The Temples of the City

I came into Mexico City gliding serenely down from the pine-covered hills to the west, those hills that reach to the highland light of the summits of Michoacan.  First we passed the skyscrapers and gleaming glass of Iboamerica, straining structures, reaching upward like the tower of Babel. Then as far as the eye could see were the rotted out concrete crates of the hillside barrios.  I got off the bus with an Ecuadorian from an Andean village who wore a braid under his baseball cap.  He helped me find my way into the metro train. He smiled at me, very briefly, from time to time.

The metro flashes by, cell after cell of creatures flickering into view– each an instance an image of enormous importance to someone but here and gone again into the tunnel of darkness.  The cold smooth steel of the handrails ring as my backpack buckle knocks against them and everywhere people try not to look at each other, try not to reveal the their internal lives, searing at such close quarters.  Station by station the train packs fuller until we are one mass of flesh– steaming and swaying and smelling of onions and leather.  At Pinot Suarez station the Ecuadorian and I get off and the door seems to contract and resist as the people jostle and push and finally burst out into the station. 
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One metro station, called Merced, is enveloped by an immense market with hallways only wide enough for one and a half people and with groups three wide going in both directions.  High above is an arched ceiling of filthy metal laminate.

It is a jungle of vending and selling, people hawking everything from balloons to pumpkin seeds to pornography with shrill cries of "barra barra" and "lleve lleve."  Booths are piled high with mountains of avocados, green stacks of nopal ears, sliced open papayas with glossy black seeds that look as if they would go pinging around the pass-way if you flung a handfuls of them, racks of chillies that fill the air with a musty tang, and next to them great bins of spices, sticks of cinnamon, heaps of mysterious powers and crushed leaves, each carrying its own distinct flavor as unknown to me as the fourth primary color. 

Then there are the meat shops. There is a whole city block of chickens, laid like deformed bowling pins on the counter-tops, the color of the rubber gloves my mother uses to wash the dishes, stretched out long and tense as if they were killed in the middle of a dream about transforming into a rocket ship and blasting of from this earth.  And down the line, massive slabs of pork, peppered red, cut into round thin layers which are then stacked, skewered, and carried to the taco stands where a man in a white apron carves off chunks which fall skittering and sizzling onto a skillet along with onions, garlic, and pineapple. Around the periphery the greased scraps of butcher paper stain the pavement and their reek rises into the air and mingles with the smell of innards and chemicals. 

I could not find my way out of the labyrinth of the market. I passed for the third time the stand piled high with marshmallows and hard candies wrapped in their individual worlds of cellophane and turned the corner around the grave and silent images of Jesus and Mary, staring fixed as the whole world pushed, yelled and laughed around them.  I began to feel desperate, craving the sun and at least a slice of sky, no matter how small, but standing in my way were rank on rank of shoe stands.  I heard a women asking the way to the metro.  She was old and looked to have problems with her hips.  She walked very slowly.  Fifteen minutes later, in about the same place I heard her asking the same question. We were both going in circles. 

I finally found my way out onto the street and won, for my effort, a small sliver of curb to walk on, pinched between the belching buses and the press of people on the sidewalk.  I looked up.  Tattered and filthy curtains hung flaccid in the barred windows of the apartment building above the market.  The paint was peeled off the facade and gouts of smoke from the steel spout of a semi dissipated on the paneling.  Up ahead a brownish pink sign five stories high proclaimed HOTEL.

I began to walk, large Latin women with their hair streaked blond or died a sordid purple jostled me with their bulging bags, lovers blockaded my path with their tangled together hands, women in their 30s bore down in sleek slacks and punctuated their presence with the sharp report of hard heels on concrete, teenage boys with their hair cropped short and gelled up barreled through the crowd hauling dollies laden with goods, a taxi driver honked, a policeman blew his whistle,  a baby screamed, and I arrived in front of a church.

I went inside.

The stones are 400 years old.  They were set in a slower time when the streets sounded with the bleats of sheep and the tap of a stonemason's hammer.  The pews are in neat rows. Jesus and Mary are in their nooks below the spacious dome.  Colored light comes through small windows.  A man kneels and down not speak or move.  The bell tolls out the hour.  The gilding around the altar has a dull glint in the dim light.  

I sit. I breathe.  I take out my book and begin to read.  People come and go with soft steps.  They genuflect.  They pour out the despair of drab days, the keening pain of loss, all that is packed behind the blank stare in the subway.  And Mary and Jesus preside, unmoving.

Mariposas

Cerro Pellon Butterfly Reserve, Estado de Mexico

After I lost my credit card and played harmonica for my bread in Patzcuaro, I headed into the highlands where the monarch butterflies congregate every winter.  I talked the keepers of the park into letting me hike up and camp on the summit on Cerro Pellon, a few thousand feet above the altiplano.  To the west were the fanged peaks and deep valleys of Michoacan and somewhere to the east, just beyond the horizon,  the vast sprawl and chaos of Mexico City.  But there on the mountaintop, the silence was complete.  An hour´s walk down from the summit were the butterflies:

They come many long miles from the north in solitary flight and alight on the branches, first a few, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands so that the stiff pine branches hang to the ground under their weight as if some seething, crawling volcanic ash had descended from the skies.   Their wings fill the air with hum and hush. 

Come the night chill and they fold together on the branches like the most intricate origami, and the rustle of their patterned wings is stilled.  Creatures walk the forest floor in the darkness and and the butterfly covered branches above arch like a cavern roof full of stone invertebrates a million years dead. 



When the first sun ray comes singing down to the tree tops they stir, and one by one spring open like a tiger lily, were all the slow hours of its blossoming seen in one resplendent moment. They can't fly in the cold and fall to the ground, knocking off a hundred others on their way and pour down the branches like warming snow sliding off a tin roof.

They land on whatever is below, be it boulder, bush or beast.  They beat their wings and the ground is a flurry of black and orange and the sound is powerful as a very distant waterfall and intricate as a mother hushing her baby in a lonely cabin.  They move and struggle until...

...they take flight and wheel in circles miles across in the broad sky, spiraling upward and passing in their sometimes pensive, sometimes swooping flight, by the high peak where I am camped.

Endnote: Scientists have discovered that monarch butterflies are attracted to testosterone.  They have also discovered that a particularly potent form of testosterone exists in males around the age of 22 that come from certain mountain vales in the western provinces of Colorado.  These two discoveries, taken together, lend ample explanation to the behaviors displayed by the butterflies in these photos.

Mom, maybe you shouldn´t read this one

Aqiula to Coalcoman, Michoacan:  I was in the town of Aquila and had been thumbing for a good couple of hours without success when a semi with a giant hopper shuddered to a stop on the speed bump in front of me. I swung up into the high cab which contained the driver Rodrigo and his brother-in-law Mario. I sat on the bed-space behind the two front seats.

"What are you guys hauling?" I asked.

"Iron," Rodrigo pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the hopper, "And weed." He nodded to the ample space below the bed I was sitting on. We began to move.

Rodrigo turned to me.  "Will you hand me that beer that's back there somewhere?"

Without a glance he tossed the can of the one he had already finished out the window.  Then he cupped his hands around his lighter and lit a cigarette.  With a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and an an occasional elbow on the steering wheel, Rodrigo opened the throttle and we thundered up the Sierra Madre del Sur.

The Sierra Madre del Sur rises several thousand abrupt feet from the oceans before dropping off the other side into a highland plateau. The road clings to the canyon-sides and sweeps around the chaos of ridges and arroyos. There are no guardrails (as if that would stop a semi). There are no shoulders. There are no double yellows or dotted whites.

Rodrigo told me stories of his time in LA as a coke dealer: how he got busted and about his time in jail. He almost head on-ed a bus. When he ran out of subject matter he flipped on the CD player which pumped out frenetic Latin hip hop.  He put one set of tires in the dirt on the roadside, then pulled them out. Campesinos dove into the ditches and signs that said things like "slow," and "dangerous curve" and "school zone" rattled furiously in the wind from the truck. He yelled for another beer. I pretended not to be able to find it until he took his hands off the wheel and started rummaging around for it himself around for it himself.  I found it right away.

I discovered that between songs he drove slower and picked up the pace as the beat hit harder. I stared yelling questions to him so he would turn down the music. This led to the unpleasant discovery that around every corner the tires were shrieking as the empty trailer fishtailed behind us and righted itself, making the cab shudder hard. I continued to yell questions, pulling on every reserve of my Spanish and conversation-making skills. But having told me about his criminal days, he was no longer inclined to talk.  He was having more fun going nuts to regaetòn and making nine wheel turns (as opposed to 18 wheel) around passenger cars.

Finally we made a screaming descent into a town which I quickly declared to be my destination, hoping I wouldn't have to say its name because I had no idea what it was called.

"Hey I've got lots of friends here," Rodrigo told me. "You can stay with them if you want.  I'll take you to meet them!"

"Oh thanks so much man.  That's cool but yeah I've already got friends here.  Yeah, they're from Jalisco but they live here.  As a matter of fact they live right here beside this little store we're coming up on.  Yeah, so I have to get off right here."

Children and fruit vendors scattered as Rodrigo charged through the town and clattered to a halt. I descended from the bed and I staggered out of the cab. Then I just sat down on the roadside, giving thanks with all my soul for the blessed stationary pavement.

In Maruata

When we arrived in Maruata the moon was full-- great yellow bulb ready to sprout, full of portents and potential.  It was a glossy onion, translucent and layered.  But it began to darken.  A scythe of shadow advanced across it like the silhouette of the blade of a thief in the night until it was dark brown like a silent town obscured by smog rising from a thousand guttering oil lamps.  We were filled with dismay.  But then the stars awoke and jumped with fervor and began to sing to us where we sat under the mute palm fronds.

In Maruata, swimming in the azure waters with the waves lapping so amniotic on the shore stretched out like entrails, a vision came to me:

There were fish and suddenly I was one of those fish and we were many but of one mind as we darted the deeps.  An octopus wearing spectacles floated by, reading a book from the library of all wisdom, but as we all drew near to hear his words in our collective mind the ink spilled from the pages of the book and created a great curtain, hiding him from view.  Then the curtain was rent from top to bottom but the octopus had returned to the dark grottoes where he keeps the library of all wisdom, exiled from man or woman, bird or fish. 

And I left my fellow fish to find the grottoes and was suddenly flying alone, an albatross fleeing from an arrow, an albatross seeking absolution in pure motion in the starlit air.  I saw a fish under the restless surface of the sea.  Dove.  Caught it.  Was filled with remorse from my former life and let it drop and flew on in the night while below the crabs scuttled on the rocks to pick at the broken piscene body and the waves bashed themselves endlessly against the bluffs. 

In Maruata the sea was suddenly seized with a fit of charity and whispered to me as I swam, "Cast your nets on the other side" and while I reeled bewildered I saw a sparkle and flash on the shore and hundreds of sardines sailed out of the water and onto the tectonic crust of the continent and lay dying.  And we walked along the rim of foam and were in awe at the destruction as the hundred transparent bodies quivered and expired and offered up their flesh to us. We gathered them with trembling hands, fried them in in oil and garlic, and ate until we could no more. Still there were fish-- hundreds of fish with unseeing eyes and gaping mouths.

I dreamed that night and in that dream came to me a women, and offered herself to me, and suddenly there were thousands, and they all lay dying of thirst on the rocks and crying out for water.  The night came and a great shadow came down from heaven, obscured the moon, and said to me, "Go into the wild and do not look back." Then I was standing on a mountaintop and time was no longer and I stood motionless forever above the snows and anguished valleys of heat and desire and rotting flesh.

When I awoke I was in Maruata. The sun was lunging into the sky, the foam stirred around hidden rocks way out at sea, and under the surface the current ran swiftly southward.

A Travelling Circus

Colima, Colima and Maruata, Michoacan-

I hitched on out of Jalisco and down into the hotter country of Colima where I met Paula and Aina.

Aina likes to lie and tell people that she is a gypsy and Paula has a cynical smile but a sudden laugh.  They were music teachers for circus kids in Spain, moving from town to town with the freaks and fat ladies, the jugglers and the clowns.  They carried fake noses with them and hitchhiked around Mexico delighting kids by putting them on when the kids weren´t looking.  They made me learn some of their children´s songs, and then they made me do the dances too.  That was alright with me.  They were fearless and flirtatious and I got picked up five times faster when I was with them.

Aina really knows how to face life.

Aina and Paula picked up some interesting tricks during their time with the circus-- for instance, how to decapitate themselves without harm.

They also were very persuasive, convincing me to do things I might not normally do, such as try to cut off my samurai top knot with my pocket knife.

When it came time to make Christmas videos for relatives, what else could we do but perform the Spanish version of "I´m a little teapot" which thanks to Aina and Paula is now sung by dozens of little kids around Mexico and by one 22-year-old American.



Now what spell, gyspy girl?



They went north
I went south
They with fake noses
and I a smiling mouth.

Makin´ Bricks, Pushin´ Cattle

Tonaya, Jalisco

Israel Robles.  The indomitable campesino with the broken hat.  He´s 28 years old and skinny as a post and stands as straight as one too.  He burns with fury at everything capitalist.  He burns with fury at everything American. He burns with fury at trans-genetic crops.  Though born in Jalisco, he renounces his identity as a Mexican and refuses to sing the national anthem though the whole town may be looking at him in as he sits in silent protest.  But he is not all fury.  When it comes to human beings he beams at them with a sunny smile and immediately engages them as brothers and sisters.  He proudly claimed to me that he and his dog have a secret language, which is a ridiculous combination of sounds: "Du-du-ru-du-du.  Como estai, uh? Dodo bai? Preciosa."

Not long after I arrived he told me, "Collin, you are welcome in this house.  The United States is not welcome."  It took me a while, but in the end I believed both parts.

In the nine house-town of Santa Gertrudis, Israel works indefatigably to realize his dream of having a self sufficient community, where all the basic needs are provided for right there on the land.  We worked day in and day out making bricks so he could build his house, and pushing cattle in the sierra for the family's butcher shop business, which sustains him while he develops this farm.

There is a major obstacle in the way of Israel´s dream.  Way above in the sierra there is a heavy metal mine owned by foreigners.  This mine dumps arsenic, lead, cyanide, and other metals into the nearby stream, and this stream flows down beside the ranch at Santa Gertrudis.  Israels whole life is bent toward stopping this pollution so that he can move on with his dream.  I decided to join him in the effort.

Not long after we arrived there was a meeting in the county seat of Tonaya, where all the government leaders gathered to blather about the successes they had accomplished during their stint in the presidency.  This same presidency refused to recognize the problem in the stream in Santa Gertrudis.  Israel had just received the results from some independent tests he initiated that showed dire levels of heavily toxic metals.  He came to the meeting armed with this paper.

I had only been with Israel two days and as we arrived in the central plaza, the crowd that had been mostly dozing off or looking longingly at the free meal stirred and looked at this strange bearded blondie in their midst.  In front the president was speaking falteringly into the microphone about a project cleaning up one of the side streets in town.  As he drew to a close Israel stepped up to the front, ramrod straight under his perpetual tattered hat.  He raised his hand to speak.  The crowd murmured.  This was not customary. Israel began, projecting loud without the microphone, calling the town to action to hold the government to account for its environmental budget and to stop the pollution of the stream. He waved the test results at the crowd and invited them all to come take a look.

"It is time for the truth to be told.  It is time for action.  It is time for us to stop the pollution of this land on which every one of us depends for the air we breath, the food we eat, and the water we drink."

The president sweated on the stage. Israel stepped down and over to where I was sitting.  All eyes were on him.  I stood up next to him.  All eyes were then on me.  What were they thinking of this American in rural Jalisco with the crazy radical environmentalist?

Israel. 

Israel and I, we made bricks.   We loosened fine dry earth with pickaxes, brought water from the stream to wet it, threw in the fibrous leftovers of agave plants, churned the mud with our feet, turned it with shovels, cleared and leveled a patio to set the bricks, hauled the mud to it in wheelbarrows, set it into the molds, turned the bricks as they began to dry, loaded them into the truck when they dried, and unloaded them at the construction site of his new house.  And all the while we talked.  Israel told me about how the local farming economy had been destroy by the free trade agreement with the United States in 1994.  Here is Nafta according to him:

Down to earth.

The U.S. Mexico border opens.  USA subsidizes its agricultural exports (corn, beef, etc.) and sells them at a loss to Mexico. Mexico can't compete.  Farmers everywhere go bankrupt, sell their equipment, then sell their farm to huge agribusinesses, and stay in extreme crisis.  The Mexican economy implodes and people begin to flood northward into the U.S.  The U.S. does not want this burdensome flood and so pays a huge aid to Mexico which is divided up among the campesinos with just enough for each to make them stay on their land, if they still have it, or find some other work. The bankrupt farms continue to be bought up by huge companies under U.S. control until the U.S. has Mexican agriculture in its pocket.

When we weren´t making bricks we were in the sierra with his father pushing cattle. We swung up onto our mounts, Israel on the big unsteady mare, Ramiro on the big mule and I on the mangy but steady little mule.  My feet nearly drug on the ground.  We plodded up the dusty trails past the organos with their thick spined arms raised to the sky. Pyramids of corn stalks like giant insect colonies sat in the field, awaiting the grinders.  Ramiro and Israel excitedly pointed out every plant we came across, telling me its name in Spanish, and in Nahuatl, the ancient language of the Aztecs. 

Soon we were up in the cool shade of the oak forest where the cattle thrash and groan and Ramiro took out a big horn and began to blow deep blasts that vibrated on the hillsides.  Israel began to call the cattle as well:  "Haliegho, Haleigho, Haleigho-way-o,  dough dough dough."  The cattle came down without haste, chewing their cud.

I am on the cranky little mule.

We began pushing the cattle down the mountain.  We were plowing through a dense thorn-scrub with putrescent red spiders wobbling on every branch and rolling off my sombrero and the ears of the mule.  Ramiro and Israel were yelling at the cattle in some complicated language I didn´t understand, so I just yelled at the cattle and waved my hat like I´d seen cowboys do in bad Hollywood Westerns: "Hey-up! Hyah!" It worked.  Ramiro cracked up and took up my style.

"They speaki eenglish! Heyyup! Yah!  Now we go down.  HEY-DOWN! They speaki eenglish Colí!" He nearly choked himself with laughter.

We ate a meal without utensils, heating up the tortillas on the ashes of the fire, and grabbing the meat with them.  Ramiro told me about his time in the California in the 80s as an illegal immigrant working long hours in a factory that makes cupboards.  He and Israel told me about how an elite cadre of capitalist Jews runs the world and is responsible for all the problems therein.  They told me about how the U.S. destroyed the twin towers itself to stimulate its military economy.

"And Mexico is just a bad copy of the United States," said Israel.

"Yep Colí.  Mexico: far from God, close to the United States.  That the way it is Colí."

I couldn´t stomach the claim that the U.S. had itself instigated the attack on the World Trade Center. "That´s just not true," I told Israel and Ramiro.  They looked at me incredulously and with pity.

"You are still inside the bubble your government has put around you. You have to look deeper.  Use your mind.  Make connections.  See that the U.S. economy is driven by its military and must have war."

"But if you are hungry to see things a certain way, you will draw connections to see them that way regardless if they are true."

Don´t worry, it´s not water from the contaminated stream.



They began to believe I was an indoctrinated nationalist.  Our brick-making discussions became hotter, devolving into epistemological discussions whose significance was swirling up in the stratosphere beyond the grasp of either of us.  Good thing our feet were firmly planted in the mud or God knows what would have happened.  And good thing we were eating a lot of beans.  At the point of our temper breaking over our differences, one of us would let out a huge fart.

"Huele mal, pero decansa el animal." 

And we would break into laughter and bend to work over our wheelbarrow full of mud. There the earth--the food that comes from it, and the shit that goes back to it-- prevailed, regardless of the crisscrossing grid of folly we human beings lay above it.

The time was coming for the event we had planned in the nearby town of San Pedro.  We had the teacher there in on our plan, which was to show a film about the nearby town of El Salto, where many were dying of cancer due to similar water quality problems.  We push-started the old custard colored '78 Ford and rattled into Tonaya.  Everyone stared at us, whispering to each other that there was Israel, the one who had caused such a fuss at the meeting, and his gringo friend, probably a spy for the CIA.  We ran into the president walking down the street and invited him to our event, which he sullenly declined.  We raced around researching the effects of various heavy metals, downloading short video clips, preparing a petition to be signed, and readying our speeches.  Then we rattled back to the farm, separated the cows and their calves to milk the next morning, watered the gardens, and went to bed.

The next day we made bricks all day and then went to San Pedro around dusk.  We set up the movie to project onto a tattered white sheet.  The crowd was small, mostly the elementary school kids and their moms.  The kids all jumped up and down trying to tear at Israels ripped sombrero.  I had to readjust my vision.  In moments imagining my role fighting against the mines I thought that all I would lack to reach Che Guevara status was a motorcycle.  But we instead we spoke to the small crowd in the sleepy San Pedro night, served them sweet hibiscus tea, and got around 50 signatures to start our petition.  As Israel and I lugged the leftover jug of sweet tea home, we watched the Persiad meteors streak down, sang ridiculous impressions of Maná, and were satisfied with day of work well done.

 


I guess it´s safe to say I´m a tree hugger.



The southward sirens began singing their songs and it was time for me to leave.  As I shouldered my pack to hit the road, Israel came out of the house at the last minute. 

"I have talked with my father, and we both agree, that if you ever want to, whatever plot of land you want on this ranch is yours to build your house on, and we will build it together."

He presented me a sombrero to take on my journey, not ripped like his, but woven of the same material.  I put it on to shade my face from the sun that rises on my home in Colorado, that rises on Jalisco, that rises on the burning Sonoran desert that stretches over the border, and turned to the road.