Recuerdos

Day 5

?The rooster has cried a coming dawn, but in the gray daybreak the shadows still lie in dark pools about doorway and alley. Somewhere, an Indian elder bows to the four directions and invokes the rain-givers, the earth-shakers in their mountainous domain. The mouth of the volcano still yawns; the future is not yet.

It lies in the walk of that man, shielding his face against the cold; in the gestures of that woman, fanning the embers of her fire and drawing her shawl more closely about her sleeping child; in that lonely figure, setting a signal along a railroad track. There is still time until the sun rises, but men scan the sky; for their lives are mortgaged to tomorrow.?
~ Eric Wolf, ?Sons of the Shaking Earth?

Wolf wrote that in the 1950s, but such is San Pablito. Women wear embroidered blouses, their daughters boot-cut jeans. Fathers stamp out the Carnaval dance; sons prepare to leave for the U.S. Roosters roam in and out of some houses, proclaiming their presence at every turn. Is that pounding I hear the sound of workers assembling the homes of immigrants in the U.S., or wives beating bark to make traditional papel amate in their absence? Drink watermelon juice or Coke, watch the fire or the television, the future is at hand. In San Pablito the road is a riverbed; cars with N.C. plates sweep men away. Mortgaged to tomorrow. Remember that ? the theme of a coming dispatch.

No credit to the guys at C@fe Internet in Pahuatlan who blasted techno from their terminals until my laptop modem started making those wonderfully painful beeping sounds. Viva machismo. Then I went in search of a taxi. People in Pahuatlan thought I was a little crazy to go to San Pablito alone, especially during Carnaval ? lots of dancers roaming the streets, downing Sol beer and asking me questions in broken English. But I found the clinica and mis entrevistas tambien. Learned how to say buenos dias, como esta and gracias in Otomi, an indigenous language that dates back to 1000 B.C. Caught a ride back and watched the sun set while reading Wolf in the plaza, beside the nightly soccer game and kids playing tag. At one point I became ?it?, focus of all attention, until I told the banditos I really needed to read. Gringa translation: Relax.

Day 6

How do you translate ?This place is so beautiful it takes my breath away?? Este lugar es si bonita, yo no puedo respirar.

Imagine a road worn down to mud and stones by frequent rain, littered with trash. Then a dirt path less than a foot wide, winding through scrubby trees, past vagrant pigs, roosters and shacks that smell of burning wood. Suddenly, the trees give way to a vista ? the verdant valley, so green it hurts the eyes, shrouded in mist. Perched at the end of the precipice stands another one-room shack with just enough space for two beds, home to a family of seven.

When you really want to know the story, you find a way past every obstacle, including language.

Before I left, someone asked me why people here would talk to me. Good question, especially in San Pablito, an indigenous community that people in nearby Pahuatlan consider cerrato, closed even to mestizos. I wondered the same tonight, as a woman who speaks my kind of Spanish (slow and simple), half my height and wearing flimsy plastic sandals, led me down the abovementioned path, in the dark, to a house and family I had never seen, without the possibility of a ride back to town. I trusted them. They talked. I rode the wave.

It was like that all day, traveling from one entrevista to another, staying far too late in San Pablito and catching a ride back gracias a Dios. I was entranced, amazed at the capacity of some immigrant families to build better lives even as others break apart. Listening to Otomi, I catch bits of Spanish. What is the future of this language; this people?

?Your eyes,? said the young taxi driver, the only one of three I asked willing to take me to San Pablito during Carnaval and a storm, ?They are so blue. I want to trade. Show me your eyes.? We were passing a mountainside shrine, time enough to look away and cross myself before the red and white cement virgin. Only when I looked back, and he smiled, did I see his hat. Guess what? Jose Alfredo Castillo, 23, is already a Tarheel.

Panaderia

Spent the day at the panaderia, watching Senores Castillo Ortiz bake, run errands, show off their son?s property and make deliveries. This was the longest day ever, 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. (just got back to the hotel ? only food available: Chocolate-covered Popsicle and Gatorade Frost). Senora Castillo Ortiz took me to el Mercado, where we moved from one tiled stall to the next, scooping up raw chicken and mole poblano paste, from which the pollo sauce is made. Then on to the tortilleria, where they pile white corn paste into metal sieves that drop globs onto a conveyor to be pounded, fried and piled. She bought paste for lunch and finished tortillas for later. Back at the house, which sits high on the mountain above Pahuatlan, almost obscured by a towering jacaranda and bouganvilla vines, I watched Senor Castillo Ortiz feed wood planks laden with galletas into the wood orno, or oven, much like a brick oven pizza parlor. Galletas, which I would later eat, are hollow pieces of bread that taste like plain crackers and are dipped in caf? before being eaten. After much talk, and a trip even higher up the mountain to see the aforementioned plot of land, past a field with some sparse corn, garbanzo beans and cilantro growing like grass. Then we drove to 12 tiendas in nearby San Pablito to sell bread and cake. The road between deteriorated into what looked like a quarry, then a river bed. We took a Ford Lareate whose lack of discernable suspension I was cursing until we hit two rocks the size of a small child. The driver, the only one of us who could drive standard, proceeded to run over them. No problem. I made sure to bless myself at the next roadside shrine, of which there were many. Not surprising given the road drops off to nothing about two inches from the makeshift roadway.

When a load gets heavy, girls here still put bags, baskets and boxes on their heads. Girls in school uniforms, the traditional embroidered blouses, even Senora Castillo Ortiz.

They were celebrating Carnaval in San Pablito already. Men dressed in Halloween masks ? devil, skeleton, pirate ? stuck peacock feathers (sold locally, no se porque) in their hair, ribbon-bedecked hats on their heads and scarves all around. Some put on embroidered blouses and skirts, too. There were fiddles, music, stomping and dancing. And whenever we encountered the crowd, the banditos demanded payment. Laughingly at first, but a bit more insistent as the night wore on. I asked a girl I?d met Sunday, whose house we stopped at, if she liked the fiesta, and she said she did, especially the music. I think I liked the dancing better. And the little banditos who clung to the truck as we passed, eyes bright with the challenge of ownership, defending their tradition.

Day 3

The news this morning was all about the latest guerra sucia trial in Mexico D.F., which I was following before I left. Not many details penetrate Pahuatlan, and nobody seems particularly interested, but I am eager to hear what people think about it in the city, especially the families of los desaparecidos. As the T.V. in a family store blared the news, I absorbed daily routines during my first work day in town. Pahuatlan woke with a chorus of roosters at about 8 a.m., sent its men to the dusty corner buses and its children to school on foot and in uniform. Red cardigans for the primaria, gray for the older students, both with an official crest sewn to the lapel. All bought by the families, along with school supplies. And of course, all the girls wear skirts and some version of Mary Janes.

Padre Javier spent a good hour this afternoon telling me how the youth here are losing their traditional values, their morals, but it?s hard to see. Those I?ve talked to all seem to essentially do what their parents want: Go to church and school, to the U.S. and back. Okay, maybe parents say they don?t want them to leave, but they benefit. The boys take over family businesses; the girls whisper, blush and marry accordingly. Padre Javier had something to say about that, too, which I?ll return to in a later dispatch.

After visiting the high school Miguel Hidalgo and the church, Santiago Apostole, I had an appointment with Senor Martiniano, the municipal president. Like Vicente Fox, he belongs to the PAN party and replaced a member of the PRI, the party that had ruled Mexican politics for more than 70 years and still boasts a sign on the main road into Pahuatlan. He?s a medico, a doctor, the kind that wears dress slacks and a silver crucifix around his neck and talks about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him some (my rough, clich?d translation). Seemed to me, and to a friend, very PAN.

Did I mention the door of my hotel room is made of bamboo? That I have eaten more meat during the past two days than the past 10 years? That there are nearly as many donkeys as bicycles crossing the black stone roads?

Then there was the suspension bridge, which I nicknamed, without even seeing it, ?Miedo.?Too bad the Pew scaveneger hunt doesn?t include replicating the adventures of our collective cinema hero, IJ. The bridge appeared to be constructed from warped wooded planks strung over five cables and stitched together with rusted barbed wire, and the whole affair was of unknown vintage. A plaque at the other end said it was reconstructed in 1956.My guide said he had not crossed it in 15 years. The sound of the rapids hundreds of feet below made him shudder as we picked our way across the center. He is afraid of heights tambien. Strange, since the hike was his idea (I jumped at the chance for an impromptu interview). Mexican machismo in effect. My next entries will probably come at the fin de semana

Day Two

Day 2:
I arrived in Pahuatlan (see photo) just as the sun was setting, and began my second day before sunrise. I woke at 5 a.m. (Pew fellows on the a.m. shift can atest this is a switch for me) but I had to get to church by 5:30. It was empty, but filled up within minutes ? no on in my pew, of course. This is a town of about 5,000, remember. The men share a secret whistle as they pass in the street. By day?s end, the women whispered about me as I passed ? the gringa from Carolina. At church, the pews were little more than narrow benches assembled from varnished planks and rebar. The sermon began with a prayer for immigrants abroad, (appropriate), then strayed to why we should not take The Bible literally as doctrine, but apply it to our lives. I was distracted by las senoras, all a foot shorter than me and most wearing tattered acrylic sweaters and woven rebozo-style shawls, hair braided down to their waists where they miraculously held themselves together. And the men, verdad campesinos who really do put their hats on the tiled floor to pray. Looking down on us from the walls were a host of deathly pale plaster saints with what looked like real hair. And outside the enormous wooden doors - which stayed open ?macaws called down from the towering palms, taunting us all. Gracias, senor.

By the time I left, the vendors were just setting up their tents, converting the plaza into el mercado. The priest was busy, and the municipal president had yet to arrive at his office. So I went to the tienda run by a family I know, had some of the local caf? I have heard so much about and pan dulce. I spent the rest of the day chasing stories. Think I caught at least two. Braved the precipice of a road to nearby San Pablito in one of many cars with NC plates. More rebozos, many with babies slung inside; my first chance to see paper amate and hear Otomi, idioma indigena. The nearest Blockbuster is two hours away, but at least a few of the kids have seen The Fast and the Furious. And there are more than a few fans of Eminem and 50 Cent.

The arcade in town and the Internet caf? both sport that dancing game with the Twister-esque dotted carpet that devotees frantically leap about on. Both are relatively new (last five years) along with money transfer services and a bunch of tiendas run by families with relatives in NC. A couple of French nationals I ran into found it startling. Why NC, they asked me, and I tried to explain.

The first of what will likely be many banned words during this trip: Gringa. Sounds like a cross between gorda and grande. No wonder I hate it so much. A few kids murmured it in my wake like an epithet. I am the only one here. Okay, there were the French nationals, but one has a Mexican husband and they?re both short brunettes. They blend. Gringa. Another drawback: Rhymes with chinga. The word is just wrong, wronger than the Spanish version of ?Total Eclipse of the Heart,? which they are playing in the hotel restaurant as we speak.

I?ll file again at week?s end, and may move on despues.

Day One

Day 1:
Opera ? flying into the largest city on earth felt like being spirited away by music you can never quite comprehend. After being harassed, as expected, by men at the airport offering to do everything from carry my bag to escort me around the city (no necesito ayuda, gracias) I got suckered into taking an airport taxi to the first of two buses I had to take to the village, but no matter. Looking out of the window I was moved to tears. You will say I?m a fool to love such a polluted, impoverished city. But what I saw from the secure confines of that tricked-out taxi/Caddy SUV was what so many immigrants have struggled to describe: La vida ordinaria. I saw men selling long bags of pistachios at intersections or working on the metro tracks, bright signs flashing past on stucco walls advertising Farmacias y Tiendas Gigantes; shiny red and green Pemex stations and beyond the city fields dotted with nopal cactus and cornstalk piles. I saw scrappy trees, their white painted trunks reminding me of Phoenix? except that they were only painted half-way up. The rare burro grazing in a bleached-brown field. As we climbed into the Sierra Madre, (ears popping) fields were replaced with sheer cliffs and mist-covered mountains with the rare house that looked close enough to shout at. Eucalyptus trees turned to lush ferns and banana tree-type leaves, all coated with a grayish dust.

I was watching you, Mexico. And I marvel at your courage.

The bus from Mexico D.F. to Tulancingo featured one of the trademark dubbed American action movies, which I was dreading (watched Master and Commander during the flight over, which put me in the mood for adventure, that and sitting next to an NGO guy going to feed Zambia). But it turned out to be ?Charlie?s Angles: Full Throttle.? Fitting. Necesito practicar mis espanol, after all. Of course, I was much too captivated by the scenery and my fellow passengers to watch?

The hotel is muy confortable, and I have already been given the grand tour of town by the owner?s brother, Guillermo, who is a dentist visiting from the D.F. We walked the plaza?s checkered tiles, past the taco stands, teenage girls and boys huddled on separate benches and two basketball games in progress. We saw the church, a cream and rust colored stucco affair with a bell tower and wrought iron gate (locked), then the municipal offices, a mustard-colored, two-story edificio with Spanish tile roof. Quite impressive until you stroll inside and discover not only is it open air, it?s leaky and the offices are up a narrow corner staircase. A roaming policeman stopped to wish us good night, and I tried not to flinch as he shook my hand.

It smells of dust, smoke and mist here, and you can hear some sort of cicada chirping from the street. Mexipop from a few cars, but it?s pretty quiet. The road to town is winding, with shrines at several turns to the Virgin and associated saints. A few grand estates, but mostly wood and stucco shacks with corrugated rooves and roaming roosters. I?m looking forward to mass tomorrow a.m. at 5 (!) and then a visit to the priest, the municipal president and some contacts in a nearby town. I had enchiladas con mole Pahuateco tonight and I can still taste the spicy chocolate sauce. Penso que la verdidad revolucion se hace aqui, en la vida ordinaria.