We venture into Colonia Obrera Cuauhtémoc
My cheap German violin (Sandner) was badly set up when I bought it 5 years ago in Veerkamp's; well, hardly set up at all. Strings, bridge, nut were all there, but they showed no signs of having been worked on to achieve optimal string height. I tried to deepen the grooves in the bridge using a serrated kitchen knife, but the tone diminished and I was afraid of spoiling the covering of the strings. I decided to treat myself, and spend a little money on having it "set up right".
Google found me a list of luthiers in Mexico, with telephone numbers and Facebook pages. I picked one at random, called Máximo Rodríguez (Laudero), and I made contact. I was to turn up at 1pm on Wednesday at his new address: Isabel la Católica 400, esquina con Delgado. Isaura told me it was "not a good part of the city", that the metro would be crammed due to the closure of the broken 12th line. She insisted on accompanying me –– by taxi.
We go there with 3 - 4 minutes to spare. The printer in the shop nearest the corner had never heard of a Máximo Rodríguez, or any violin-maker. Nor has the printer next door. I had a telephone number but, before I had got out my phone, the door opened and a shy young man appeared and led us down a passage to a room at the end containing a small table on which lay a dismantled violin and a small cabinet of tools. Máximo had only occupied this workshop for two days.
I gave my diagnosis. He agreed. We would come back in an hour and the job would cost £20 (i.e. MX$500). We set off down the street, with an hour to kill, enjoying the sunshine and the novel experience of this explicitly 'working' district. The traffic was modest and not intrusive. But two particular noises gradually took our attention.
It turned out that essentially everyone was listening to the the progress of the football match in Qatar – Mexico versus Saudi Arabia; on telephones, on transistor radios, on television screens, in shops, in booths, in kiosks, in cafés, in print shops, in stationers. (Mexico won 2:1.)
The other noise was that of printing presses, for we were in an area of town where essentially every business was concerned with printing. The shops were stationers, the booths sold printed T-shirt and printed ribbons, the kiosks sold printed mugs. The workers were printers, lithographers, photocopiers, hot-metal printers, hot-foil embossers, draughtsmen. We saw one workshop advertising: "Suajes y Suajados, urgentes". Isaura had no idea what skills were involved, and Google Translate was little help –– something to do with die-cutting.
After three quarters of an hour, and a little weary, we sat on a bench for a few minutes outside a workshop in which a massive, old-fashioned, press was operating; a heavy fly-wheel spinning, massive jaws clenching and releasing. Next door a more modern process with its characteristic whoosh-click, whoosh-click, like a giant photo-copier. In that hour we must have walked past well over a hundred printing concerns, perhaps two hundred.
And one violin maker.
