business at the last minute that prevented it. It was no big deal, as we were only allowed to see the administrator handling the case with a translator, Enrique Rivera, and a friend, which was Ismael. The administrator showed us the denunciation against us, which was about 20 pages long, and clearly took lots of time and money to put together. It accused the Poobah of working illegally in Mexico, and the Ha-Ha fleet of leaving the beaches of Mexico filthy, polluting the water with oil, and generally being about the worst curse to ever befall Mexico.

When we asked who had filed the denunciation, the administrator said it had been done by a front organization, which meant the identity of the real person making the attack can never be found. "I can tell you that it was filed in Ensenada," said the administrator, "and could have been done by a Mexican or even some angry American."

Anyway, the administrator allowed us to give our side of the story, which was that all Ha-Ha activities in Mexico are put on by Mexican businesses, and that the Poobah and Ha-Ha in no way profit from them. To back this up, we showed the administrator photos of the Poobah with the smiling Mayor of Turtle Bay, and with the Port Captain and Immigration heads in San Carlos, who had come up to Bahia Santa Maria specifically to clear Ha-Ha boats into Mexico. We also explained that it was one of the top priorities of the Ha-Ha to leave all beaches cleaner than we found them, and that any coward who made accusations to the contrary was either ignorant or a liar.

It was a meeting that went on for several hours, mostly in Spanish, and was very educational. The administrator explained that anyone in Mexico could file an anonymous denunciation against anyone else, and it was Migracion’s responsibility to investigate. When we asked him if they got many, he pointed to the file cabinet behind him and rolled his eyes. He said it was not uncommon for Americans to file them against other Americans. When we later left the building, we noticed a post office like box where people could drop off denunciations.

We found the administrator to be extremely competent. He took the charges in the denunciation very seriously, but he also took our responses to the accusations every bit as seriously. By the time it was all over, he had created a three-page single-spaced document that would have taken someone in the U.S. courts a month to create. It stated his finding, which was that we hadn’t polluted, and that we hadn’t collected money in Mexico, but that we had been in a small technical violation because we didn’t have ‘MC of beach events’ on the back of our FM3 visa. When the administrator said there was going to be a small fine because we were in a small technical violation of the law, it was a tie between Enrique and Ismael to see who could first say who was going to pay for it on behalf of the Ha-Ha and the Poobah. The amount of the fine will be determined later, but the administrator said it would probably be somewhere in the range of $100 – $300. It didn’t make any difference to him if the fine was going to be paid by the marina and or Baja Cantina. Further, he thanked the Poobah and the Ha-Ha for all we have done for Mexico. He pointed out that our FM3 needed to be updated by December, and that if we added party host for Ha-Ha on the back, we would have no similar trouble in the future.

Hate usually pays poor returns. In this case, whoever went to all the time and expense of trying to get us and the Ha-Ha in trouble with the Mexican authorities came out the big loser. A lot of psych experts contend that hate is both a cry for help by insecure people and the externalization of some amount of self-hatred. We don’t know about any of that, but we do know that for less than $10 you can buy a Zen garden that will fit nicely on most chart tables. And we know that working the sands of one’s garden is much more productive than become the slave of others by virtue of hating them. Peace.