A FULL DISH OF GRINGO TV : Nestling Into a Cocoon Where Everyone Speaks Amurrican

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico â€”  We fell into the ultimate gringo trap. We bought a dish.

Actually, the term gringo trap refers to the hazards of life in an ancient colonial city like this, one that has been officially decreed a national monument and cannot be altered from the way it was three centuries ago. Thus, there are very narrow, cobblestoned streets with minuscule slate sidewalks winding through the forbidding walls of great homes and palaces that today contain banks and hotels and restaurants as well as private residences.

But much of this city is in perpetual disrepair. There are loose paving stones, sudden gaping holes in the street, broken curbs, various elements to trip up the unwary with sprains, turned ankles, broken bones and the like. Mexicans never seem to fall into these, only Anglos. Thus they are called gringo traps.

But the ultimate gringo trap, it seems to me, is the dish, the satellite receiver. This massive rooftop antenna, by bringing in distant TV and radio signals, projects one completely out of the world of Mexico and into the familiar confines of Tom Brokaw, Bill Cosby and “Kate & Allie.�

One may be an alien stumbling down cobblestoned streets and attempting in halting Spanish to bargain with a curbstone vendor of mangoes, but once back within one’s own thick walls with the dish, one has, as the British say, a “home from home,� and can cuddle comfortably with Robin MacNeil and “Cagney & Lacey� and the Dodgers and the political spoutings on C-Span and “Washington Week in Review� and whatever oozes out of 150 other channels bouncing off the man-made stars with which we clutter the sky. You can nestle in a cocoon where everyone speaks Amurrican and deals with Amurrican prospects and problems, drug busts and nuclear waste and Wall Street shenanigans and shootings and idiotic statements about Mexico and the like.

In recent years, these huge rooftop dishes have proliferated in Mexico like toadstools after the rain. Not only Americans and other foreigners living in Mexico buy them, but wealthy Mexicans as well. One resident of the posh Bosques de Las Lomas area of Mexico City said recently: “Around my house it looks like a field of parabolic antennas,� adding that the 12-foot dish on a house is “a sign of prestige.� The dishes pick up Spanish programs from the satellite Morelos 1 (as well as a dozen satellites carrying American programs) but reportedly it’s the American programs the Mexican buyers want, not, as one observer put it, “the stale fare of Mexican TV.�

Like Americans in rural areas, Mexican residents with satellite antennas are up in arms over the decision by HBO, Showtime and other pay services to scramble their satellite signal, particularly as some 40 other channels are also planning scrambled signals. There was much applause for the electronic engineer who calls himself Capt. Midnight who successfully jammed HBO’s signal last April for four minutes as a personal protest. (There’s an equal amount of sympathy for him now, after he was tracked down and confessed.)

Reports are that a decoding package for various scrambled channels is being prepared for Mexico at $25 a month (about 15,000 pesos, a weekly salary for a working man) plus $6.50 a month each for certain pay channels. But there’s the question of international copyright, which, according to Orbit, the Bible of satellite TV, neither HBO or Showtime has for their products. ‘Tis a pickle with which, as of this writing, Congress is wrestling.

Actually, neither PBS nor the commercial networks are involved in any scrambling plans, and though I would hate to give up Bravo and the Arts & Entertainment channel, I can live without the rare movie worth watching on HBO. Like most expatriates in Mexico, we have visas that require us to return to the states every six months, at which times we pig out on the better movies and other fare.

Actually, what may well be the most valuable thing you get when you put one of these giant dishes on your roof is music. Not only are television signals sent by satellite but audio signals as well. Tied into your stereo system, you get 24 hours of classical music, chamber music, symphonic music from stations in New York, Chicago and other cities; you get country music, rock, jazz, big bands, music from the ‘50s and ‘60s. There are stations that offer the eternally soothing music known as “easy listening.� (Our kids call it elevator music.) Also, via audio, there is 24-hour news, weather, sports, religious programs, even a comedy channel.

But TV is, of course, the primary reason for the dish, and as you plow through the vast spectrum of programs, you get the feeling that time stands still. Tod and Buzz travel eternally down Route 66 in their Corvette, and Scotty and Kelly search out the endless threats of “I Spy�; Donna Reed has her eternal worries about her children, and “Gunsmoke� rises nightly. There’s Dennis the Menace and Jack Benny and Gracie Allen. Ozzie still hangs around the malt shop when malt shops no longer exist. Excuse me. The Dodgers are on and Valenzuela’s pitching.