I’ve never been one to believe in ghosts or witchcraft or anything like that, despite my ex-wife’s grandmother’s warning that, “Que los hay, los hay.” Of course, this was the same woman who accused me of sneaking into her granddaughter’s bedroom in the middle of the night with lascivious intentions because she found a pair of men’s shoes underneath the bed (shoes that belonged to Abuelita’s own son, my ex’s uncle, who was visiting from out of town). Yet, it was my own personal experience—and that of others—with el Mondo Caffè in Guadalajara, Jalisco, that led me to believe that perhaps there really was something to what Abuelita had to say…

My wife’s family had always been into that sort of thing: her mother claimed to have seen headless ghosts in the family hacienda, one of her cousins was a medium who wrote letters from Jesucristo himself, and my wife, well, she bought into all that stuff, including witchcraft. I took it all with a grain of salt—yet another one of Mexico’s charming idiosyncrasies. The first time I heard that my employees had found a chunk of meat buried in the planting box outside my café, I assumed that one of the kitchen staff had been stealing dinner, and for some reason or another, decided to hide it. When it happened again, however, I was actually present, and it was obvious that whatever it was that we had uncovered was not a cut of meat that we sold at the Mondo. My wife mentioned what happened to someone in her family, and immediately called me to tell me the true meaning of the meat in the garden. It was a “trabajo”—witchcraft—aimed at basically destroying the life of the intended victim by turning him into an alcoholic, breaking-up his marriage and ruining his business. The motive behind the curse: envy.

I found it hard to believe that somebody “envied” me and my business enough to go through the trouble of cursing me—if they only knew what a struggle it was just to keep the business open! But, I had also learned over the years not to be surprised by anything unusual that happened south of the border, and that, although I didn’t necessarily prescribe to their beliefs, to many Mexicans, witchcraft was a part of life just like anything else. I laughed-off the idea of a curse, although I must admit that it bothered me that somebody actually hated me enough to wish for my total demise.

Other strange things had happened in around the Mondo in the past, and although I didn’t see a connection, it was a little disturbing. There had been a mysterious fire in the basement that would have completely destroyed the business had the fire department not arrived in time to stop it from spreading—I wrote that off to an electrical problem. On more than one occasion, a car that was parked in front of the business inexplicably began to roll down the (relatively level) street—I attributed that to leaving the car in neutral and not engaging the parking brake. When an employee claimed to have seen the ghost of a small boy in the remodeled basement, I assumed she was either crazy or high.

And then, out of the blue, an old friend called. I had worked with Jaime at QFC many years before I moved to Mexico, and jokingly referred to him as my “brujo” because of his South American heritage and homeopathic inclinations. I was in college at the time—in the best shape of my life—and Jaime was always recommending different, natural remedies for purifying my system and enhancing my physical condition. But that was about the extent of our relationship. The last time I had even seen him was years before when my wife and I were up in Seattle visiting the family. We had gone shopping at the grocery store, and sure enough, he was still there, checking away. When he told me over the phone that he wanted to come down to Mexico and visit me because he “felt a disturbance” in my life, I said, “Sure, why not!” Anybody who wanted to visit me in Mexico was always welcome—brujos included—and to tell you the truth, my life had been unraveling a bit as of late. My wife and I were constantly fighting, and more and more, I found myself seeking solace through drinking. I arranged to pick him up at the airport the following week.

I had told Jaime that I owned a café, but never got into any of the details—especially as far as spooks and curses go. As we pulled-up outside el Mondo, Jaime immediately got out of the car and just stood there as if he were somehow measuring the psychic energy. “Is this your café?” he asked, as if there were another one nearby. I nodded. “I’m going to take a walk around the block,” he said, “to get a feel for things.” A little while later, he came into the café, sat down with me and said, “There are two presences here…one is a young adult—angry, mischievous. The other is a child.” Dumbfounded, I began to tell him about the cars moving by themselves and the (now frequent) accounts of the ghost-boy in the basement.

I had never seen anything myself, and I was pretty sure that most of it was hysteria, but there were a couple of different occurrences that had led me to question my own skepticism. The first was when our beer-sales rep reportedly came up the stairs from the basement (where we stored the kegs), and asked the barista whose kid it was playing in the subterranean storage room. Of course, there was no one down there. The second was when my manager—perhaps the most macho and cynical employee I had—told me of his own encounter in the basement. He was down there to get supplies when he came face-to-face with “el niño,” as we had come to refer to the presence, and upon seeing the specter, was overcome with an overwhelming sense of sorrow and, contrary to his macho nature, began crying uncontrollably. “I’m never going back down there,” he proclaimed.

Over time, other aspects of my life began to sour. My drinking had gotten out of control, my wife and I had broken-up, and business was anything but booming. Even my amigos Gringos suggested that I get a “limpia”—a sort of spiritual cleansing performed by a “santero” or good witch. Once again, I was skeptical, but when in Rome… My girlfriend at the time and I went to visit a santera, who agreed to visit el Mondo and evaluate the situation. We didn’t get into the details, and when she claimed that there was indeed a presence in the building—an older man who had hanged himself—my skepticism returned. We did follow her instructions, however, and carried out a series of rituals aimed at ridding the building of its malevolent spirits.

Around the same time, unbeknownst to me, my ex-wife visited a renowned, local chamán, whose powers are manifest through eggs. Those who seek his help buy “huevos” at the entrance to his home, and bring the eggs to him, which he then cracks open and “reads.” According to my ex, and her equally ingenuous sister-in-law, when the chamán cracked open the egg that they had bought in my name, a rusty nail spilled into the glass along with the egg white and yolk, a sign that whatever it was that had poisoned my life had been extracted.

Not long afterwards, after a series of robberies, betrayals and other bad luck in general, I put the café on the market and was overjoyed when someone agreed to buy it for my asking price. As I was cleaning out my offices, my girlfriend and I were surprised to find two containers of salt, one strategically placed behind the safe and the other hidden beneath a sofa where I regularly slept on nights that I chose not to return home. The purpose of the salt was, of course, to further bring about financial and personal ruin. And, although I hadn’t necessarily come to accept these “trabajos” as anything other than Mexican superstitions, the idea that someone in my administrative inner-circle—someone who I trusted—took measures to bring about my downfall.

Since I left Guadalajara, el Mondo continues to stand on the corner of Chapultepec and Pedro Moreno, although its doors have been closed for more than a year. The new owners were either incapable of running the business or, as some might suggest, fell victim to the curses and the supernatural presences that had become a part of the locale. Whenever somebody asks me if I miss el Mondo, my reactions is always the same: a disdainful snort escapes as I slowly and sincerely shake my head. Despite the fact that I am often incapable of letting go of the past, El Mondo Caffè is nothing more than a distant memory from another life; it’s ghosts no longer haunt me.

Photo courtesy of Duncan Allan

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