11/30/01
Lucy
had a chat with me this evening about what to do with Norman Krekler and his
wife’s ashes, which were buried in their house in Hermosillo. There are 3 kids,
Eric, Timoteo and Carina. Eric is living in the house where they were buried. He
had a work bench over where the ashes were buried and Timoteo saw that and
protested, so Eric said, go ahead, take them, they are dead, the ashes are not
them. So Timoteo now has the ashes, with some still scattered in the house.
Lucy wants me to talk with the head families in Bermudes, El Cordón and La Mesa
de Abajo and ask where they think a good spot fopr a gravestone might be, on
private land and Lucy and the people here will bring a plaque. She is looking
for suggestions from the people here, as Norman wanted to be buried in the
Sierra. Timoteo will go, with Lucy standing in for Carina and Roberto standing
in for Eric. Apparently the kids can’t agree on anything and once the old man
died, the whole service project scene he started fell apart, to be picked up
mostly by Lucy herself, at least in terms of hosting travelers in Hermosillo,
and now her family is tired of hosting groups when they pass through and so
that stage will pass as well. Lucy’s house is now on the outs for groups.
Things change. I asked my Spanish teacher here, La Rebeca, to look into what
she could do and put her in contact with Mike.
My
old neighbor Marissa came over today for a visit, with her 3 year old daughter,
Valeria. Marissa is hot and swank, with black high heels and all black clothes
and black hair pulled back tight with the classic Mexicana sideburn curly cues
hanging down. She told the kids I was Santa Claus and they bought it hook, line
and sinker, asking for this and that, very cute.
I
met Panchita at the University today and we met with a hydrology professor to
review plans for a big water holding tank in La Mesa de Abajo, our next project
there in March and April of 2002. Panchita will continue to pursue plans with a
structural engineer and try to come up with simple drawings we can work from.
Lucy and Panchita really make a guy feel at home here, fed, folded laundry,
keys to the house, advice, favors, integrated, connected. I took their photo
tonight, together, my Mexican women. We all look for something larger than ourselves
through service, as the highest motivation in life, beyond our individual
desires. I’m priveleged to know them, beautiful people, sincere, full of
integrity.
12/1
I am
out there, 5 hours out from Hermosillo on the twistiest mountain roads imaginable
and then another 2 hours out on wild dirt roads that my truck can barely pass,
listening to the Messiah, Oh death, where is thy sting, oh grave where is thy
victory?, it’s majestic, it’s crazy, it’s what I’m doing. They are waiting for
me there. The music frames the drive and journey as something larger than life,
, it’s now the XMAS season, I bring gifts. After I stopped in Bermudes to speak
with Doña Tila about the ashes, she showed me trees, roses and bushes that the
old Quaker brought that are now big and mature. She and her husband became
sober and reflective when considering the issue of the ashes, they will do what
they can.
12/2
Had
fresh beef, beans and home made cheese for breakfast, the same routine, Maria
makes tortillas for the day first thing and we sit around and talk and wait. I
brought out Rosemary’s painting and they marveled at it and then I translated
her letter and Tavo viejo cried and the rest had tears in their eyes,
“pobrecita” Tavo said, feeling for Rosa Maria’s wanting to be here and having
had such a good experience. Later Maria showed all visitors the painting, de La
Rosa Maria. When they put the la or el in front of your name, that means you
have crossed a threshold and are now considerd a good friend. I took a picture
of Maria with the painting. The painting really does embody a lot, has a lot of
feeling. I put Rosemary’s name on the back and the date of the program and
named the picture La Cosecha, (the harvest) since she didn’t sign it.
I
varnished the new front porch ceiling a first coat today, we had potatoes and
bacon for lunch, with beans which they call “frijolitos”, their little
legumninous friends, and then sat around for hours in the yard shooting the
breeze. I got out photos and they poured over them for a long time, focusing
heavily on la muchachas. I suppose las muchachas will never cease to be
fascinating for us guys. Don Facundo came by and I gave him some loperamide
pills for his diarreah, gave Enerina some tongs I bought her, gave all my food
and now I’m here, settled in with lots of work to do, as I want to paint the
house here and sharpen it up for my friends. I have 5 gallons of different
paint and a case of caulk.
I
was once again amazed at how long the folks could go on about cows and how they
know each one, out of 100’s of cattle. All the cattle have names that are
written in a book, los becerros, becerras, vaquitas, vacas, toritos, toros.
Every once in a while I jump in, pretending that I have cattle too, which gets
a good laugh.
Rosa
made corn flower from the local elote and served me up a few fresh tortillas
with local butter and cheese, decidedly better in taste than la MaSeCa corn
meal bought in stores.
12/3
Rosa
maria’s painting took on new and very
realistic aspects as we sat by the fire last night and the light flickered
around. The painting looked as if a window into a whole other world, the Narnia
effect, as if you could just walk into it and be there, in the fields, picking
beans at dawn with the sun peaking over the horizon and the bundles of corn
standing as sentinels in the aurora.
The
folks asked me questions on and on about working in the US, how much peoplep,
make, what rich people do? I told them about the $5.00 dollar glob of cold
mashed potatoes at Whole Foods in Mill Valley, CA and they were as incredulous
as me, the folly of the rich, who would pay that much just so they don’t have
to cook a potato that is worth a quarter! Then we got to talking about what it
is like at Mike’s house, David and Pearl’s, Daniel’s and they pumped that for
every last question. The best questions are ones like, “do Arabs speak
English?”, “are Chinese people smarter than Americans?”, “do you understand
Chinese?”, questions that reveal their utter lack of understanding of the
outside world. Tomás brought over a used drill he had bought and asked me if it
was good brand, it had no brand, all it said was Made in China. He was
disappointed as someone had told him it was really good. They are concerned
about the brand and want anything from the US, assuming erroneously that it
must be a good product. Then it was me and Octavito left, looking at Jaws in
Spanish.
Now
here comes the sun, another beautiful day. I study verbs. They want to know if
my parents know where I am and that I am with good people? Have I told my
parents that the people here are good people?
At
lunch today Maria served up a soup with some mystery meat, kidney, tongue,
something, I did my duty and ate it and then when I had my mandatory seconds, I
hoped there wouldn’t be any more left but shit, there were two more big pieces.
She picked up on it and said, “don’t you like the soup?” I said “sure, I had
seconds didn’t I?” They are always
forcing food on you and it is good, especially the squash with sugar and milk
or peaches with sour cheese and milk, good stuff, rice and milk and sugar.
12/4
Had
dinner at José Luis and Rosa’s last evening, beans with pork fat, wheat flour
tortillas (tortillas de harina), quesadillas, fresh quajada cheese (sort of
like cottage cheese), dried cheese and all very good, with coffee and fresh
milk and a wide ranging conversation about all topics. What better than to have
a friendly gringo in the house to pump for information? I’ve told them many
times that I am a Quaker, the same as Norman Krekler, same as Mike, yet they
ask over and again, what is the difference between Quakers and Catholics? Are
Quakers Christian? Do you believe in Jesus? So I go back to Jesus, talk about
how the disciples lived, how there was no church then, there was direct
revelation, how the chuch became the official religion of the Romans, how it
became corrupt in the middle ages, which precipitated the Reformation, how some
Protestants are almost equal to Catholics and then it gets on a spectrum to
less and less saints and symbols, until you have people trying to live as the
disciples did, looking for miracles and revelations and so you have Quakers and
Mennonites at the far end of the spectrum, but still Christian I assure them.
They ask again, you have Jesus Christ and God too? Yes, yes, but some Quakers
put more emphasis on their direct contact with God and with a continuing
revelation. This, they see as very strange. They see the Mexican Mennonites,
which are here in Chihuahua some 8 hours away, as being very weird, but they
are respected for working hard and making good products. I don’t have the heart
to tell them that I don’t believe in Jesus, nor God as an anthropomorphic
figure, that would open up the true gulf that lies between us, some things are
better just not said, they are not equipped to handle the level of abstraction
that is my understanding.
Maria
is finishing off the embroidered rose she is making me, putting frills around
the edges, to make it nicer, Beto helps her, my own little miracle. Tavo
returns from milking the cow, the water is ready, I sit in front of the
fireplace (la chimenea), having gotten what little alone time I could grab here
at the Sierra sunrise.
They
saved the camambert box from a cheese I brought, as a treasure and read the
newspaper wrapper with want ads with much interest. I wrapped the painting in
it. The painting went from the center of the mantle, to being framed by Beto
and is now on the wall. I painted the front room today and the porch yesterday
and things are looking sharp, the caulk tightens up all the cracks, with
different colors of pink, violet and blue/ purple, they like it alot. I’ve been
working hard. All visitors gawk at the gringo painter and his work, they all
too want paint and a paint job. The food has been really good, peach spread,
fresh honey, fresh beef, chorizo, machaca, just really good, hot tortillas with
home made butter. I’m trying not to eat too much but it is hard.
At
night here it is TV, around the fire. In Hermosillo and Obregón, it is TV too,
I don’t like it that much but at least I am hearing Spanish, in a more clearly
articulated form than they speak here. Some people here, I can’t understand at
all. The Spanish is spoken with hardly a movement of the mouth and sounds
garbled, a distinct accent. In the morning they put on the radio and it is a
cacaphony of different channels all mixed together, until gradually, Radio
Alegría comes through. Mexicans seem to have a higher tolerance for raw noise
than gringos do, they can suck up way more trumpet blasting and 3 radios on at
the same time than I can.
The
weather has changed and now it will be really cold, we are at 5,500 feet with a
clear sky, it will be cold tonight with a hard frost. I have a slight touch of
culture shock and lonliness, even though I am ensconced in the bosom of my
family here, I can’t really lay out how I am feeling or what I am thinking
about as it is of such a personal nature as well as forbidden. I keep it
inside, wishing for good friends to help me process
12/5
Tavo
messed up his back this morning while chainsawing out part of the kitchen
counter in a fit of Mexican carpentry. The kitchen was full of chainsaw smoke,
dust and debris, Maria wanted a change. I lent tavo Kim’s stones tonight for
his back, they may be Catholic, but the stones, they have an allure and the
folks are not above a good cure of whatever type. They marvel at the stones.
I’m
sinking in here, way at home, I’m
becoming enchanted, the days pass like nothing, long nights of
reflection in bed, 10, 11, 12 hours of sleep, all dark. I’m totally taken in by
these folks, as soon as my plate is empty, Maria is waiting on the last
spoonful to offer more, “más frijolitos?” People come to visit, I even
understand what the little kids say. I’m in the groove, in with the jokes and
small talk. I’m sinking in, everyday a little deeper in. I don’t feel separate,
I feel a part, a part of life here. Every little thing, from the kids making me
hot water for a bath and saying “it is all my pleasure to do it”, to sharing my
cave painting book and having all pour over it in fascination, what does this
mean, the origin of art and religion? I explain, as I previosly brought photos
of extinct megafauna skeletons from the La Brea tar pits museum in LA, the
megafaune 10,000 years old. They know the mystery of life is deeper than their
particular faith, as I know that too, the great mystery fascinates us all,
although we name it, pretend to understand it, it is much larger than what we
can think and it all gets back to being just totally at home at the table and
around the fire, talking, joking, being here now, as the leaves turn yellow,
red and brown and the winter sky grows and the milky way appears as if a giant
cacoon of silk and spider webs. This is some real life here, just what I
wanted.
12/6
12
hours in the sack! It’s like the Greenlander’s winter, nothing to do but go to
bed when it gets dark. Last night we talked about social mobility and why there
is such a high divorce rate in the US. They were fascinated by my analysis,
that the lack of family or social control, allows people to choose to be happy
rathere than suffer, it is a complex tapestry, why 50% divorce? Tavo said the
stones took away his back pain. He wanted to look at them again. Where do you
get rocks like that?
Today
I’ve almost completed 3 rooms in the house plus furniture and the front porch.
Everyone comes by to look and admire, how clean! What a nice XMAS you will
have! The kitchen really looks sharp and Maria is tickled to death to have her
kitchen made over and look so clean and neat, her smile says it all. The new
closet in their bedroom is pink framed with white panels, with a purple door
into the bath house and a pink wall.
12/7
Getting
the kitchen and house painted set off a fit of home improvement and cleaning.
Maria washed ALL of her glasses and dishes, Tavo got into lots of carpentry, he
will make something work with his carpentry, although it is not fine, it works.
I tell Tavo the standard joke, “don’t worry, the painter will fix it...”
12/8
Last night I was reminded of some of the things
I don’t like about Mexico, the TV blasting until 11:PM, Beto having varnished
my door in the late afternoon, so I had to smell varnish all night. Mexicans
are sometimes just oblivious to the effects they have on others, especially in
terms of noise.
I love getting into the links between Latin,
Spanish and English, for example, the verb TO BE, in Spanish there are two
verbs for TO BE, ser and estar. Ser comes from the Latin verb esse, from which
also comes the English essence, thus, ser describes an essential, inherent
quality or characteristic. In English then, autumn in the Sierra IS beautiful.
Is, esse, essence, ser. Estar, from the Latin verb stare, comes the English state, thus estar is used to express a
temporary state or condition. Another cool connection I made just the other
day, is between the reflexive verb rendirse and the English word surrender.
Rendirse means to surrender oneself. When someone gives up or surrenders, you
say in Spanish serinde or in the past serindió or if plural, serindieron. This
is clearly the etymology of the English surrender, a neat way to remember
words.
Another point of interest, a common phrase here
is “con el favor de Dios”, with the favor of God. So I had said one evening,
“tomorrow I’m going to put a big change on the kitchen, it will be looking
good” and Beto said “con el favor de Dios” and I said, “No, con el favor de
Federico, Dios has nothing to do with how I will paint the kitchen.”
12/9
The food is so good, I’m eating more than I
should, something new comes up every now and then, like spreadable prickly pear
preserves on a hot tortilla with grated cheese. The cheese has a great sour
taste, making parmesan seem weak and flavorless. These people use the grated
cheese exactly how I use parmesan, in great big heaping portions. We are birds
of a feather with the cheese. A man with a produce truck came all the way from
Obregón and Maria bought lots of greens and made fresh salsa, which when put on
the beans with lime, cheese and some Salsa Sonora, is just too tasty, and then
maybe a side of chorizo or fresh machaca or carne seca heated in the oven or
machaca with fresh eggs, then for dessert, honey, butter, tortillas, more
cheese. Tavo is the king of honey, in great big huge portions. They also make a
sweet treat called jamoncillo, which is just boiled milk and sugar, boiled down
until it is like a cookie. They cook squash and put in sugar and then have it
with cold milk. That is really good, or, bottled peach preserves with milk.
There is a saying about the squash, “calabaza fría, pedos todo el día, calabaza
caliente, pedos de repente” (Cold squash, farts all day, hot squash, farts
immediately.) For spices it is lime and chiltepine peppers, round little wild
chiles where 1 or 2 is enough for a whole
plate, just don’t touch your eyes later, or any other sensitive body
part....There is fresh milk everyday, unpasteurized, the cheese and butter are
also unpasteurized. The butter has an incredible taste, making American butter
quite bland, but does it give gas! The diet has LOTS of sugar, lots of dairy,
LOTS of beans, 3 times a day, loys of corn and wheat tortillas. They put huge
globs of vegetable shortening or pork fat in with the beans and to make the
wheat tortillas. They save the beef fat and have it all in a big bucket. I
suggested the beans could be made without the grease and they said “ but it
will have no taste!” It is no wonder then, that people tend to be fat,
especially the women for lack of aerobic exercise, and that people have no
teeth or teeth falling out at an early age, but as Tavo pointed out, there are
no chemicals in any of the food and many people live to an advanced age.
Nacho’s father just died at 100. Tavo’s mother, Locha, is close to her 80’s.
They throw out car batteries in the back yard,
use gasoline for paint thinner, throw it on the ground and generally have no
concept of how these things may effect the ground water, live now, deal with
the consequences later. There is no local recycling program.
I spent the afternoon on the Clark Villa side
of town and then Máximo and Eberrardo came back with a good sized buck, which
they hung up by the head and antlers. Máximo skinned and butchered it with his
side folding knife. The deer was just like a cave painting, a flesh and blood image
of power and grace. Inside Máximo divied up some choice cuts for everyone in
the village, sending his young daughter out to deliver the goods. As I sat in
the kitchen with Alba and Elea, who were sewing costuras or doilies, with
flowers with faces and the names of the days of the week, I got to looking at
Elea and imagining that I had a woman to treasure.
Later I had dinner with Eberrardo and Alba,
deer steaks and liver with onions, really good! The week before, Alba’s brother
in law had just been shot 16 times and killed in El Rebaje, in a drug deal. The
call went out on the radio to bring a casket from Yécora.
12/10
I finished varnishing Tomás’ big wall closet
today. He stained the wood with tar and gasoline, a new technique for me. When
I looked at the varnish can, Sherwin-Williams, I saw in the instructions and
warnings that “this product contains lead”. Why is leaded paint illegal in the
US but they sell it in Mexico? How do I get roped into these jobs? No more
thinner based products for me. The thinner here is more like auto paint reducer
or paint stripper and really hot, it burns your hands, melts the paint brush
bristles, probably with benzene. They sell it in anonymous plastic bottles with
a skull and crossbones on it. Enough of that for me. Tomás cleaned out the
varnish can for use in the wash area and opened the can with the kitchen can
opener.
Today was the day of the deer, deer, potatoes
and beans for breakfast at Maria’s, deer albóndigas (meatballs) at Enerina’s
kitchen for lunch and deer pozole soup at Elea’s kitchen for dinner, all good.
The pozole had sections of spine and associated meat. Tomorrow Octavito, Jesús
and I go to Moris, the county seat some 7 hours drive away on serious dirt
roads, for the fiesta of the Day of the Virgin, the patron saint of Mexico, the
Virgin de Guadalupe. The country boys are all excited to go to town, bathed,
showered, shaved, best clothes ready, ready for the promise of a muchacha and
the dance. The dance is the big deal, where you get to shake your money maker
and maybe make the fruits fall down.
12/11
There was a fierce wind storm last night and
for most of the morning, that blew 4 big pieces of tin off the roof, to a
tremendous racket in the howling darkness. We may go to the fiesta tomorrow,
weather permitting. We sat by the fire all afternoon, it is snowing in Cananea.
I read from my book, Mexican Refrains. I imagine what it must have been like
here before TV, just massive hanging out and chatting. It’s the peasant life,
you zone in to just passing the time when that is called for and then work like
crazy when it is time to sow, harvest move animals, haul water etc. It is still
this way in many houses here that don’t have TV or who have broken TV’s. You
get into the zone after a while, not in the white guy, always have to be doing
something mode, but the peasant zone, you are just here. That’s all. It’s who
you are, not what you do that counts.
I had a thought that maybe way out here would
be far enough away to escape XMAS hype,
but after a certain point at night in the Clark Clark household, it is
all TV, at insane volume, that I can’t sleep, blaring, obnoxious, loud TV, God,
it is so Mexican, fucking mindless noise. They are good at having two radios
going, TV, trumpets, a morass of noise.
12/12
Well, I had to get over my encounter with noise
and I did, woke up and let it go. Tavo apologized for the TV and I acknowledged
that it was a special night for them, the celebration of the Day of the Virgin,
and then we were out of there for Moris, with Pancho in the back, 2 hours to
Puerta La Cruz, stopping at the river in Bermudes to fill sacks with gravel to
give me better traction up the hill, as I had spun badly my last time and
nearly didn’t make it. Then, to Yécora for Jesús to buy clothes, then 1 more
hour to Mayocoba on the highway and then another 3 plus hours on rough dirt
roads to Moris. The ride was spectacular, very nice, like northern CA, lots of
oak, pine, big views, some like the grand canyon. One view, near El Pilar,
where Adéle was born, was really wild, a big rock face like Yosemite. We got a
totally seedy motel room, with a communal bathroom straight from hell, shit all
over the toilet, water and piss all over the floor, then off to bull riding and
beauty queens of the fiesta. Even the bulls are scared of Mexicans. Mexicans
don’t fool around with animals, they are the boss. If you a pet a dog, the
animal almost can’t believe someone is being kind to it. There was a pen full
of bulls to be ridden, by whoever wanted to give it a shot, and the bulls were
all after each other but not after any Mexican. Some bulls nearly tore the
fence down as they were prepared to be ridden, and then, once bucking off their
riders, charged the rim fence where everyone was sitting, causing all the beer
drinking, pointy toed boot, sombrero guys and their foxy girls to leap off the
fence in haste. As dark came, all hustled back to the central plaza for a
settling in, some dinner at a taco stand and a stroll around the plaza. We ate,
went to church. I thought of some of the Gnostic Gospels, walk on the road of
yourself and you can’t go astray and I looked at the church and the whole sheep
aspect of it all, and paid my respects to the Virgin on her day. It was again,
the amazing contrast in Mexico between the sacred and the profane, the piety
and the debauchery. The Virgin stood immobile, a mute witness as the people
prayed. The whole thrust of religion here is so different than what I am used
to, the idea of a personal journey, the Virgin almost seemed sad to witness
people in such poverty and debauchery. As the boys cued up for the dance, I
went and got half a roasted chicken and ate it in the motel room, as the
infernal noise and polka music blared away outside. Moris is in the desert,
down in a valley, with lots of cactus and decidedly warmer than up in the mesa
country. Jesús was smashed drunk.
12/13
I slept until Jesús showed up at about 1:30AM,
he had lost all his money, some 3000 pesos, roughly 300 dollars. He was flipped
out and very drunk. It was probably a drug deal. For all those who know La Mesa
de Abajo, this is off the record, that he lost all his money. I slept off an on
between 3:30 AM and 5:30, as the street in front of the hotel was filled with
drunks and loud music, a classic Mexican scene, the totally reckless party, all
night long. We left early and I enjoyed stopping in the desert to check out
plants and canyons. Back at the ranch, Octavito was grilled for hours about
what happened, who the queen of the fiesta was, why her, on and on, we told our
stories and then told them again. I was pretty tired from having had to drive
over terrible roads for a total of 16 hours out of the last day and a half, on
high rock alert. If you don’t keep your attention on these roads, you hit a
rock immediately, it is all in first gear. My truck has proven itself to be
able to take the worst these roads can dish out.
12/14
While I did get a BA in anthropology, it never
interested me to actually do academic field work, I much prefer to just be
inside the movie, making my observations, living it, rather than trying to pick
it apart at some micro analytic level. Maria mentioned the other day that Lucy
will have to talk with the justice of the peace in Bermudes, to arrange whether
the old Quaker can be interred in the area, if the judge says no, Norman stays
in a plastic sack in Hermosillo. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Give them
eterneal rest, oh Lord.
The cult of the saints continues to be an
interesting thing for me, every single
day has a saint associated with it, every single day. It has been a tool of
discrimination by Christianity, to condemn other religions as pagan, idol
worshippers, savages, infidels etc because they don’t have just one god/ God,
but many gods. Yet Christianity has God, the Holy spirit, Jesus, the devil,
saints, etc, if this in not pantheism, what is? It is certainly not monotheism.
The pagans are not chosen by one
special, almighty God, but live amonst a horde of gods, spirits, angels and
divine beings that are capricious and not so much concerned with morals but
with practicality, how to have better luck, better weather, more fertility etc.
So, here in Mexico you have this incredibly tangible Christianity, Catholic,
but with the Virgin standing more important than Jesus or God and the saints
being more important day to day than anything. People pray to patron saints
like San Francisco, buy miracles/ milagros, make pilgrimages, crawl for days in
penance, undergo hardship, asking favgor of the patron saint. I suppose I
straddle these worlds, as I am not above asking for a miracle myself. I see the
saints perhaps more clearly, as they are not my particular flavor of voodoo,
perhaps harder to uncover the tentacles of faith and belief I ride and use to
make sense of the larger currents of life, easier to see other’s fishtanks than
my own. I like Hunter/Garcia “Once in a while you can get shown the light, in
the strangest places if you look at it right.”
As I notice the differences, I see these people
as focused on immedaite issues, going to catch horses so they can go check
their cattle, harvesting, fixing the house, getting enough pesos in one way or
another to get the things they need, roofing tin, cement, sand etc., they are
poor and have to work hard. To them, perhaps, a path such as mine, a more
reflectional, interior, personal relation to the divine, is just not practical,
they need this stuff to be in it’s place, in the chapel, in the church, they
pay their respects and that satisfies the rrequirement, tip their hat to a
shrine of the Virgin, cross themselves and that is enough. Adéle in Yécora can
see outside the box. She points out that the protestants don’t drink or smoke
but the Catholics are drunkards and feel it is enough to confess and go to
church, she sees the difference in the behavior and wonders at it, even though
she is a devout Catholic.
People here don’t read. The entertainment is
talking, TV, radio or a dance. I am continually impressed by how much TV
dominates life here, even in educated households, it’s a stranglehold of mass
culture. The XMAS jingles are driving me nuts.
12/15 Yécora
I went to El Cordón today to check out a paint
job for Alvaro and Chava. We chatted and talked, I gave my advice and my price,
15 dollars for 8 hours work. That is a Mexican pay scale that is considered
good here, it is five times the minimum wage for a day and yet still less than
I make in one hour in the US.
In the morning, Tomás, Octavito, Tavo and three
others, including Gerrardo, who had been at La Mesa Atravesada, him having
bought 74 head of cattle, met out in the boonies to drive the cattle to La Mesa
de Abajo and then to Tarahumaris, to be sold to a middle man. Tavo and Octavito
woke up before dawn with Maria having made tortillas and “lonchi” the night
before, Maria up before any getting the provisions ready and Octavito the last
out of bed, to the loud complaints of Tomás. Tavo was taken aback that I didn’t
know how to ride a horse, as they had gone out and brought back a horse just
for me, to help on the drive. I refused to learn how to ride on a cattle drive,
in incredibly rough terrain littered with volcanic rocks everywhere. Tavo and I
get along good but we live in different worlds, I read and study, he makes
shoes and herds cattle. Gerrardo had previously called on the CB radio to Tomás
and the Clark Moore brothers arranged where to meet in the hinterlands for the
big drive, whoopy ti yi yay, git along littel dogies, these guys are real
cowboys! They were off at dawn, to stay out more than a day, with nothing more
than a piece of plastic to sleep with.
Beto and I got back from El Cordón. Maria had
washed all my clothes. I had not asked her to. She said that Gerrardo had
sustained a bad injury and was in bed down at his house. Beto and I went down
and Doña Locha gave us the details, Gerrardo soon woke up, smelling strongly of
bacanora, the local tequila made from agave lechugilla, they make a salve with
herbs soaked in bacanora for wounds, and also put fresh onion on wounds.
Gerrardo said he didn’t want to go to Yécora, that he would be OK. Beto, being
the town medic wanted to see the wound and once I saw it, I said “man, you need
to go to the doctor now.” What gringos say carries a lot of weight, everwhere
people assume that a gringo is smarter and better prepared than an equivalent
Mexican. It was a deep, gashing wound over the knee cap, to the bone, and down
over the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), with nerves and shit hanging out. I
offered to drive to Yécora and Gerrardo agreed to go. He was running down a
calf on foot when he slammed his knee into a rock hidden by the grass.
We got to Bermudes at twilight and up the
nastiest hills just before dark, the rest of the trip all in the dark, wind and
rain. Hard rain began to fall and it was very cold, sort of like a Frankenstein
movie, trees whipping in the wind, forboding darkness, slashing rain, extreme
isolation. As we arrived in Yécora, Blanca, Gerrardo’s pregnant wife who now
stays in Yécore for their kids secondary education, fed us and then we all
loaded in my truck, with two boys in the back, and went to the doctor. It took
over an hour for the doctor to fix Gerrardo up, then back to the house, with
fucking infernal TV blaring, insane, how TV has to be such a big deal, maybe
they keep the volume up so others in the house can’t hear fucking noises?
12/16
It rained hard off and on all night and then
froze solid in the early morning. The TV went on at 5:AM, adults and kids all
looking at cartoons. On the ride to Yécora, Gerrardo spoke of wanting to find
direct American buyers for his cattle, to eliminate the middle men and increase
his profit, from the point of origin seller and lower the cost to the ultimate
buyer. He wants to work a deal, then rent a semi truck, and carry 200 calves to
the US. That’s an ambition. He also told me stories of older groups from the
Norman Krekler days, and how and his age set had gotten some of the girls, an
image and experience just emblazoned on his mind, gringas!
Now I am at Adéle’s, TV is on, will be all day,
she is asleep. I am left to admire her daughter and with the little kids
watching TV.
Here is some total locura/ craziness, I go and
eat a steak, as we are wont to do when in Yécora and then go talk to the
doctor, to confirm that the doctor had said that Gerrardo has a torn ACL, “yes,
it is serious, his ACL is torn”, later I am able to diagnose with my WFR
training that he does not have an ACL injury. Put this down in the annals of
Mexican competence. I go back to Gerrardo’s Yécora house, tell him the news,
eat TVP ceviche, which is very good and then go to the Mesa de Abajo, with snow
and ice all over the place, and lots of mud as well. I reach a point on the
road up from Puerta La Cruz where my wheels spin on the ice and I could choose
to go back or chain up and keep going. I choose the adventure and the unknown
and up I go, followed by two horsemen who offered to pull my truck up with the
horses, thick mud is flung by the chains, over solid ice, to the top and
gradually through swamps of mud to a great Gypsy Kings sunset where I can see
the Presa Ovicahi (Oviachi dam and lake) way off in the Sierra distance, near
Obregón.
There were 74 head of cattle in Tomás’ corral
with Octavito and Beto and 2 other chamacos watching them. Doña Locha appeared
instantly to get news of Gerrardo, then dinner of beans, cheese, coffee and
cowboy exitement in the air. It is now a real winter sky, cold, ice, Orion up
early, a serious winter sky, no more Fall and hints of warm. The winter sky
sweeps clean all that came before, new, a cold, clear, crisp cattle drive
winter sky. Beto called me his big brother, I become fictive kin to the family.
12/17
Getting the dogies out in the morning was the
big deal, with Maria telling Octavito to “be careful and don’t get hurt”, as he
rode out with the other chamacos. I had the chance to hang out with Don Facundo
some and we were talking about hunting and permits and how Mexicans hunt
without permits or regulation and don’t care for the future resources of the
deer population, they kill does. Facundo said “Mexicans are very brutish, they
don’t care for anything but themselves.” Beto said as much, Jesús said the
same, muy bruto los Mexicanos. There is an undercurrent of knowing and
admitting that things are really screwed in Mexico and in a lot of ways, they
really are. Facundo had an old hunting magazine and wanted to know all about
the moose, reindeer, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, bears, guns etc, what all the
articles were about, how much the guns cost, can you have a gun like that in
the US, is it legal? After dinner Tavo started asking about man on the moon, if
there was life on other planets and we laughed that he keyed into a universal
curiosity that people have, are we alone? There is a new crescent moon. That
people from the US actually went to the moon, blows these guys away. Is the US
the most powerful country in the world? When they see the magazines and the
gadgets and equipment brought by the gringos, they want it all, they see it is
sort of magic, that these people make such good stuff. How much does that cost?
Can you get me one? How can Americans be so competent and Mexicans so
apparently incompetent? (In general, in terms of industry and manufacturing and
quality of goods and services.) I was asked this same question also in 1998, by
the director of the archaeology museum in Hermosillo. He looked at the
magazines, as I tutored him in English, and marveled at the vast gulf between
Mexico and the US. I have a huge list of stuff people want, that I will have to
try and smuggle in, to avoid paying tax, so that Mexico won’t get any money.
That is somewhat bruto too, no?
12/18
Don Facundo wanted a ride in my Toyota, he’s
about 78 years old. So I took him up to El Cordón for the day as I painted, he
sat and watched and chatted with the locals. I like Facundo a lot, we are
buddies, and his women, Luz and Candida, are precious old women, never married.
12/19
The TV got so bad last night I couldn’t bear
it, even with wax earplugs, so I went out and read in my truck until it got too
cold, and then back inside, fucking watching TV with them to the bitter end,
there is no escape. “Is the TV keeping you up?”, “yes, it is too loud for me”,
but Beto and Octavito don’t get it, to turn it down, they leave the volume
right where it is. I could here every word on the TV, from outside the house
and inside my truck with the windows closed. There is cultural gulf here. They
don’t read, can barely write, there are no books and what ones there are, are
curiosities and collect dust unused, at night it is either talk, go to bed or watch
TV.
So far in El Cordón, I’ve worked 8.5 hours, 2
coats of paint, 15 bucks, with one more coat coming after XMAS, as the paint is
so cheap, it won’t cover and they ordered two more buckets off their cell
phone, to Obregón. I continue to be disgusted by the way Octavito hawks and
spits on the floor of the house. Tavo spits on the floor too, but without the
hawking. I’ll never get used to that. Today in the outhouse there was a big
green lugar right where you put your feet. Don’t they know anything about
hygiene? I’ll never sleep on the floor in the Sierra again, as they spit on the
floor right by the beds, all night.
12/21
They have old fashioned irons that are heated
on the stove, old rolling pins. All the clothes are sewn and patched over and
over until the dying day, on old pedal driven sewing machines. Today I had corn
covered with butter, lime, salt and salsa, very good.
12/22
I went with Eberrardo, Tomasito, Pancho and
Jaime to the bottom of the arroyo today. I made arrangements with Eberrardo to
meet him and leave at 8:AM. I got there at 8, and then waited until 9:30 before
we left. I had forgotten that for many Mexicans, punctuality is just not taken
seriously. I had suggested a later departure and he insisted on 8:AM. I never
could get over that in Hermosillo, always arriving on time and always ending up
waiting, even th teachers arrive 15, 20 minutes late to class. I just can’t
fathom why set a time and then ignore it?
Eberrardo brought along a big bag of salt and
as we walked along the arroyo, the men called out to the cattle and horses
(bestias) and all knew that it was time to gather for a good salt lick. We
stopped in a side canyon where there are old stone walls (trincheras) and many
citrus trees called naranja limón, or orange lemon trees, of which we ate lots
of fruit and picked a bunch for later. On the way a big bee hive was spotted
and much energy spent to knock it out of the tree with rocks, only to find
hardly any honey. The dogs went berserk and were stung many times. Arriving at
a big stone corral, there were more than 100 animals, all anxious for salt. As
the animals came in, they fanned out to herd in stragglers and made a fire to
get coals to heat our lonchi on. The tortillas filled with beans were heated
directly on the coals, which we had with hard cheese, dried deer meat and
canned tuna and plastic bottles filled with really sweet coffee. When you watch
these people make a cup of coffee, it is routine to see 2 or 3 huge heaping
table spoons of sugar go in. After lunch they herded a bunch of calves into the
corral and put plastic rings in their noses, so they couldn’t nurse (mamar, to
nurse or to suck) and so the cows could get pregnant again. Then it was up the
hill by the caracol trail.
The trails here are in extremely bad condition,
covered in rocks and rubble, all switchbacks cut off. It doesn’t seem to occur
to anyone to fix the trails. They just live with things being screwed up and
adapt to it. Many days pass when the trails could be fixed but the people do
nothing. The road is the same way, terrible, but no one fixes it. These types
of situations are then seized by service groups as projects, to really just
serve the sensibilities of the project doers, as the people here could easily
do it, they just don’t.
12/23
Today was my first deer hunt, over hill and
dale, down steep arroyos, over cliffs, where 1 fellow died a few years ago; we
went a long ways, walking 7 hours straight, with no lunch and little water,
which we drank like cattle from springs along the way. The terraoin is just
covered with rocks of all sizes and very difficult to bushwack, especially if
you are not used to the substrate. These guys do it in homemade shoes with no
tread and they are nimble and sure, never fall, have their heads up looking for
deer and turkey. Octavito moves like a cat, 18 years old. I was once like that.
He had a turkey caller, a box with a moving piece on which was inscribed Tomás
Klark Moore. Beto later said, “muy bruto.” We descended down and then up the
contra mesa, exploring a cave where we found great big piles of marijuana.
Octavito said not to mention it to anyone, as it is very dangerous to meddle in
such affairs. This is a note to the wise in AFSC groups, if people just wander
off, no telling what or whom they will find. As the day drew an, we got
thirstier and thirstier, thinking of nothing but agua, finally we reached a
well about 2 km from town and drank deeply out of an old bucket, water filled
with aquatic insects and debris and we didn’t care, it was water.
Victor Hugo found a squash along the way and we
stopped in an arroyo with pines, oaks and palms and set up the squash to take
pot shots at with the rifles. Later we ate all the seeds, all we ate all day, 4
guys, were seeds from one squash and madroño berries.
Now XMAS looms up and Maria is making cookies
in the kitchen and more people roll into town, relatives from far flung
communities where they are all married into, where all are cousins of some
degree. There is 2 day old menudo (cow intestine) in my cooler that they will
make for XMAS dinner, I can’t wait for that. I have taken up daily long walks
in many directions, exploring and getting good exercise.
I asked Tavo for some deer hunting tips and we
got to talking. He mentioned a man who lives near Campo Americano, Chico
Morales, 80 plus years old, who was one THE ace wolf and lion hunter in the
Sierra, hired out all over Sonora and Chihuahua. He killed lots of wolves. Now
there are no wolves, no bears, few lions and even fewer jaguars. I then regaled
the crowd with tales of snorkeling with sharks and barracudas in the
Everglades, crocodiles and alligators, grizzly bears, black bear wars in
Yosemite, what SCA is like and they just ate it up, question after question,
time passed like nothing. The TV may be broken, thank you Santa, Tavo smashed
the button in anger at the kids one day for having it on too loud and now the
TV teeters on the brink of death, a serious problem for the boys, as they are
addicted to the novelas or soap operas.
12/24
Día de la noche buena, XMAS eve, almost done
with the invasion of silly ass XMAS jingles and hype, it is hard to escape the
long tentacles of hype, it is hard to take XMAS seriously when it has been
hyped so much I can hardly stand it. The leaves have almost all fallen and the
sky speaks of Winter. I always loved this time of year in the Berkshires.
The day passed with more guests and socializing
than usual, more talk about cattle, with Tavo making out receipts for cattle
sales, standing in for the comisario or mayor, who is in Obregón. The comisaria
here includes Campo Americano, El Cordón, El Encinal and La Mesa de Abajo. I
suffered my first menudo and almost made it through seconds but not quite, as I
had to leave big hunks of intestine in my bowl. Octavito doesn’t like menudo
either, so I am not alone. During dinner the
party boys came from La Mesa Colorada, bearing much liquid refreshment
and vino, or bacanora, also known as mescal, tequila.
During the day there was more fascination from
folks farther out in the Sierra, with the gringo, his stories, his tools, his
stuff, his tales and reocurring comment that Mexicans are more pendejo, more
bruto than gringos. They describe themselves as “un nopal”, as a prickly pear
cactus pad, from the phrase “un nopal en la frente”, or someone really stupid,
that they have a cactus pad stuck on their forhead. It really has nothing to do
with aptitude, I tell them, it is exposure and education, it is not a question
of capacity but of culture, still, some guys and gals were wide eyed amazed at
me, even though I’m just a regular guy.
Maria and I talked about XMAS traditions and i
mentioned about gift giving and she said “the only thing is we have no gifts to
give.” I offered a toothpick to one of Tavo’s sisters after dinner and she said
“I have no teeth.” After dinner I went out with Jesús, Jaime, Beto and Chuchi
to El Cordón, in search of a dance and muchachas. Jesús managed to crack up
Jaime’s truck on an oak tree and we went back, thank God alive. It is XMAS eve
and the tradition here is for a big party, round up the trucks, the cattle, the
horses and have a dance. If you are too old to get a muchacha, at least you can
sit on the bench and watch the young ones wrap themselves around the girls.
12/26
I finished my job in El Cordón today, for a
grand total of 23 dollars for 11.5 hours work, that’s 1.80 per hour.
On XMAS eve, at 3:30AM, Israel and Michael had
a head on collision with 2 trucks just outside the Mesa. God knows how they
pulled that off and it has been the talk ever since. Both trucks were totalled,
1000’s of dollars worth of damage, with ultimately Michael being 80%
responsible. No one was hurt bad, just a few eggs on people’e forheads, or
should I say, nopales on their forheads. They hit head on, on a straight away!
On XMAS morning Tavo was ready with the
bacanora and Maria made me beans and eggs so I wouldn’t have to eat menudo and
the day got off to a rip roaring start by killing off a bottle of bacanora and
then a bottle of brandy and 2 cases of beer in quarts and then a piñata party
for the kids and then a disqueada, or deep fat fry, with many pounds of fresh
beef, with another dance and all wound up by 11:PM. The women were in the
kitcghen cranking out tortillas, 5 women couldn’t make them fast enough for us
out by the fire and the disqueada.
Tonight, it is TV again, with lots of static
and bad to no picture, skipping picture, English stations cutting in, but the
whole tribe persists and puts full attention on the boob tube, amazing, the
tolerance of sheer noise and the utter mindlessness of slavish dedication to
pasive entertainment.
12/27
Buñuelos: step 1: fry wheat flour tortillas in
lots of grease, step 2: add peloncillo
to water and boil (peloncillo, brown sugar, formerly known as panocha), add
canelo (cinnamon) and clavo (cloves) until all mixed together, step 3: put the
fried tortillas into the miel (honey) of peloncillo, and it is good! Maria
fried her tortillas in the olive oil I brought.
12/30
Two days ago Tavo took me to their rancho,
about an hours’ walk down off the Mesa, at a slow pace. After you pass a closed
fence, that is Clark Moore land, the trail forks to the left to the ranch and
to the right to Máximo’s rancho and the bottom of the arroyo, the main arroyo
running from Bermudes. At the ranch each brother has a shack with open sides,
next to a big cattle yard and a stone corral. The main building is of adobe and
was built by Tavo and his father and José Luis, a long time ago. The stream
snakes around and drops over a large cliff under which is a large cave, which
is a good place to sneak off and have sex, according to Gerrardo. The shacks
are all so close together and they stay there for a month in May and
April, making cheese and butter, that
there has to be some strategy, a place to go to have some raucous sex, to be
able to make some noise.
Tavo told me the round of life here:
January:
care for cattle, look for calves, sell calves in quantity, depending on
necessity, 10 to 15 calves can be sold for 3000 dollars, in the old, pre Bin
Laden days, now the prices are way down, their main source of income shot in
the ass
February:
get fire wood as needed, they usually don’t stock pile more than a month
or two’s worth of wood at a time, check on cattle, sell calves
March:
fix fences, check cattle, if it rains, plow the land
April:
fix houses and rooves, check cattle
May and June:
cattle are at La Mesa rather than on private lands below, they use the
milled corn and bean huskss for feed, sometimnes have to buy hay, there is no
rain now and the forrage is all used up in the country, in the old days, they
had to haul water continuously at this time, on mules, then with trucks, now,
after the new holding tank, they will have water
July:
begin to plant, plow the fields with mules, plant beans, corn potatos,
squash, chile
August: cultivate soil for planting
September:
from the 10th to Sept. 10th, go to respective
ranchos and make cheese and butter, bottle fruit and make preserves, quince,
peach, apple, fig, chabacan, plum, nuts
October:
on the 10th, return to La Mesa and begin bean harvest
November:
continued harvest of beans and corn, mill corn, put bean husks up for
future cattle feed
We took another trail back up, up the arroyo
from the rancho a good ways until there is a smaller arroyo with water to the
left, we take that left , to the right, some 400 meters up from this junction
is the projected water supply for El Cordón. We follow a small arroyo up and it
gets steeper, through a few fences and then the trail comes out just below
where we went down. I had the chance to ride “el Macho”, the mule, for a couple
of miles and that was fun, with the rifle and machete in the saddle.
When we returned, Mike, Candy and Maya were
there to deliver the 2100 dollars for the AFSc donation to the project this
Spring, to buy sand for a big water holding tank. The county (municipio) will
provide the rest of the material. It is now up to the folks there to arrange
the buying and delivering of sand from Obregón. They will get receipts for each
load. I went to Yécora with Gerrardo to look for clean sand, but apparently you
can’t get clean sand in the Sierra. On the way back, he got to talking about
gringas and some of the history of projects and gringas and local boys, how he
and Máximo and Eberrardo would saddle up horses and mules and go up to El
Cordón and sneak the girls out and have sex. They’ve had a taste of honey and
the impulse remains to have more. It doesn’t seem to matter to these guys that
they are married. It is part of the macho tradition in the Sierra. I would
imagine though, just don’t be sneaking around their women.
The time has come to mill the corn and the
trucks go out and bring back huge loads of corn, which has dried on the stalk
in the fields. The trucks are all lined up at the mill, everyone helps
everyone, at least within the extended family, and the corn is loaded into the
mill right off the back of the trucks.
12/31
It is amazing how meat is kept in Mexico,
unrefrigerated, in markets, in butcher shops, in homes. The hygiene is
incredible. I haven’t gotten sick. In the homes meat is salted heavily for a
preservative and then hung to dry, then roasted directly in the oven or pounded
into machaca and cooked in with eggs.
1/2/2002
Candy brought an old chainsaw from her garage
that apparently hadn’t been started for 18 years, and gave it to Facundo. They
all tinkered with it for a day and a half, rigging it in what they called a
“mexicanada”, or Mexcian style repair. Jaime killed a cow in La Mesa Colorada
and today Tavo and I will go for a visit and to eat soem fresh beef.
1/3
After lots of good food and a little too much
bacanora, which really bit me, Tavo drove the Toyota back to the Mesa. The TV
is finally broken, thank God! There was a kid here for the XMAS holiday who had
never tasted peanut butter, he liked it. The local epiphyted are called
maguellito de encino, or littel maguey of the oak, as they seem to only grow in
oaks. More etymology: siniestra means the left side or left hand, sinister in
English, as left handedness is associated with being off.
1-4
The issue of the old Quaker’s ashes is more
complicated than Lucy thought. The folks here don’t really want to get involved
as it is really the problem of the Krekler family, between them and the judge
in Bermudes. It is a soap opera with all sorts of macabre possibilities. Four
days after the new year, Tavo asked, “what month is it?” He has huge gaps in
his knowledge, a really good guy, a perfect country bumpkin.
Maria made a huge farewell breakfast and I am
torn between wanting to stay in this secure zone where where all is simple and
known and between needing to go arrange SCA affairs and check out Ciudad
Obregón. Beto and I arrived in Rosario Tesopaco at 3:30 PM, a little more than
half way to Obregón, to Emilio Clark Moore’s house near the central plaza and
were greeted to a warm welcome. Charlita, Emilio’s wife, made tamales, we drank
coffee and my Spanish seemed to take a huge leap forward, as it usually does
when I change contexts. Emilio’s daughter Néne is just drop dead good looking,
the neighbor girl Ana is the same, flirting with me. The youngest daughter has
a great name, Maria de Los Angeles, Mary of the Angels. I’ll go to Obregón
tomorrow to arrange affairs and then come back here for a week on Emilio’s
rancho. Emilio has planted 70 kilos of buffel grass seed on his ranch over 8
years, after bulldozing any flat areas to make pasture for his cattle. Buffel
grass is thick in the desert here and on the side of the road. Buffel grass is
a noxious weed in the US but here is very desirable for ranchers in a desert
ecosystem. It was imported from south Africa in the 50’s as a hardy grass, for
cattle forage, but tends to choke out all other native plants and grasses and
is also adapted to burning, which the other desert plants are not, per se, so
it burns hotter and does more damage, eventually dominating the landscape, ie
noxious weed.
1/5
The house here is huge with some modern
appliances but charmingly primitive as well, with a wood stove and outdoor
kitchen, meat hanging in a drier for their machaca business, a shower heated by
fire. The front door stays open all evening as we chat inside and people from
the street stop in for a chat. Emilio is wide eyed at whatever I say.
I had 135 messages after a month of no e-mail.
We went to visit Enilio’s sister Aida in Obregón. She had heard all about me
and seemed thrilled to meet me. Federico in person! She wanted to know all
about my adventures in La Mesa and her husband Nacho was full of questions. I
felt honored to be such a star. Aida teased her 8 year old son that I was
Tavo’s oldest son and the kid believed it. I enter into deeper realms of
fictive kinship. In Tesopaco, Charlita plies me with huge portions of food and
I now see why the men insist on only just a teansy it more, because if you say
a little more, they just load your plate up with a lot more food.
1/6
We´re here at the ranch, with a late lunch of
tamales, beans, cheese and chiltepines. Then Emilio gave a bull a shot, that
was fun to watch. He has a Caterpillar bulldozer and over the years has leveled
off much terrain and planted the buffel grass and has also left many trees and
all the organ pipe and echo cactus, which can reach saguaro sizes. We take a
walk, get to the top of a hill and he says, “isn’t it beautiful, doesn’t it
look good?”, “I’m going to bulldoze that other hill and plant buffel grass, con
el favor de Dios.” How can I stand in judgement when my whole pattern of
consumption is based on the massive exploitation of the US, the highways, all
the environmental change brought about by the creation of the US, the dams, the
monoculture agriculture, all of which I take for granted and benefit from. I
can say I’m a vegetarian or a vegan or ride my bike and recycle, but it is
still based on massive consumption which degrades some environment somewhere.
You’d have to be a John Woolman or live on a self sufficient commune to not be
in the system.
Emilio has worked really hard and all he has
done stands totally opposite to what an environmentalist would want.. There is
a Guarijio Indian ranch hand here named Lolo, 50 plus years old. Lolo heard on
the radio that we were coming, 2 days ago when we arrived in Tesopaco. They
also heard about our arrival in Obregón and in the Sierra, all family and
friends have us localized, anyone interested in the travels of Federico.
1/7
Emilio and I went deer hunting last night, with
an ancient Chuck Connors type rifle and my old flashlight, that I gave him when
I met him at La Mesa last October. I saw something run through the trees and
brush and then we saw a jack rabbit (liebre). It took 6 shots for Emilio to get
it, shot through the arm, he walked up and grabbed it by the ears and we went
back to the ranch, all in the dark, hare still alive and kicking. Beto put a
string around it’s neck and choked it to death and then hung it up and
butchered it and fed it to the dogs, which are very thin and don’t get any
Purina. Not one hair was left, the dogs ate everything, skin and bones and the
cats grabbed whatever they could. One dog ate all the guts as they spilled out
and was sick for 2 days after. Evening at the ranch here is more of a leap back
in time than at La Mesa.
I slept under the ramada with stars all around,
quite chilly. At 5: AM Lolo turned on his radio, trumpets, racket, as the day
broke slowly and the stars faded, to the unavoidable Mexican noise. Dogs barked
all night, never any escape from barking dogs in Mexico either. Sleeping on the
folding cot was like being inside 100 Years of Solitude, 400 plus years of
ranch life in Sonora, I'’ on the same turf and lifestyle as Cabeza de Vaca,
Coronado, Kino. The radio just announced
that Beto and I are at the Rancho Tres Palmas, cool to hear your life unfolding
on the radio, the family knows where we are.
The level of hygiene is OK, but no soap to wash
dishes with and bloddy rabbit knives on the table, greasy bean and vertebrae
soup dishes stay greasy, but I yet to get sick. The produce is inside of a
screened in cabinet, fresh chiltepines we harvested in a basket on the cheese
rack and we wait for a milking cow to come with a calf, so we can lasso up the
calf, tie it up and have the cow return in the morning to milk it and make
fresh cheese. The cheese is coagulated with juice from a cow organ called the
quaja, there are vegetarian quaja products but the people say that cheese has
no taste.
The jack rabbit hunters struck out tonight, but
the hunt was on. A guy has to be very good at doing nothing and hanging out to
pass the time on a Mexican rancho. We did get a truck load of wood, roped up a
calf, gave the bull another shot (for an infected eye), the bull fell over in
the chute, I thought it broke it’s neck. We irrigated, pumped water from a well
with a generator and ate three meals of the exact same thing, beans with vertebrae
stew, with tortillas and hard cheese and chiltepines and coffee.
1/8
I ate the XMAS cookies Luz and Candida gave me
as a going away present, with Lolo around the fire as the Mexicans slept at
dawn. The cats and dogs here will eat anything, tortillas, beans, they can’t
afford to be picky. For breakfast we eat machaca with fresh egges, fresh milk,
squash paste with milk, coffee and beans and tortillas, made by Lolo. The ranch
house is open on one side, with a big ramada held up by old cedar horcones. We
sit in the shade and watch the cattle come by to the water, we can see all. The
big news is when a cow comes in with a calf. We get three more calves tied up,
milk one cow to feed the dogs and cats, tomorrow cheese. I become a cattle
herder. Out in the desert I saw a great big tree ocotillo (ocotillo macho).
Knowing how to shit without toilet papaer is a skill necessary in Mexico,
especially in the country where there may not be any, you have to use whatever
is available, a smooth stick, a particularly shaped rock. As I walked past the
fields, I hoped to see more native desert on the hills, but it was thoroughly
thrashed by cattle, for 100’s of years, yet still with many native plants. The
echo and organ pipe cactus thrive, as well as many native trees. The trees are
spectacularly wierd. There are even more weird trees south by Alamos.
We sit around like dogs in the tepid afternoon
air, as the breeze shifts, we sit silently, the time passes. I petted one of
the dogs that I named “Boney” and it was so happy to get some attention it
didn¿t know what to do, it pranced and danced around, coming back shyly for
more, as if this was just too good to be true! Another rabbit hunt went awry,
but we got in a good shot. The talk is pure cows, cattle all day long. Emilio has
a string of old thread holders, plastic and ribbed, that when 8 or more are
squeezed together, it sounds like a rifle being cocked, for when he is here
alone. Above that aparatus is a dried, skinned, headless rattlesnake, for
consumption when someone feels like snake. Dried beef ribs also hang, among the
kerosene lanterns.
1/9
I didn’t think it was possible to reach a new
high in Mexican noise but last night and this morning took the cake, 5 calves
tied up in the corral all night bellowing bloody murder, another calf in
another pen, Emilio snoring up a storm, the mother cows bellowing outside, dogs
barking, roosters crowing and then the radio turned up louder to be heard over
the rest, the radio with the same jingles like La Pesadaaaaaaaaaa. I am getting
adapted by trial by fire.
You can look at the cattle and buffel grass
through a history of domestication lens, through a lens of conquistadores,
through a lens of being in the desert, where the trajectory has all led up to
taking advantage of whatever resources one can TODAY, tomorrow is another
story. In a very poor country, where everything is recycled 5 times or more and
all nails are saved and reused, what domesticates came here 400 plus years ago?
Cattle and wheat and white guys and they´re still here, the culture is
ingrained, cattle is king, there are no environmentalists, they would be
laughed out of town or shot. Who wants wolves and jaguars when your whole life
is calves, cheese, milk and butter? Our 5 tied up calves gave us the ability to
rope in the cows and get 4 gallons of milk, which made fresh cheese for lunch
and another big cheese for later.
We went over to visit the nest ranch on a very
nice ride through prime echo cactus desert. The son was pumping water and
carried two 5 gallon buckets back to the house on a yoke with wires attached.
The house was totally cool, walls of wattle and daub, a roof of desert tree
vegas cross hatched with organ pipe skeleton cut in mid sections and the main
walls sided by massive echo trunks, traditional Yaqui architecture. We were
served coffee and fresh deer grilled on an open flame. I saw a bird I had never
seen nor heard of, a chachalaca. It was hanging out with the chickens but was
wild, it didn’t fly much, like a road runner, with a long, broad tail, reddish
legs and under belly, greenish body and a sort of comb on the head, it looked
like a cross between a road runner and a female pheasant. On the wall was a
calender of different cattle breeds, one of which caught my eye, beefmaster,
what a breed! Other breeds are cebu, brahman, brangu rojo, charolay, cimbra,
chambray, pardo suiza, angus, huaco (hereford). They use all these same breeds
in the Sierra, all the animals being crossed and mixed between these breeds.
This ranch life is pretty fun. I found a quartz
rock, partially crystallized. Lolo said “what is this for, why do you have
this?” He is fascinated by the rock, never saw one out here. I showed a light
through it tonight, to his and the other’s amazement.
1/10
Emilio has sort of the same charm as Tavo,
really nice men, in their mid 50’s, with less than a fourth grade education. On
this ranch there is squash, corn, multiple types of domestic pasteurage in
addition to buffel grass, chiltepines, chiles, fig, date palm, oranges,
grapefruit, lemon, lime, pomegranite (granada), lemon grass, nopal for
nopalitos and nopal for tuna, other local fruit trees, papache, chapote, weird
shade trees, various herbs and they rope in the calves, milk the cows, make
cheese, drink milk, shoot the breeze and sit around the fire at night and get a
few good laughs. All the arroyos running through the pasture land are developed
as holding tanks for water. There has been a lot of effort to scratch out a
lofe here in the desert, and it is hotter here than in Phoenix or Tucson.
1/11
A few notes on hygiene: our drinking water is
pumped out of a stream, from a little holding tank, the stream full of cow
shit. All drainages in Sonora and Chihuahua are full of cow shit. There is
really no way to avoid shit, of any sort, there are no septic systems, all out
houses drip down into the ground water from one house well to another. Then the
drinking water is stored in buckets with titles such as MexLub, automatic
transmission fluid, generic SAE 40 motor oil, hydraulic fluid, diesel oil. The
water is dipped out with a communal cup which everyone drinks out of. They
rinse out their mouths with tepid water in place of tooth brushing and then
spit the water on the floor. Dishes are washed by hand, i.e. with no scrubber,
in cold water with no soap. The table is wiped off with a fetid damp rag that
touches all, the rabbit blood, etc. The table is covered by flies which have
certainly landed in Lolo’s shitting area. The tortillas are put right on the
table. It is a pot pourri of germs and I’m amazed I’m, still healthy.
After I went to bed last night, Javier, from
the next ranch, returned with a hare and they fed it to the dogs. I’m reading
the Call of the Wild and White Fang in Spanish, very entertaining. Javier and
Pancho rode horses over from the next ranch and brought more fresh deer, which
we will also have for breakfast. The big action last night was the men trying
to make wheat tortillas. Corn are relatively easy to make, wheat are much
harder and generally regarded as tastier, perhaps because of the grease
content. The men generally know how, but they are not like the ones the women
make. I’ve noticed the women’s hands, very robust and strong, Maria’s hands as
she sqeezed out the balls of harina, what those hands could do with a chile in
them.
They use TVP sometimes, for cevishe or in place
of beans and remark, it’s supposed to be good for you, other than that
everything they cook has a huge dollop of grease thrown in. Everything seems
totally saturated with manteca or pork fat or has huge amounts of sugar and
salt. Where is the public health? Why is it incredibly easy to buy candy and
soda but you can’t find a toothbrush or floss?
The hygiene of cheese making is a whole other
ball game, licking the fingers, drinking out of buckets, cow shit on the hands,
flies everywhere. Beto made requzon last night, or cream cheese, pure fat,
eaten with delight. The deer would have been good if not drenched in so much
fat. Instead of a barbeque, they prefer to deep fat fry, la disqueada, because
it is fried in a big disk.
I was looking at some prickly pears and
imagining how to trim and manage them and then thought of the cactus I planted
at Mom and Dad’s in Tucson, how that chapter is gone, how I won’t be able to
see those plants grow and change, how that impulse is being attached to what is
forever changing, how human it is to feel choked up about it. It doesn’t change
anything for me to see the big picture, I still feel the immediacy of the
moment.
Emilio uses a witching stick to find water. He
found a spot with a stick that now has a well and a big holding tank of 2500
liters, which runs to the kitchen sink. The stick, in Spanish, chicura, from
the tree chicura, no other tree will do, and it has to be a specific size. He
showed me how to do it. Emilio may be a simpleton in some respects but he can
find water, drive a bulldozer, make cheese, make shoes, milk cows etc.
1/12
Everything is made for short people and I’m
constantly banging my head on everything.
I’m seeing that environmentalism is really a
middle class luxury. If one would put these constraints on the third world, 2/3
of the world’s population would be out of business, unable to eke out a living.
The real solution is to back-ciphon resources from the 1st world to
the 3rd world and reduce levels of consumption in the first. It is
easy to speak of conservation when one already has a house, computer, car,
refrigerator, washing machine, TV, stereo, telephone, electric, gas, cooler, AC
and money in the bank, a good education, harder to think of how people who
don’t have all that are going to buy your argument to get all the cattle off
the land and cease introducing exotic forage and plants. In this lens, then, it
is an impossible situation, as the whole premise of US economics is to consume
MORE all the time, to grow, grow, grow, no stasis in the consumption rate. If
the US won’t lead and back down, then the rest of the world will continue to
desire the same sort of materially oriented consumption and any environmental
victory will be only pyrhhic, as the tide moves towards consuming all resources
and producing enough food at whatever cost. In this sense, Mexican cattle and
buffel grass are chump change compared to all the pollution generated by the
US, all the suffering from underpaid 3rd world laborers who make us
our computer games. The statistics speak for themselves as to the distribution
of wealth in the world. What would an environmerntalist do for the people of
Chihuahua and Sonora if they were to have thgeir way? Will the people just go
away?
1/13
I guess the question is where to draw the line
and who gets to draw the line. Humanity’s greatest advances have come by
modifying the environment, domesticating plants, animals, mining and
metallurgy, mastering substrates with boats, planes, cars, trains, submarines,
rockets, space ships, and communication substrates of radio, TV, radar,
internet. In a very real way, to be human means to modify the environment. Why
draw the line on the most recent modifications when it is the precursors that
set the precedent? The dam is breached. Why is buffel grass such a big deal
when our own greatest food sources,
corn, wheat, soy, have taken over such vast tracts of land? Are our food
sources and environmental modifications somehow more holy? Why draw the line on
cattle and buffel grass when inumerable other environmental modifications in
our own back yard are just as bad.
When drawing the line, one must be just and
make the cut so all will suffer equally, not just people on the front lines of
direct resource exploitation. Those who indirectly exploit are as much a part
of the game, the consumers bear equal responsibnlity, just as the war on drugs
focuses on producers and not consumers, environmentalism sometimes gets the
cart before the horse and goes after producers of problems rather than
consumers of problems.
On another tack, how Mexicans treat animals, I
am reminded of the biblical parable of the guy who beat his burro when it
would’t go, only to find out that God then spoke through the burro, that it had
never mistreated the man. Here, people mistreat animals routinely, beating
dogs, kicking cats. Muy bruto indeed. One kitten is on it’s way out today after
being kicked good last night, bitten by a dog and falling into the grease
bucket. I’ve seen cattle kicked and beaten with sticks in the head, the cattle
are shy of people, overall it is not the same sort of interaction with animals
that people have in the US, even the bulls are scared and dogs are extatic to
get petted. What does the biblical parable mean? That life deserves respect, no
matter what sort of life it is. The Mexican scene is just one big
contradiction, a ball of wax that defies any easy explanation, I’m rubbed the
wrong way by many things yet I am drawn to defend Mexico as well, by being able
to point out contradictions as a result of having lived in the US and Mexico.
1/14
The time at the ranch has come and gone and now
I am down the road with Beto in Obregón, with a fresh big cheese and lots of
memories. I’m at Tavo’s sister’s house, Aida and husband Nacho. I got a map and
amazed them all by localizing their house and places I want to visit. Those
crazy gringos sure do know a lot of fun stuff! I went to visit Manuel Clark
Villa and his wife was delighted and fascinated to have a gringo in her house.
Most of these folks have about a 3rd grade education and are really
nice but tend to be overwhelmed and fascinated by information that I take for
granted. I’m like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arther’s court. It is just
really nice to know this family, as I am now part of a huge net of people, all
who want a piece of me. It is just what I wanted in Obregón, to establish a net
here.
My bed is again a folding cot of burlap, on an
outside porch in the open air, stars out there. I have some sort of problem
with my eyes and bought some antibiotic drops. Here you don’t need a
prescription to get whatever medicine you want, everybody gets to be their own
doctor and to save lots of money. Injections are big here, antibiotic
intramuscular injections in the ass, thigh or shoulder; they get themselves a shot for just about
anything. In the US, I have to be certified and trained and scared to death of
lawyers to give an anaphylaxis shot if someone is choking to death from a bee
sting allergy, here, anyone can give a shot, no training, no lawyer fear.
1/16
I rented a fully furnished apartment for 80
dollars per month, bed, stove, refrigerator, electric, gas, bath, shower,
porch, second floor balcony, tables and chairs. I had a blast last night as
Nacho and family imitated accents of the Sierra and different parts of Mexico,
and told me that even they have trouble understanding the Sierra accent and
particular people, like Hector, Tomás Clark Villa, Manuel, etc. In addition to
being able to tell people from the Sierra by their accent, Nacho said you can
tell them by the way they walk, a kind of lanky, bouncy walk, that grows out of
having to deal with an incredibly rocky substrate. The walk is a sixth sense,
to let the feet and legs feel the way, a body sense that has to be unconscious,
until you get it at the unconscious elvel, it is hard to walk without looking
down all the time.
I am reintroduced to the Mexican city, nothing
works like you would expect in ther US, what you have to anticipate is for
everything to be totally fucked up, then you don’t get flustered, as that is
the way it is. I’m even preadapted to total noise. I took a Mexican shower,
heated up 4 gallons of water on the stove, poured that in a 5 gallon bucket,
filled the rest with cold water, took it in the shower and dipped out water in
an old butter container. It’s the same way they do it in the Sierra. Nacho came
over to check on me and made sure to tell me that I am welcome to come over
anytime for food, shower, laundry. Now that I am alone, I realize I am
seriously tired. It has been taxing to toss myself out into the hinterlands of
a foreign country, everyday a challenge to even say anything and now navigating
a new big city by myself, the stress has caught up with me, I feel tremendously
weary.
1/17
I went to Alamos, Sonora with Beto and it was a
let down, híjole chingada pinche cabrón gringos. Like San Carlos, Kino Bay,
Rocky Point, it is a flavor of Mexico that is fantasy, playing on what gringos
think could be Mexico, but is not the real deal. The architecture there was
nothing special, played up to look colonial but the buildings were nothing one
couldn’t see in old Hermosillo or in the Sonora river valley for old churches.
How many old churches does a guy need to see? Beto and I went to a hotel to
inquire about the prices. It was very nice, exclusive, pleasant, I imagined
Beto and I sitting around the pool sipping margueritas and lo and behold, a
room for $165.00, pesos I thought, 16 dollars. I said to the lady, “yes, we’ll
take a room”, as we sat there in the office, it came to me that it might be 165
dollars and yes it was, for one night, “sorry, we don’t have the lana for that”
and we left and were back in Obregón by mid afternoon. Beto was disgusted by
the overt wealth and the co-opting of a whole town by gringos. We took the
Obregón libre highway to save 5 dollars in tolls and the libre was a minefield
of potholes, ruined by the hurricane.
I had heard of Alamos before I got to know
Sonora in person and went to satisfy that curiosity, to scratch that itch and
now I am unburdened of any more fascination for any tourist places in Mexico. I
prefer Mexico as it is for Mexicans, more fun, more challenge, more real.
1/21
Ciudad Obregón is another ball of wax, quite
different from Hermosillo in the lack of an older center of town, lack of
museums, not as much to do. The streets are in much worse condition and the
signage is amazingly bad, it will be a miracle if I don’t wreck my truck or
have an accident. Many streets have no signs at all, are one way, so you get to
a corner and take a left only to find yourself facing a horde of oncoming
traffic. At intersections, everyone pulls half way out into the traffic and
gradually it becomes snarled and people
inch through, people skating from crashes by inches, this goes on
constantly. Bicyclists must be getting killed like flies. The pavement is
riddled with big pot holes and rough sections and it all boils down to that you
can’t just drive, as you do in the US, you must pay constant attention to many
things or wreck. What government resources are focused on, I don’t know, not
education, not public works, the law is terribly corrupt. Public health and
education are non-existent as seen in widespread lack of awareness that the
basic diet people have is bad for them, lack of hygiene, dental care etc. With
the economy in a shambles and the average earnings of 3 dollars per day not
enough to buy tortillas, people are forced into a survival, subsistence mode
where they have no power to effect change, ignored by politicians, insulated by
ignorance, they’re just fucked. Contrast this city life to life in the Sierra
or the smaller towns, there life is more pleasant, real and genuine. I much
prefer that Mexico.
I wouldn’t want to be presidente Fox, as the
problems are so big and insurmountable and the resources seemingly always
siphoned off by corruption. No wonder people look for someone to blame, they
are victims. That the US is so successful and Mexico so unsuccessful only
invites people to ask why? Surely the US has taken advantage of Mexico in many ways and that can’t be
justified morally. Capitalism has no morals, it is equivalent to the law of
club and fang, every dog for himself and tough shit if you don’t make it, as
evidenced by the current Treasury Secretary saying tough shit to the 1000’s of
people in the Enron scandal. If your neighbor is all powerful and tremendously
successful and you are powerless and very unsuccessful and the powerful
neighbor’s main attitude is “tough shit”, no wonder many educated Mexicans have
a tremendous dislike for the US. Ironically, the uneducated think the US is
great, they all want to go, all want anything, clothes or whatever, as long as
it is in English.
I went to the public library today and it was
pathetic, hardly any books and a really bad museum on the region’s Indians.
There is a Spanish word, porquería, meaning all fucked up, that well describes
a lot of things here. If the US has culpability, Mexico itself also must bear
responsibility for it’s history and failure to serve the populace. The system
has it’s charm, as it seems that anything goes, good or bad.
1/25
Tonight I have been invited to a modelada,
modeling show, where I will see Néne and Cendy model the intimate clothes and
evening dress that they have made in school. They are Emilio and Nacho’s
daughters, respectively. La Néne is the paragon of all that is sexy about
Mexican women, plump, shapely, dark hair with curly whispy side burns, deep
dark eyes that sparkle with the light, a mix of looks combining Spanish, Arab
and American Indian, with dark skin, a smile that could melt a heart of stone.
The show was very impressionable, in a big cantina, elegant, light shows, fog
machines, great music, especially one song by Sting, 1000 years or something, a
parade of beautiful faces and clothing. I took a picture of Néne in a red
dress, surrounded by fog, as if she was the Queen Califa herself. Néne was by
far the most beautiful in a sea of beauty.
Nacho and I looked at the moon this afternoon,
“it’s true that only gringos have been to the moon?”, “yes, there is flag up
there too”, he said, “I heard there is good land there, I’m going to put a lot
of cattle up there”, “yes, but there is no water” I said, “well, I’ll put in
irrigation then”, I said “muy bién entonces, buenas suerte mi amigo.”
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