First trip to La Mesa de Abajo, 1999

4/20

I left early in the morning for another trip to the

Sierra, with Mike Gray, Luz Maria Sandoval de Navarro,

Manolo Sandoval (Lucy´s brother) and Eduardo "Lalo"

Ramirez, a mutual friend who is with the State Police.

In Hermosillo it had been getting up to 110 F. / 43C,

so it was a hot shuffle for three hours until we

gained enough altitude to ride comfortably. We were

packed into Mike´s Blazer, where three in the back is

especially uncomfortable. I now know that I don´t want

a Blazer.

We arrived in Yécora at around noon and suprised

Adele, Lupeto and Jesus who were very glad to see us

all. There was no gasoline in Yécora and we were told

that maybe in a few days there would be a delivery.

After unloading gifts and other extras it was back on

the road to Mesa el Campanero, gaining even more

altitude, up to around 6000 feet. At some point we

crossed into the state of Chihuahua. Off of the Mesa

it is a short descent to Bermudez, a small logging

town.

In Bermudez we stopped for a visit at a house of over

150 years. The interior was inviting and comfortable,

walls adorned with browned photos of ancient people

staring out from the past. Beds were situated here and

there and doors opened into rooms filled with the

atmosphere. There were shrines of various types,

pictures of Jesus, crosses, hanging plants, an old

stair case bent and crackling and a covered back porch

opening opening unto a yard filled with flowers,

strange cactus, herbs and mature fruit trees, quince,

peach, plum and apple.

After Bermudez, the road gets very rough. It is about

an hour and a half to El Cordón, a village of 7

families out on the lip of an old lava flow. It had

been 5 years since Lucy had been there, working on

another service project with ASA, Asociación Sonorense

de los Amigos, or the Sonoran Association of Friends,

an outfit founded by a Quaker named Norman Krekler. We

were welcomed warmly. As usual, the hosts start

grabbing chairs and enjoining everyone to sit while

the wife gets wood and stokes the fire to heat coffee

water and to start cooking to feed the guests.

By this time the sun was sinking low and much to

everyone´s delight, it was cold! After a bit, Tere had

dinner ready, which consisted of mashed bayo beans,

cheeses and tortillas; bayos are small, yellow-green

beans which are grown in this locality. I like the

mashed beans a lot, you take your fresh tortilla and

break it into a small piece and fold it over the beans

for a mouthful. The cheeses consisted of freshly made

cottage cheese or cuajada and a dried version of the

cuajada to which is added salt and then grated and

served in a bowl to be sprinkled onto your beans; it

is very similar to parmesan or romano. All over Mexico

there is a great variety of cheeses, which have been a

pleasure to sample. Knowing that this was all produced

locally, homemade, added to to the awesome good taste.

To top things off was a jar of red hot, pickled

chiltepin peppers.

After dinner we retired to the older part of the

house, built by Don Emeterio, some 30 years ago.

Stepping into the anteroom there is a cozy little fire

place, some chairs, beds off in two corners, and some

photos of previous service project people. The people

really like to have the groups come and value highly

any memorabilia which the gringos leave behind. A

small TV was playing a cheesy novela or soap opera and

everyone was sitting around paying serious attention.

The reception was marginal, with a lot of fuzz and

passing lines and the sound was full of static, yet it

was enough to rapture the audience.

Doña Matilde, Don Emeterio´s wife sat in a dim corner

with a shawl over her head, variously poking at the

fire with her cane and joining the conversation. She

was ancient, face deeply furrowed, barely able to

walk, all hunched over, an old crone if there ever

was, but with good hearing and clearly spoken Spanish.

She still managed to fulfill her wifely

responsiblities and continued to cook for the Don,

wash clothes and sweep up the house.

Don Emeterio (Emmett), is 79 years old, a bit hard of

hearing but entirely mobile, alert and active, with a

big smile of false teeth, out herding cattle at the

crack of dawn. He is the grandson of the immigrant

from North Carolina, Emelio Clark, who came to Mexico

fleeing the Civil War. How odd and interesting to run

into Mexicans who look exactly like gringos, except

for the ever present mustache, cowboy hats, boots and

shirts opened half way down the chest.

Two other immigrants accompanied Emelio Clark,

Guillermo (William) Moore and another fellow named

DeMoss. In El Cordón, Bermudez and farther down the

road in Mesa Abajo, they are predominantly Clarks and

DeMosses. They all look alike, tall, with light skin,

blonde, and some with reddish beards. Their facial

structure is entirely different from the common

mestizo look of the average Mexican. A general rule is

that each pueblo is made up of one big extended family

and here we were most definitely in Clarkville,

Mexico.

There has been a drought in Sonora for some 4 years.

All throughout the Sonoran Sierra it hasn´t rained for

8 months. The live oaks are entirely brown and many

pines are browned off as well. Dust blows along with

the wind and the topic of conversation inevitably

returns to the drought. In El Cordón, they must haul

water every other day from Mesa Abajo.

In Mesa Abajo they were lucky enough to run into a

gringo service outfit called Piloto Sandía, which

specializes in water system improvement projects. Mesa

Abajo, the municipio (county), Piloto Sandía and the

state of Chihuahua all anted up some $21,000. And the

villagers put up all the hand work to install a quite

impressive system. 1000 feet below the mesa is a

cistern in a shaded arroyo which catches water from a

spring. There is a solar powered pump which pushes the

water uphill into a circular tank made of sheet metal

the size of a small swimming pool. The tank lies above

the village and various PVC pipes are attached and

gravity carries the water off to individual houses and

stock yards.

There are fields and small ranches spread all over the

Sierra. From the mesas, you can see the Sierra Oscura

or Dark Mountains, a heavily wooded area where a

fellow recently got lost and  they had a posse out fro

three days before they found the body. People live in

simple traditional ways that have endured for hundreds

of years. Directly south is the Copper Canyon,

Barranca del Cobre and mountains and canyons upen up

for as far as the eye can see.

The Tarahumara, Guarijío, Southern Pima and diaspora

Yaqui Indians all converge in this area. A Guarijío

man killed a big jaguar not too long ago. The older

guys remember bears and wolves too, but now, after

hundreds of years of ranching, and people´s lives

depending on the calves (becerros) survival, they

large predators are limited to mountain lions, bobcats

and coyotes. Last week a cow was killed and half eaten

by lions. Times are tough for everybody during this

drought and deer are scarce and few far between.

Some of the local talk is about gringos who pay up and

over $10,000. to come and hunt wild turkey (guajolote

or guijolo) and deer and how ridiculous it is for

these folks to come and spend so much money. It

doesn´t add up to these folks, who are generally

pretty poor, that people would have so much money to

blow when they are struggling to get by. The talk also

runs into who is acting as a guide without the proper

papaers abd ripping off the gringos and not paying

taxes to the state.

Back at El Cordón, the houses surround a big corral or

open public space, with animals everywhere, mules,

burros, horses, cows, bulls, chickens  and roosters.

Life there is a constant din of mooing and neighing

and crowing and clucking. One morning, I had to throw

some rocks at the bull to clear a path to the

outhouse.

The fields, while cleared of trees, are full of

volcanic pumice, from the size of gravel up to small

boulders. There is so much rock that it is impossible

to clear it all off. They plow right through it all,

with large oxen and old style plows and put up fields

full of corn and beans. It is amazing how hard they

must work to plant and harvest yet they bring in

enough to sell extra. The people from the Mesa el

Campanero area sell their produce as far west as

Tecoripa, but farther is the domain of others, there

being an informal division of territory based upon

accesibility and also whether the people will like

bayos or whether they prefer pintos or maycobas.

Of note is that you drive all day, way, way out there

and arrive at a small pueblo, seemingly worlds away,

yet they have nicely built houses with stoves,

paintings, couches, nice tables and all is clean and

well organized and comfortable. All the villages have

a CB radio which they use to communicate with Ciudad

Obregón, personal news, emergencies, whatever. This is

all in great contrast to Trigo Moreno where trash is

strewn all over and the people devolved into

intransigant infighting, which prevents them from

cooperating and achieving the levels of organization

found in El Cordón and  Mesa Abajo. The pueblo of

Trigo perhaps mirrors the proximity to Yécora and

"civilization" and thus it is easier for them to

operate as individuals rather than memebers of a

community. However, any small pueblo is going to have

gossip and problems deriving from close proximity,

everybody knowing everyone elses foibles and problems.

This is a worldwide phenomena.

4/21

We went to Mesa Abajo to see whether they were

interested in having a service project and as I have

been saying, it was striking how together everything

is. We visited a few homes and kids were sent out to

gather the heads of the families and gradually, all

were sitting on the front porch of the comisario

(mayor). I had the pleasure of translating Mike´s

flyer advertizing his different projects, to let the

people know what sort of operation this was. The

villagers reached a consensus and Mike agreed to bring

a group for 10 days in June and July.

Lucy and the fromer ASA people wanted to introduce

Mike to some new pueblos besides Trigo and their

thought came to fruition. (After the death of Norman

Krekler, there was a falling out of the people amidst

accusations of financial mismanagement and now ASA is

no longer a functioning entity and Lucy has been

working with Mike to continue service work in Sonora).

After a good session of porch sitting and joking about

how the group should be all muchachas of twenty years,

we all went to eat at different people´s houses. Mike

and I went to the house of Gerrardo and Blanca where

we had a soup of squash, potatoes, cabbage, ground

chiltepines and dried meat, accompanied of course by

tortillas, very tasty. For desert, Blanca brought out

a bottle of oeach preserves which we had along with

prickly pear fruit jelly spread on hot tortillas. The

ambience (ambiente) was made more significant by

knowing everything we ate was grown and produced by

Gerrardo and Blanca. We sat around the table and

gradually broke the ice between different worlds.

Their kids came home from school for lunch. I took the

opportunity to fool around with them and play a few

tricks. When you get in good with Mexican kids, you

are home free with the parents. In Trigo I have a

great time with the kids, when we walk down the road,

they all want to hold my hand. Kids are less inhibited

than adults; the kids provide a great opportunity to

integrate and work one´s way into the village life. In

Mexico, kids are honored above all. I had brought a

big bag of shells from San Carlos and made a give away

at the truck as we were leaving, and every one got a

few choice sea shells, the adults had to join in as

well as you just don´t see that sort of stuff out in

the mountains.

Doña Maria and her husband, a Clark and the mayor, are

first cousins. Some other things to add about the

women: their domain is the house, there they rule.

With their old fashioned pedal sewing machines they

make bright designs on doilies and table clothes, they

make their own shoes, with tire treads for the soles,

they make many clothes and provide tremendous

hospitality. They hover over the table. Should your

cup or bowl be empty, they immediately offer to fill

it again. As you eat they are making tortillas and

endeavor to supply the perfect meal, nothing cold, no

waiting to ask. They don´t eat until the men and the

children have finished.

Coffee is the entrance into the house, "would you like

some coffee?". You arrive, first they pull out all the

chairs, then you get served coffee, always instant

coffee with sugar, then it is "are you hungry, have

you eaten?". Every house is the same. To visit a

pueblo means to drinking a lot of coffee!¡!¡ You sit,

chat, drink more coffee. The conversation winds itself

around to the drought. They have never seen it this

dry, ever. Who got a deer? Who died? Who got married?

The conversation hits on the heroes journey, and all

points inbetween.

After giving away the shells we slid out of town and

back to El Cordón. Lucy was right to identify the

pueblos in Chihuahua as a good alternative to Trigo

Moreno. It is a whole other breed of people. It is a

different type of Mexico and as always, Mexico

suprises and delights. The real action, the pearl of

what a person can find in Mexico, is the sociability

and simplicity of the traditional culture.

4/24

I slept in front of the fire for the last two nights.

What a delight to be half naked, cold on one side and

hot on the other! The first night in El Cordón, Lalo

and Mike slept up on the beds and me on the floor. The

second night, Lalo couldn´t take the sagging, lumpy

old mattress and joined me on the floor. The fire was

hot, coals of oak and I was rolling and adjusting and

meanwhile, Lalo fell into a deep sleep, snoring as if

to imitate all barnyard animals. I lay awake, unable

to let loose of the focus on his snoring. I slept from

12:30AM to 3:30AM and that was it. The roosters and

cows took care of the rest. In the morning Mike and I

arose late, missing a dramatic, foggy sunrise and the

folks thought, "what a couple of lazy gringos". I

pulled into the kitchen to beg for coffee around

6:30AM and told my story and not long after, Mike came

in all bleary eyed and said, "it wasn´t just Lalo, but

Fred too". This all became a big joke and Lalo became

"Ronky" Ramirez, from the verb roncar, to snore. All

day Mike and I were toasted from lack of sleep.

In the late afternoon and evening it rained some, but

nothing more than to settle the dust momentarily, the

soil, being so dry, sucked up the small quantity of

moisture and it evaporated off almost instantly.

We packed up and left back to Yécora, only to find the

main gas station still out of gas, we had 1 or 2

gallons left, at the mercy of Fate. Lucky for us there

was gas at the other station, buried within the bowels

of Yécora. At the station we ran into Lupeto and

Chiri. Lupeto had been drinking all night and he and

his socios were fried. Mike wanted to go to Trigo to

deliver a roll of fabric to Pina and scope out the

scene for future projects, but with Hilario´s death

and the advice of all the former ASA people, it was

almost a foregone conclusion that Trigo was history.

Before leaving Yécora, we went and got Jose Juan and

he and Lupeto appealed for a stop at the Deposito to

buy some more beer. They bought 48 cans of Modelo

Especial and we headed out. Arriving at the Rancho of

El Dan, the gringo, we found a bunch of strangers and

a few familiar faces hanging out and drinking

bacanora. It still being morning, it was a bit wild to

be getting after cold ones, but with the crowd there,

the two cases were made in short work. Mike, who

doesn´t drink, and I then went off to Pina´s house

where we were welcomed heartily by the matron and her

kids, Manuel, Miguel, Beto and Olga.

Pina and her kids are my favorites in Trigo and all

was good. She served us up coffee and hot tortillas

with butter and salt. She didn´t have anything else.

Her husband, Víctor, was in Yécora drinking all night

with the other guys. Mike brought photos and they all

became absorbed in that, being able to decide which

ones they wanted. Manuel had caught three fish by hand

farther down in the drainage and he showed them off

with pride. At 14, the oldest kid, a  bastard

son, he is wild and undisciplined, but a good kid, a

friend, with confidence, an innocent Sierra boy with a

bright smile. The peach trees had put on fruit in the

yard and the season had progressed, round and round,

year after year, life in el campo, the country.

Mike left to visit more and then Lupeto showed up,

drooling, stumbling drunk, to announce that El

Progreso was in town, to provide health care and to

give monetary assistance to mothers with kids. Pina

left me in charge of the kids and they wanted me to

sing in English and play games. We had a lot of

laughs. I treasure those moments with them. El

Progreso gave Pina $40.00 for two months. They don´t

come every month and she gets shortchanged. Mike was

honking  to leave and I pulled out $200.00 pesos

(@$20.00) and made a present for La Pina. She is

pregnant again and quite poor. Although I had only

around $350.00 to my name, I figured life would come

easier to me than to her. I should have given her

more.

I also delivered toy trucks and toy tea sets from Lucy

for the kids, which they began to play with

immediately. I gave a little truck to Dan´s son Billy

and he immediately said "I don´t play with toys". What

kind of macho, cowboy crap is Dan teaching this boy!?

Billy did go to his house and got me a piece of lead

and copper which he said was fool´s gold. For a kid of

7 years old, he is living it up in México, hardly any

school. He had a pair of sneakers which intead of

saying NIKE said KIKE, obviously some Mexican shoe

manufacturers playing a joke that only gringos would

get. Also, in Mesa Abajo, they had a black dog named

nigger.

I could see in Jose Juan´s eyes that he was losing his

spirit in Yécora. In Trigo he had been a hard working

campesino, living in the simple and direct way, but he

got railroaded out of town by the coldness of the

other families and ended up selling his life in the

country for one in the dusty streets of Yécora. He now

has his small property, a truck, but he is not happy.

He doesn´t like Yécora, it is too noisy, dirty and

impersonal and he is quickly spending the money from

the sale of his property on beer and whatnot. It is a

shame to see such a nice guy get driven like this by

the winds of Fate.

After we got back to Yécora, Lupeto went and got

another case of beer and Jose Juan had us over for

dinner. We returned to Lupeto´s house to find Lucy and

Manolo waiting and anxious to leave, they not wanting

to spend the night amidst crazy drunks. Jesus,

Lupeto´s son was skulking about, obviously ashamed of

his father and Lupeto then said "Jesus is not worth

anything, he won´t even drink a beer!". We were out of

there, on  our way to Hermosillo via Sahuaripa. Here

and there are wild fig trees called tescalama, which

have impressive large root systems grabbing all over

cliffs and rocks, similar to the strangler figs of

South Florida. It grew dark as we entered the

Sahuaripa River valley and the smells of the river and

cows and horses along the road provided ambience until

we arrived at Bámori, a very small town some 30

minutes south of Sahuaripa.

Lalo´s aunt lives in Bámori. He hadn´t seen her for

five years. As he was knocking on the door, a neighbor

came out and I told her what we were up to and she

said we could stay at her house if we wanted. All the

doors to the house were wide open, (in the other

little pueblos too), what a sense of having entered a

whole other reality! There is no fear, the people are

friendly beyond belief, the streets fairly exuding

the  atmosphere of old México. Auntie took us in and

fed us, again we ate, and we all got a bed in nice

open rooms with halls opening out into a huge backyard

planted with flowers and fruit trees and containing

the remains of an old adobe building built by the

aunt´s great grandfather. The house itself was built

by the great grandfather too. The ceilings hold

earthen insulation with echo cactus ribs or splits.

The atmosphere of the house is fantastic, rustic,

simple, well cared for, in a style much more to my

liking than the ultra clean, sterile ways of the US.

Here you have tortillas cooking on the lid of a 50

gallon drum in the back yard, mesquite flavors the

air, chickens cluck and roosters crow. The people

sleep on the back porch, open air, the smells and

sounds of the night drift in, cool breezes refresh.

The river valley  is very comfortable at night and

pleasant in the morning. We get fresh tortillas and

eat in the shade of an ancient tamarisk tree. Again

there is fresh cuajada, this time with no salt. There

is a rock hard hunk of highly salted, dried cuajada

which the aunt grates and gives along with bowls of

beans and scrambled eggs and chorizo. The dried

cuajada can last all year.

Contrast the traditional world, with it´s welcoming

arms, circumscribed borders and plethora of small talk

with modern life centered in the individual. There is

a sense of belonging and uncomplicated simplicity

which is very appealing with tradition, yet people

cannot go beyond it, the freedom doesn´t exist to

question and work from abstract levels. You take and

accept what is handed down and that is the way it is.

There is security. With the modern world there is

tremendous freedom to push boundaries and explore, to

question and challenge yet there is no feeling of

belonging and membership. You don´t have to accept

anything and therefore, there is nothing to fall back

on except concepts of one´s own making. In terms of

society, tradition represents coherence and meaning,

there are forms of social control which reel people in

and guide behavior. In the modern world, in the

absence of local family and relations, people are free

to pursue an individual path and this may be what

makes possible the tremendous pathos found in America,

the violence, the high divorce, the substance abuse,

all acted out in a vacuum of meaning. What people

hunger for is meaning, to belong, yet they rebel

against the strictures of tradition as being too

limiting. The world has always been changing from one

way to another, this above is just an attempt to

describe the current dynamic. You can see this

happening in places like Hermosillo or Yécora, where

people are freed up from the confines of the village

and start to break out with all forms of delinquent

behavior.

In the morning, the Bámori women are out front

cleaning and sweeping the narrow streets. All is close

and well kept, intimate. The buildings are old, the

trees large. Sahuaripa was originally visited by the

first Spanish explorers, Coronado, Marcos de Niza and

there has been a mission there since the 1600´s.

Cowboys walk down the street with lassos and ropes,

leading horses, burros and mules. Ballads play from a

radio off in the distance, birds sing, roosters crow.

It is tranquil beyond imagination. Here are the

smells, tastes, sounds and sensations of traditional

México, the pearl of what is unique about the country.

The elders all live with their families. They are not

farmed out to an old folk´s home. All the homes have

an ancient or two, living in a back room and included

in life up to the very end. Kids, if they want any

higher education, must emigrate to Hermosillo or

Ciudad Obregón, where they end up at the famous

University of Sonora. They perhaps become exposed to

the temptations of modernity and thus, having opened

Pandora´s Box, can never regain the innocence of

traditional life.

At the house in Bámori, there are Catholic symbols

everywhere. The people have crosses around their

necks, there are pictures of Jesus, the Virgin of

Guadalupe, the Last Supper, shrines and altars. In

Yécora there was one house that had a sign inside

which read, to the effect of, this is a Catholic home,

and no Protestants or evangelizing will be tolerated.

4/28

In the mass media there is pressure to conform to an

ideal of perpetual youth, there has grown a cult of

vanity, where certain anorexic and buff looks have

become the ideal. In rural México, this is an

afterthought. In Mexican cities such as Hermosillo,

people are seriously preoccupied with appearances and

take much time cultivating there looks. The men and

women are equally vain. I think the preoccupation with

appearance coincides with exposure to American mass

media. The less exposed, the less self-conscious, the

more natural and uninhibited. Out in the pueblos you

find a natural grace and unselfconscious beauty and

dignity among the people.

Vanity is certainly a universal human failing, but it

is less when the people are not exposed excessively to

notions of unattainable perfection. Mexican society in

general is much more accepting of different body types

and the men seem to prefer the women to be on the

chunky side. Chunky is equated with strength and

fecundity. They like ´em chunkier than the anorexic

images blasted at US women day and night.

I saw a rooster jump up onto a fence, fluff his tail

feathers and beging to crow. Whatever hen will do.

This is the masculine strategy. The young Mexican

women are highly attractive and svelt, yet as the

years pass and they have more and more kids, they grow

large and ponderous. Mexican couples come in all

shapes and sizes and don´t seem to arrive at the

moment filled with guilt about appearance. Ultimately,

it is who you are that fills the gulf, not what you

look like. I even found a phrase in the Bible where

someone said, "don´t worry about what you look like."

Youth is the time to appear young. The young in the

Sierra revel in their time and as the years roll by,

they accept their appearance, weight, lack of teeth,

with equanimity.

===

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return. Genesis 3:6:19

        Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine

"There are some remedies worse than the disease. Many receive advice, few profit by it. No one knows until he tries".  Publius Syrus