By December 20, 1965, the 16 little taxis were completed and the governor issued permits for them to provide public transportation in Mazatlán.
As is the case with many men like Don Miguel, he had a variety of business endeavors including selling bread, motorcycles, and pianos. He even worked as a reporter for a period of time. But he always had his eye on the next adventure.
When he was in his early 40s he passed by an open garage and saw an old unused gasoline powered Cushman golf cart. He thought to himself, “What a great way to get people around town.” Only a little modification would be needed. He approached the town’s banks, only to be denied financing for his crazy scheme by the smart bankers.
Undaunted, he travelled to Lincoln, Nebraska, the home of Cushman, and talked the company into financing eight of the gasoline golf carts. He brought them back to Mazatlán and rented a place on Constitución and had his friend, Don Miguel Valadez Lejarza, make the necessary modifications.
When his prototype was ready, as luck would have it, the Governor of the State of Sinaloa, Leopoldo Sanchez Celis, was in town. Early one morning El Chícharo drove his three-wheeled taxi downtown and parked it in front of the hotel in which the governor was staying.
When the governor exited the hotel and saw the little taxi, he was taken by the cleverness of the motorized tricycle, and struck up a conversation with El Chícharo. El Chícharo did his best “sales job” and before the governor left he told El Chícharo that he would help him build sixteen of them and get the permits to drive them as taxis on the streets of Mazatlán.
His location on Constitución got busy building the new taxis. His Constitución location, which now houses the Municipal Arts Center, served as the workshop for El Chícharo for ten years. The next time you walk past this location (the first door on your right as you walk east on Constitución past Carnaval) you will see a plaque commemorating this fact.
By December 20, 1965, the 16 little taxis were completed and the governor issued permits for them to provide public transportation in Mazatlán. El Chícharo lined them up on the main street and drove his little parade through town with him playing the accordion in the first cart.
By the end of the following year El Chícharo had another 16 tricycles and the public had accepted them as a quick and fun mode of transportation. Although the public liked the newly created option for getting around town, the drivers of city buses and taxis did not. El Chícharo was cutting into their profits.
The open air transportation during the cooler months did cause one to bundle up a little, as the fresh and strong ocean breezes swept through the vehicle. The taxi drivers would tell prospective passenger that they would “catch their death of cold” riding in one of those things. Before long word had spread, thanks to the jealous taxi drivers and bus drivers, that people were catching pneumonia riding in them. Although no one ever met a passenger who had suffered the illness due to a ride in the little tricycle, the name “pulmonia,” which is the Spanish word for pneumonia, caught on. Before long El Chícharo’s little taxi had a name, a pulmonia.
By the end of the 1960s there were well over a hundred pulmonias plying the streets of Mazatlán. The drivers of the pulmonias had by this time formed a union and decided they wanted a bigger piece of the pie. The union approached the governor and asked him to issue permits to them, so they could also have pulmonias on the streets. They argued that free enterprise demanded it. El Chícharo should not have a lock on the business.
Their request fell on deaf ears, or at least ones that were hard of hearing. So the union decided to get the governor’s attention and on April 4, 1975, the union struck El Chícharo. With a significant portion of the city’s public transportation out of business, on May 28th the state recalled all permits issued to pulmonias and began issuing temporary ones.
Operation and control of the pulmonias was granted to the union. The story goes that the union’s operation of the business was so bad that within a short time there were only 24 pulmonias serving the public.
In an attempt to revitalize the business major changes were made in the early ‘80s. Since the three-wheel vehicle was really unsafe for city streets, it was decided to go to the current four wheel version. Also the motor from a Volkswagen Beetle was substituted for the Cushman motor. The availability of Volkswagen engines and parts substantially cut the cost of both production and maintenance.
The pulmonia made a comeback and the design and name “pulmonia” was registered with the federal patent office (The Mexican Institute of Industrial Property). The union attempted to introduce the pulmonia into other resort towns, such as Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta. However, the local transportation unions never let the idea get off the ground. In fact, one story says when the Mazatlán union took a pulmonia to another town to show it, the local union set it afire.
And so, the pulmonia is another thing unique to “The Place of the Deer.” The importance of El Chícharo’s pulmonias to Mazatlán was memorialized in 2001 when a monument to the famous taxi was unveiled on the Malecón across from the Aqua Marina hotel.
Today there are well over 350 pulmonias providing open-air transportation to locals and tourists alike in Mazatlán. I must admit, however, that sometimes during the months of January and February I am more likely to catch a ride with a taxi. Not that I’m afraid I’ll catch my death of cold riding in a pulmonia; it’s just a little too breezy.
But come March, like most people, I’ll be on the corner waiving down that white pulmonia.
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