Sierra Madre to Baja journal, 2006

Fred Allebach

Sierra Madre, Chihuahua to Baja journal, Fall, 2006

10/24

The area now inhabited by La Mesa de Abajo was previously territory of the Lower Pima Indians. As the Spanish moved north in their conquest of New Spain,

missions were built, mining was undertaken and gradually the Indians were pushed back into marginal terrain and a marginal role in society; they were the conquered people. Upon this land came immigrants from North Carolina, fleeing the Civil War or it’s effects. Their last names were Clark, Moore and DeMoss and they came to Bermudes, Chihuahua and eventually their families colonized the nearby pueblos now known as El Cordon, Campo Americano, El Encinal, La Mesa Atrvesada and La Mesa de Abajo among others.

In those days there were no roads into La Mesa de Abajo (La Mesa) and large predators had not yet been extirpated. It would not be long for that however as cattle ranching and grizzlies, jaguars and wolves just do not mix. Now there may be an occasional puma but for all intents and purposes, the cattle are free to roam and investments on the hoof pretty much stay alive save for accidents and old age.

At La Mesa there were no utilities and it was not until relatively recently that there was introduced small solar electric systems and a solar water pump to bring water up from a lower arroyo. In the 70s people started to get diesel cattle trucks. Almost all home construction was and is with adobe. Barns and sheds are of  and most buildings at the ranchos are of wood. Rooves were thatch, of which there are still some, including the oldest and largest house, that of Tomas Clark Villa.

Initially La Mesa was covered with mature pines, probably similar to a ponderosa pine parkland. Small wells were dug around the houses but this did not last seasonally and/or in dry years and water had to be hauled from below. The older boys worked all day hauling water, one trip after another. Water must have been a crucial issue during the late winter and spring when cattle had to be brought to the mesa top due to lack of forage below. From the get-go the people became intimately acquainted with the level of carrying capacity of the land, water and their labor. You couldn’t have more cattle than you could feed and water, plain and simple.

The pine parkland was cleared for what is now a series of family fields and holdings between the two “bandas” or family groups there, the Clark Villa band and the Clark Moore band. They refer to each other in general as “la otra banda” or the other group/family. Bayo beans are grown as well as corn and squash, there are apple orchards nearby, quince, and kitchen gardens. Other fruit and nut trees have been brought in, walnuts, a citrus tree called naranja-limon or orange-lime, the plantings all seem to have one use or another. In good years enough beans can be grown to eat, save for seed and sell. Calves are sold, cattle butchered and sold, cheese, butter and requezon (cottage cheese) made in September for the year, milk dranken at the ranchos and from a home milking cow, jamoncillo (boiled milk candy) made for a sweet treat and in general enough food can be generated to get by. As Jose Luis said, “we are not dying of hunger”. Another person told me there is “always enough” beans, even in bad years when too much rain, hail, frost or not enough rain impacts the harvest.

Amidst of this is a social, family world where all is intertwined. Everyday is a face-to-face day where the modern notion of being an individual does not apply. There is no turning inward away from the community to interact only on one’s own terms. That there is this face-to-face aspect does not therefore mean that all is one big happy family, hardly so, only that this is the form of human social organization people have used since the beginning and from which some of us are recently emancipated, for good or ill.

Today the traditional world there is undergoing change, little by little a growing steam of modernization affects the day to day life and plans for the future. It takes a lot of work to manage a family herd of cattle, grow and harvest crops, repair homes, repair fences, make cheese and butter, make clothes, shoes and saddles, make blacksmith metal  products, maintain a water system and the young folks have had a taste of modern life in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora and many have left and are not coming back to be farmer/ranchers. Few of the up and coming are planning to stay and continue this life style. There are kids in the computer business, as carpenters, electricians, factory workers, as street taco vendors, in school to be architects, kids who have illegally crossed the border and the adults themselves spend more and more time in Obregon returning only for crucial functions and tasks. The cash economy has drawn people away and the older Thomas Jefferson type of freeman economy of make stuff all yourself, that is free, yes, but damn hard.

Those that stay manage the affairs of their extended family, mainly cattle issues, herd movements between pastures etc. The grandparent generation does not want to be anywhere else but since winters can be cold, they end up stir crazy in the city until they come back. Of course this is all quite a simplification, but the observations hold to a degree.

In one big respect, people are moving out not only from modernization pressures and the desire for an easier life in a cash economy but also because of the level or resource carrying capacity of the land. The land cannot be subdivided indefinitely. If each banda or extended family can run approximately 250 to 300 cattle, on range below La Mesa around the main water drainages, each kid cannot just add another 50 cattle for themselves.

So then part of the other side of all the immigration issues people hear about in the US, part of this is the result of a growing Mexican population and less resource base. People have to go to the city as the country provides pretty much nada if you don’t have any land. So you have to move out as there is not the resource base for your whole generation there at La Mesa, maybe you learn a trade like Sigifredo and Dora’s boys and stay in Mexico in a city or maybe you cross the border illegally like the son of my good friends. These sons then live in two worlds, at once modern and traditional. They are on hero’s journey, to master two worlds and bring back a boon from their adventure. Or more simply, they may stand to make a high hourly wage and then be able to send some money home. One son brought his Mom a washing machine from the US and a generator, so now maybe she doesn’t have to spend so much time washing each item by hand on a cement washboard. Women spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen and doing laundry, so stuff like being able to buy tortillas and have a washing machine, can save two, three or more hours a day.

This living in two worlds for the younger generation and for the older folks who go to Ciudad Obregon more, has got to create cultural dissonance and friction. You see you can buy shoes instead of make them, you can buy beans instead of grow them, you can finish your job and be done for the day, no cattle to tend, fences to repair, wells and water lines to tend. Maybe there are other religions, other ideas and notions, the internet, there is satellite TV with 500 channels and the small, Sierra Madre world is blown to smithereens. There is no telling how many ways a culture is broadened and how it changes. Probably little by little as each extended family member decides to adopt this or that feature. One sign is by who wears baseball hats and who wears sombreros. The younger and/or more progressive wear the baseball hats mostly and only sombreros to special functions, the older folks always wear a sombrero and never a baseball hat. There must be plenty of other stuff like that.

La Mesa has two extended families, El Cordon has two extended families, El Encinal has one, Campo Americano one or two. It seems that whole villages are really just extended families. There is a  sort of boundary represented by perhaps how far one can ride in a day by horse, how far one goes to a dance and can meet people and this becomes the defacto boundary for an extended family. One could then, theoretically overlay circles of extended families and lay them over the terrain of the Sierra Madre, this would represent all of their particular and proscribed face-to-face worlds.

So, what do families make off their cattle and agricultural products? Calves: $2-4000 per year, beans:up to $1000 per year, plus home trade work, leather, metal, machaca (dried/pounded/shredded beef) businesses. A living can be made right off the land, but it is hard and demanding. Enough can be generated to buy sugar, coffee, flour, produce, gasoline plus tools and whatever etc. That there are only nominal land taxes, no income tax, means that people keep just about all they make.  Government services are still provided at a certain level, cement, block, health clinic, help for solar, water, maybe road work once every 10 years, so a family sees clearly their bottom line and that the government will not be taking it away, as in the US, where we have much better roads for our taxes but other additional benefits are not so clear for the 15% or 25% that we are fleeced for.

There is a yearly round of planting, harvesting, of making cheese, making bacanora etc and a round of the generations rising and falling, grass thriving and then harvested. This all unfolds within the context of, under the umbrella of the traditions that these people have. As I sat one day with Jose Luis comparing the North American cash economy, social mobility etc Luis noted “our world is very small”.

To give a point of comparison, in the 1930s Tucson, AZ had 30,000 people of which half spoke Spanish. The town was made up of ranches, cattle was king, there were leather shops, tanneries, family businesses etc. This is what you generally find now in many bustling Mexican pueblos and cities, that the economy is agriculturally based with cattle ranching predominant and that the level of technology and the means of production are changing towards more modern forms. Instead of store upon store of family businesses chains are starting to invade, the mass advertising culture is invading, being overlaid upon a life style and economy equivalent to one hundred or more years in the US past. And these guys are supposed to grasp and compete economically in the framework of NAFTA?

My friends will work as hard as anyone, and do good, high quality work but they are like Thomas Jefferson competing against Wall Street, the cards are entirely stacked against them. They are campesinos with maybe 50 cattle each on marginal land. They can get by comfortably and even well given predictable weather but they are, like me, small bits of flotsam in the strong current of the modern world economy. The forces at work seem to entice, draw you in but then once you have bitten, once you go for the materialism, you are left with the hollow feeling of having lost your traditions and those things that give meaning to life.

Over the years I have developed a sense of the region, of Sonora and southeast Arizona. I am more than an observer; I’m in the story and as such these musings are not anthropology, they are an insider’s views, an accretion of information representing my travels, interests and studies. I go to Yecora, Sonora, the local commercial and administrative hub in the Sierra Madre mountains and I Mini, daughter of Lupeto and Adele,  at El Commercial on the plaza, “oh yes, Johnny Machaca, yes I’ll tell him and the people in Trigo Moreno that you said hi, and yes, Wencho is OK”. The dusty streets of Yecora carry on with the local bustle of life, Gerrardo and Blanca’s machaca business, one after another of massive old Ford trucks go by, a burro, a mule, the river, the Pima Indian slums on the other side of the river, the plaza, scene of so much debauchery and life’s passages, the church, the Mission, the same guy serving good food in the restaurant gives me a knowing welcome. Yecora is “town” as in “we’re going to town to get supplies”; Yecora is the first and only big town for a long, long ways. Villagers from all around live in Yecora full or part time, those who don’t make a bigger jump to Obregon, Chihuahua, Hermosillo.

There is a sense of change, that the old ways are giving over to the new, but  slowly, the forests are getting logged but in a primitive manner, daily life is still sleepy, in it’s own time. Two hundred miles to the north is the border fence with the USA, the Border Patrol is everywhere trying to stop people who make no cash or maybe a dollar a day. Huge fences of steel and barbed wire, high tech radar stand as monolithic dumb statements to complex issues with no easy answers.

Woven threads of history unravel and are sewn together again. Indians, dispossessed, live in ramshackle huts made of pallets and tar paper and cardboard, pieced together by whatever is available. Prejudice they face in large draughts, this after so much blather of civilization and true religion, so much blood and suffering. It is a cruel and stark reality, the juggernaut of the impulse to convert, civilize, to get mining resources, to benefit, has all left the Indians in abject poverty with their traditional culture shattered. And the church and government have the nerve to speak of the truth and salvation, of what people need to do? When a whole people are smashed and ground up to nothing but a body and a life, and you see them in their shacks and trash, you wonder, what happened? Who is responsible for this? My thoughts move to structural aspects of injustice, large sweeps of state and church actions, people crushed by the force of history and ignorant ideals unable to be seen. No one is responsible now; no one can pay the debt, no one can own it, to the hammers the world still looks like nails; the  winners take all and leave the conquered as so much flotsam and jetsam. Any just purpose of society seems entirely lost, on both side of the border. The notion of change by simply pulling oneself up by their bootstraps, is a fantasy of the winners and well off. What seems clear is that society boils down to every dog for himself and that the white man’s civilization has been nothing more than savagery in fine clothes. 

11/19 /07 finds us on the Pacific side, in Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. We pulled into town past the huge flag/monument marking the 28^th parallel, which divides the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur. I went to a Refraccionaria and bought motor oil from a nice man named Juan, which still cost twice as much as the USA even though I haggled $5.00 off the price. Juan and I got along good, talking about the Discovery channel and world issues of pollution. Kim and I then got a motel, I changed the oil out on those dusty streets, we made a deal with the laundry girl to wash, dry and fold our clothes and we went out to a point in the huge bay here, where the salt flats are, where the dunes are, where there were millions of clam shells and the dusk came in thick with fog and then back here to the hotel through the bustle of Mexican night streets, Kim made fresh salsa, burritos with cheese from La Maria in the Sierra Madre, with Salsa Sonora and now we are settled in for the night.

We came from an old Mission, San Borja, which was way out in the middle of nowhere, beautiful, in between Bahia Los Angeles and here. There we toured the old mission, took hot baths from natural springs, put mud on the skin, spent the night and a 19 year old Cochimi Indian took the starter out of his Toyota and transplanted it into mine. We stayed in their house and it was 100 Years Of Solitude for reals, maybe 400 years….It was a special visit, playing guitars, telling jokes, seeing their orchards of grape and olive, a huge mango tree, date palms, avocados, bananas, a nice scene, sharing a day and night under the sky and stars.

Before that it was deep into the thick of boojum tree desert (the boojum or cirio, Fouquieria columnaris, is probably in the top ten weird trees of the world, growing only between the 30^th and 28^th  parallels in Baja and a bit in Sonora on the other side of the Gulf of Californai/ Sea of Cortez, and the impression is of driving through a Dr. Seuss book, through Alice in Wonderland) right down to the coast, to Bahia de Los Angeles, Sea of Cortez side, and 5 days under a palm palapa in front of gently lapping seas, bottle nose dolphins, pelicans, sea shells and general total tranquility of what a south sea vacation should be. There was no one around but us and we checked out the town, the little museum, the sea turtle restoration group, all with good conversations about this and that. In the museum, the artifacts were exactly like our friends are living now in La Mesa de Abajo, so part of the trip, we lived in a museum, from life 150 years ago somehow ensconced in the now. The temperatures have been amazingly livable, not extreme in any way, never cold, sleeping outside in cots under the stars, the Milky Way very close above.

And before this we found ourselves in the thick of the Baja 1000 car race and that was wild, you should have seen and heard some of those rigs! We were out at night by the side of the road in Catavina watching these guys just smoke by, motorcycles, ATVs, VWs, monster trucks, Baja specials, stock cars, just crazy, and we could not fail to notice that one of the Baja trucks was worth probably more than many Mexicans will ever make, and the contrasts between the wealthy gringo foreigners and the poor locals, is a great gulf, that we have pondered, and tried not to separate ourselves from. The majority of the high dollar trailers, Baja 1000 people, the RV people, they bring all their own stuff and don’t stop in the little towns to buy tortillas and chat up the locals. That’s our trip, get into the local flavor and not get to where it is only other gringos around; we don’t want the Taco Bell vacation, we want to know what it is like for these folks who live as average Mexicans. And one thing I can say, we feel poor by US standards but here we appear as quite well off. Poverty is relative. The abyss between the northern gringos who are really well off and the average Mexican is HUGE, there is almost no bridging that gap, so we have contemplated the history, what led up to such a big inequity of resources, how it is currently sustained etc. No easy answers, people have always hoarded wealth, and it may just be human nature to have it be every dog for himself, at all levels.

We came south from Gypsy Beach, San Quintin, a pleasant little spot, site of the former Vacation of Terror (where 20 years ago, Mark, Steve and I spent: 1 night in jail, and on night 2, had the tide come in on the truck, had to walk miles in the dark through streaming sandy tide to the mainland, then spent all the next day saving the truck, got an 80 dollar speeding ticket and Montezuma’s revenge, saw the Terminator and Dr. Zhivago, all in 3 days); San Quintin is a major agricultural area, lots of covered tomatoes. We had a nice stroll through the dunes and big flat beaches, saw a pilot whale or two, ate some tasty fish tacos, showered etc. Life was goo; the wind dried all our stuff hanging on the fence and we received the hospitality of Laura in Laura’s Zopilote Mojado restaurant/ camping area.

Now, this may be hard to believe, but the night before getting to the above beach, we were snowed on, 2 inches, in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, a National Park, at about 10,000’, where we stayed 4 days and saw actual California condors flying, and where we visited a 2 meter telescope and talked about infinity et al with the main technical guy there. We stood at the portal to infinity, gazing from 1 side of the Baja to the other, commanding views, a high country very similar to Mt. Lemmon or the Chiricahua Mtns. in AZ. That snowy morning my hands were frozen, the wind whipped and I had to chain up to get out to the main road, our stuff got soaked in rain and slush and snow, but who can say they got snowed on in Baja? That was better than cool; it was freezing. And condors too! In the world of voodoo, we were the sacrificial gringos who got wet, soaked and frozen cold to bring water to the desert. The skies were washed clean, revealing crisp views and panoramas of pines descending into pithaya agria and garambullo desert.

Preceding this we spent the evening at Puerto Santo Tomas, with a poor fishing village (shacks made of pallets and tar paper) on one side and rich gringo homes (brick, aluminum roofed, fenced in, locked, solar panels, green grass etc) on the other and a great beach below us with fun rock formations and as always more sea shells to peruse and decide whether to get or not. Seashells have always been the best. On the way here we went through some wine country with nice big valleys and the prerequisite chateaus, quite scenic, with olive groves and all. We found a trash container and then, over the hill, was all the trash that had just been dumped out of it, a whole ravine full of trash, it was so absurd we had to laugh. Why do we not litter in a land where littering is the way it’s done?  Why do I save water in Tucson only to have new immigrants use it to water grass and make golf courses? With no sense of people being in something together, there is no reason for some behavior other than to make us feel good. So we are congruent with our ethics, we seem to do right but it seems to make no difference in  a world where all are for themselves and the commons are thrashed due to lack any cooperation for ideals and sustainable management larger than our immediate needs.

We stayed outside Ensenada one night before this at an unremarkable and inflated beach front locale where we met a German guy from Savary Island, BC, who had made himself a restaurant and hostel all from stuff he scavenged off the beach. We served him coffee and he held forth on the details of his own movie as we sat by the sea wall amongst the trash and shells.

The day before we crossed the border into Tecate, Mexico, a very nice border town in some higher up coastal zone hills near San Diego, where Kim found the killer bakery (una panederia) and we chatted with a nice police man outside about the way things are. We took our pastries to the plaza and sat in front of a statue of Benito Zuarez, former president of Mexico, an Mexicanized/ acculturated Zapotec Indian. The quote below him in so many words said: peace comes by acknowledging the rights of strangers/ aliens, i.e. make everyone the in-group and then there is no out-group. The night before Tecate we found a great little campground in the USA, in a big oak grove surrounded by high desert, and we were there because our propane tank valve broke and there was no fixing it in San Felipe and we had to run back to Mexicali/Yuma to get the small green propane bottles in a WalMart and we then drove through this great area of California that is totally backwater, next to the border, high up, oaky, junipers etc and we came upon this campground where we slept under the quiet and solemn oaks as coyotes yippi yi ki yoed. On our way back up to Yuma, the sandy flats adjacent to the Colorado River, where all the sand used to be in the Grand Canyon, we stopped and met an old Cocopah Indian woman with whom we hit it off with and from whom Kim bought a necklace, and to whom Kim gave a pair of glasses and Inocencia then gave Kim a necklace of her choice. I asked this old woman how old some of the pictures were in her personal museum and she said “500 years old”. We liked her a lot and if we go back, we’ll buy the book about her too, get her more cigarette money, as he said. She was all wrinkles, smoking Delicados, making beaded collars, in a camp of Indians next to the Rio Hardy. She said when she was young the river flowed and the wildlife and fish were everywhere. This is corroborated by Aldo Leopold in A sand County Almanac. Now, for reasons of big agriculture and huge US and Mexican population in the river’s drainage, the water is all spoken for and more is taken from the Colorado than goes into it. This leaves the Cocopah with a stagnant ditch, the spoils of the conquered.

So, before this we had gone down to San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez side, and explored much of the Colorado River Delta country, even crossing the Colorado River in Mexico, over a bridge showing the river to be completely dry, no Colorado River there, I guess it got all used it all up! Who could be using all that water? How many swimming pools, golf courses and green lawns in the desert to do that? We found a great little restaurant near here in Coahuila where we ordered the specials, carne asada and steak milanesa, very tasty, served by the ample waitress with green jewelry. In San Felipe it was ugly American-ville, totally, no doubt, with crappy little tourist camping areas and big fat expensive hotels, luxury boats, all recreation, lots of drinking, motor sports, fire works on the beach at night, and generally not our cup of tea, especially for $20.00 a night for Neolithic services in a dirt park with trash. I suppose some, even many, maybe the majority want to go to the tourist areas, but we find them disgusting. We are clearly against the grain of why tourist people come to Mexico, a couple of rebels who go not for the mainstream, prefer the side-stream, the eddies, the backwaters. I mean why come to Mexico to hang out with a bunch of knuckleheaded white people to blow off fire works, drink, fish and burn tons of gasoline? The whole American lifestyle seems to me shallow, the high ideals of freedom, individual liberty, equality, have degenerated into rampant materialism and consumerism; whatever it was the Founders had in mind, we have lost it almost totally as a nation. What does the US stand for now? What ideals can we put in front of poor Mexicans and Africans and actually say with sincerity is the truth? Shit I don’t know; I suspect that it is not really the US or any entity other than ourselves, this is human nature to be greedy, to hoard, to vilify the stranger, to fight for resources. If it wasn’t the US it would be somebody else and in reality, that somebody else is us. Excuse my ranting please.

We spent 4 days in the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve, a volcanic area at the head of the Sea of Cortez, which is the crème de la barren desert, exquisitely bare out there, life hanging on by spines and threads of exposed and unquenched dry roots; we love it there; there was not anybody anywhere except us (pretty much the same in the San Martir Sierra), and I explored the old hidden Emilia tinacos (pools where the extinct Sand Papagos found sustainance, below the lava tubes where they emerged from the earth created by I’itoi, a prime god of theirs), of which only 2 pools were barely left, it was DRY, maybe hadn’t rained since we were there last, 2 years ago. But up higher on the main volcano it has rained and the plants were green: barren desert update, it can not rain in any particular locale for years and years, like life is coming to an end, but it hangs on against all odds, that is the way things are there in one of the hottest, toughest deserts anywhere. In many of the places we visited it has really not rained for a year or more. And we sacrificed ourselves one night to have a good rain all through the central Baja, mud, mud everywhere.

And…. before this we were 2 nights in Tucson with our final prepping and having just returned from a week in the Sierra Madre to our village La Mesa de Abajo and weaving new threads among our friends there and with Mike Gray, the AFSC trip leader who we know and admire, and shoot even before this it was nearly a week coming down the dry side of the Sierra Nevada in snow and the infernal wind, Death Valley, where we saw DJ again, a nice fellow we met 6 years ago on our Luna de Mile, and through Flagstaff to visit Rosemary and Ethan, and that is about the short of it, an outline and notice that the show still goes on and we head to Mulege (in honor of Kim’s homeless friend Jim in Sonoma, we are going for Jim, Kim keeps a line open to the heart and the supernatural) and have just 1 week left before having to return to the USA, work a touch and then 2 weeks to visit my Mom in NJ, leaving the day after Kim’s birthday.

This is the subtext of our movie as it stands now. The little red truck has taken a beating on very rough dirt and gravel roads and performed well, things have overall been fun, challenging, transformational and we have each been reading books which augment our understanding of the Spanish speaking, Mexican world, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for Kim  and Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the US on the Indians of the Southwest 1533-1960 by Edward H. Spicer.

Kim packs now 11/20, the truck is small, hard to pack, lots of stuff even for low materialism white folks. Every time you want something it is always hidden behind other stuff. Kim has given away lots. I told the guys at San Borja Mission that if they could keep Kim there long enough, they could get all that was in the truck. Kim has left a nice care package for the cleaning lady and her son here, and now, FCA25 clear.

Now we are in San Ignacio, a quaint little place that sits inside a giant palm grove, I wait for the pictures to upload, and then we stay or go on, allowing the game to come to us, serendipity may decide.

Attentamente, Frederico y Kim 11/20/07

11/21/07

We came to Mulege and found a quite nice place by the river, surrounded by palms, near the sea, a pool, a great pool, with hot shower, Kim can run along the river and to town for 3 Klicks or more, there’s date palms everywhere, fresh dates lying on the ground ready to eat; we bought a date pie and date empanadas in San Ignagio that were outrageously good and lest you may think that all is just soooo good and great, let me tell you that I had another encounter with a Mexican toilet today, sat down and the seat was drenched wet with who knows what, and me in my nice clean favorite shorts, so that adds to the legacy of Mexican toilets, that no seat ever fits, all seats are loose and falling off, the size of the seat never matches the bowl, the seats are always way too small so an average gringo can barely squeeze on there, and then there is more, that I’ll spare you delicate reader, these charms and characteristics which add to the overall atmosphere of the Mexican experience. At first this all takes some getting used to but if you can camp out and endure hardships and inconveniences, this is not so different; you just have to step up and take care of your business, and behind a cactus is preferable for this honky mofo.

We met a head honcho gringo last night, a local player, a big fish in a small pond, who does much charity work, Rotary Club, provides a free dental clinic, flies in doctors, does good works, and so I saw that all gringos in big fancy houses are not all just turned into themselves but some are focused in service work and so my perspective is stretched from its cynical stance of the corruptness of riches to seeing that there are those who do good works with their resources and so I must readjust my perspective. Kim got into with this guy and called him a fucking asshole, but that was her boat to row.

Kim and I spoke this morning of how egalitarian Koi and  San people (Bushmen), who share all, still have issues with jealousy and people noting who has what, who is more lazy, more productive, and that they have trance dances to clear the table after people all accuse each other of this and that, so the upshot, is that people can’t help but notice disconformities in who has what, who does what, but that perhaps in a world of individuals, of “citizens”, that there is no face to face community, no social control, no social pressure, people can disappear into their back yard barbeques and never relate, never deal with the poor, the needy and in this world of individuals, there is no accountability to the community…just a thought. This being in Mexico stimulates questions that only by being in the Third World can arise, like why do they pay twice as much for a can of corn when they make substantially less? Why is it that poverty tends to get poorer while having more money gets all the breaks, all the good interest rates, the loans, why when you’re down, is it easier to fall even further while when the game is good, all is easy? 

11/24

We stayed three nights total at Maria’s in Mulege, the first night we just pulled in and camped and on our first day, on our first trip to town, in the first store we got to, there was snorkel gear and we got it. Now we could open up the unseen world beneath the waves. That was exciting! Whatever it cost I knew that even just one time would bring so many good memories and it is so fascinating to see all those colored fish swimming around, that it was a no-brainer. Continuing our stroll around charming Mulege we found a nice restaurant where Kim got the killer baked fish with garlic and me the combination plate and life was good, fat city, as the pot goes down, shoot, just keep on spending; we’re Americans after all! We drove all over town, checking this and that, too windy to snorkel so back to our palapa for the night.

The next day it was Playa Escondida and some great snorkeling, pufferfish, banded yellow fish, striped orange fish, ones with yellow, green and blue, big flat ones, stingrays, iridescent little blue ones, ones with big fins, little fins, long ones, fat ones, fast ones, ones that hide in coral, giant schools of minnows flickering in the light, giant schools of other ones flitting this way and that and, one octopus. Once you stop and float, they all relax and come around you, checking you out; they go about doing their stuff, eating algae off rocks, defending their turf, eating each other and going around on fish various unknown fish errands and business. We went out twice. We also saw professional beach bums with 50 gallon drums of water next to their palapas, guitar, kayak, beach chair, table, hammock, deeply tanned; that’s the life, you get your spot amidst a bunch of  other gringos scattered down the beach and proceed to fish, clam, drink, smoke and hang out till the money runs out.

We also checked out the old Mission in Mulege and contemplated more the differences that make a difference, how cultural flavors make the tastes of life so strange and compelling, so bitter, so sweet and attractive. We hit it off with Maria, a very nice but deeply self-centered woman whose own movie, whose own story was always the first thing on her tongue. She was the kind who is very hard to talk to because she never seems to hear what you say and is always interrupting you and seems to be formulating her reply even as you are making your point. It is a kind of diffuse sense of conversing, never satisfying to the second fiddles in her orchestra. Nevertheless she had quite a nice place, a beautiful swimming pool, showers, bath, big date grove with dates just all over the place for the taking. Her domain was been hit by a hurricane last year. Much of lower Mulege was also hit, and under 6, 10 or more feet of water, flooded from broken dams above and the river pushed back in by a full moon storm tide. As usual there was the section of town, of big fancy houses, pure gringo, and then the other side of the tracks, not unremarkable I suppose as that is how people learned it in the USA. Being here is great for being able to triangulate a perspective back on life in the US, it provides a unique, alternate view that enriches and deepens, reflects different images and shadows that you would not get other than from here.

11/25

We went down to Playa Armenta after Maria’s for 1 night and had a beachy palapa experience, a few more snorkeling expeditions, peering off into deep water, strong currents, in a true wilderness, in the food chain literally, a bit unnerving but exhilarating nevertheless. We made a beach head and then came a few RVs, people heading to Cabo San Lucas, the ultimate gringo destination. Sitting on the beach watching the birds feed and fly in the early morning or late evening is sure tranquil and interesting, seeing how pelicans drop straight down with feet out, plummeting for a fish and it occurred to me, what is it that all these driven folks are doing here? These beaches are lined with RVs, kayaks, sailboats, palapas, all in a row, one after another, (a Mexican girl even said “we can’t go to the beach, they are all taken up by gringos”, and it is all on a pay basis). To get the resources to live on vacation you have to work, work, work yet the ultimate goal is to sit around and do nothing but take up space and recreate. So therefore, doing nothing is desirable and a wanted end result but it is not acceptable to do nothing if you are homeless or are supposed to be work, work, working. Nothing but clamming and fishing and drinking and playing cards or golf; that is the ape demy but this nothingness, in order to be valid, has to be earned and cannot be undertaken prematurely or you cannot be a true member of the do-nothing club. Doing nothing too early makes you a bum or an outcast, you have not accumulated enough resource to live at the helm of nothing with smooth sailing ahead. Of course many desire to sail away into the sunset of nothing and try to shepherd meager resources with this goal in mind, like me, or the beach bums. And furthermore, there are those that have nothing already but they desire not even more nothing, they, those poor of the world, desire lots of something, plenty lots of it. So there you go, how to make sense of that. I suppose the grass is always greener. Rent a house in the US for $1000.00 or down here in palm tree paradise in San Ignacio for $200.00, three baths even. That gives $800 for a lot of nothing to go with your carne asada tacos and Tecate.

The upshot: the accumulation of lots of something can be ultimately aiming at the realization of total nothing, and this says a lot about the value of the things that are done on the way to nothing, that they have little intrinsic value and given the choice, people would just as soon not work, work, work at shit jobs managed by others and would prefer to be the captain of their ship sailing on the ocean of their own choice, free. Ah, freedom this is what this all points to, the actualization of one’s own volition, and looking toward the abyss of eternity, in death, as a skull and skeleton, as dust, then the precious time to sail with one’s own hand on the tiller, that time is short, so wait not too long and think not too much of creature comforts, such as an RV with a shitter and a refrigerator, as to accumulate that will waste many years of freedom, lost in notions of safety and security when the grim reaper cares not for these things. Now is your time, spend those pesos NOW, as tomorrow we die.

A number of gringos are involved in a free dental clinic, flying doctors, in service work, massage, seeing the poverty and lack of education they identify a need and try to fill it. They come and want to clean up the trash. This presents the same dilemma/ paradox that Mike Gray and other serious service worker eventually see, that maybe you are serving your own sense of what is necessary, how do you know you are serving what the people themselves want and need, whose compass is being followed, maybe you are actually altering the recipients for the bad and not the good, maybe your service is giving them fish but not teaching how to fish…but many folks do what is called the “feel good service” and as long as they feel good about it, then it is good, and there may be no way out of that, as how do you excise yourself out of any service you give, how can you not be you as well as serve others?

Kim says, “ask not whether Mexicans belong in the US but ask if Americans belong in Mexico?”

We busted out of Playa Armenta early and headed up to Santa Rosalia, a really cool ex-copper mining town built up by the French. The architecture is quite different than the rest of Mexico is that it is wood, imported back from Tacoma, WA, when the ore was exported up there for smelting. Santa Rosalia was remarkable for the sheer profusion of small shops and stores which give it away as a more traditional kind of place, nothing catering to gringos, there’s no beach, so the flavor was more real, not artificial Mexico flavor that seems to predominate on the vacationland of Baja coasts. We liked Santa Rosalia a lot and enjoyed the Eiffel designed church, the bakery, even though I saw a big fish filleted out on the table where they were making buns.

You, the reader, may wonder why I am even here if I appear so cynical about the white guy presence, as I am myself a white guy who aspires to lots of nothing, i.e. freedom. Well, this is really my first time in any sort of tropical beach type of mass produced vacation place, and we/I have seen that maybe this is not our cup of tea. I didn’t know how it would strike me; I thought we would be alone on an isolated beach and not next to a bunch of intimate enemies(……explain), being charged by opportunistic Mexican parasites to separate my meager something into their meager poverty. I just didn’t know. It has been pretty good when we found ourselves mostly alone, and away from beaches is where the mostly alone is, or in the off-season, or not big holidays; so the answer is that I did not like the Florida Keys as every square inch was designed to fleece me, and I’m sure the Caribbean and Hawaii are the same way, unless you have an in somewhere and can get with the locals and be seen as an equal and not as a bottomless pit of potential money for them. I guess I prefer the woods and wilderness then, for my brand of freedom, where the wheat is separated from the chaff, that may be my tribe, and I am just thrown in with another tribe here that I have no allegiance to.

Anyhow, we came back to San Ignacio and got a little motel with no TV (yes!) and we strolled the plaza and met an expatriate guru follower, northern California woman who we passed some good talk with and now we go to Campo Rene, to check out the Vizcaino coast area on the Pacific, it sounds good, this is the home stretch, only $300.00 worth of freedom left.