August 28th: San Cristobal de las Casas

On August 28th 1975 I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas in southern Mexico.

Chamula Procession, 2008:  Picture by Wolfgang Sauber,  CC

On this day I took a truck to the Tzoltzil Mayan town of Chamula, a few miles from San Cristobal.  The town was spread around an open sloping area of grass.  I sat for a while in the outskirts eating a papaya, pleasing the kids, smiling at the women, greeting the men; one man offered me some of his moonshine, others were playing music for the fiesta, of which this was the first day.  Almost everyone in town that day was Indian.  A crowd of people was standing outside the church, playing music, eating, drinking and sitting, occasionally going in, some people in very ceremonial costumes.  I looked in at the central square market, and walked up the hill where women were weaving.  Then I returned to the covered market, ate frijoles and cabbage soup before leaving.  It was a good walk back to town, sheltering twice from rain.  There were parties of women returning from town to Chamula, celebrating with high ululations.

The market in San Cristobal was a place of endless fascination.   One area of interest was the fruit, much of which I had not seen before, and it took many visits to try everything.  The market here was also one of the first markets I came across in Latin America which had prepared food to eat.  I tried tamales here for the first time and would come to depend on them as I travelled in Central America.  I found tamales and fried beans much more to my taste than the heavier dishes of more mainstream Mexican restaurants.

The market was always full of Mayan Indians from the nearby towns and villages.  I tried to record what they wore and were doing in my notebook:

Mayan Street Vendors, 2008:  Picture by Wolfgang Sauber, CC

In a stall in the market:  mainly an Indian scene, with people from different villages wearing different costumes.  The women most commonly with a black thick woven skirt, loosely wrapped around their hips and a white blouse with fairly simple decoration, a rebozo for carrying goods or babies, a black strip of woven material folded on their head, often with tassels, and a string bag for produce strung from their forehead.  A common variety is a white or gold/yellow/brown pinstripe in the skirt, and a rough brown blouse.  Some women near me are selling home-made bags and a little woollen doll of vaguely religious persuasion; they have bright coloured cummerbunds and ribboned plaits in their long black hair and a baby hangs on to the plaits as it sways around in the rebozo.  A little girl, in black serape with cummerbund, walks quite independently around beneath the tables, glancing at me.  The men with white trousers, often with white serape of fluffy wool and sombrero; sometimes without the trousers, just shirt and serape;  flat wide hats with dangling ribbons often darker in colour; black serapes, sometimes fluffy with long sleeves, pink cotton serapes with pom-poms and tassels, colourful decoration.  Double gourds highly polished.  Leather bags.  A woman with a huge dried fish.  A herbal medicine stand with a dead parrot or toucan.  Girls wearing a kind of shawl or cape covering shoulders and arms, thin pink white stripes, clasped by coloured strips, over the white, colourful blouses and plain black or blue skirts.  Women wearing light blue blouse with reddish decoration.

There was plenty to do in town.  The churches were interesting.  I noted at the church of San Martin "the Mayans worshipping, sitting in front of the candles, kneeling, and chanting and bowing, a man coming and chanting, standing, with his arms folded across his chest; the woman who looked after the place."  The churches very often had pine branches strewn around the open area in front of the altar and the images of the saints were often given a very Mayan look and Mayan clothes.  I visited the house of Na Bolom, where there was a museum and an institute studying the Indian customs and protecting the Lacandon Indians who survived with a distinctive culture in the jungle areas near the border with Belize.  There were even some young Lacandons to be seen there.  I went to a lecture on the weaving of Mayan huipiles (blouses) there, but I found the scene rather patronising.

Before I left, I walked with friends to the house of a friend of theirs from the USA.   We stopped to have a fruit juice at the barrio of San Ramon where there was a fiesta in full swing and crowds of people, and girls in white clothes.  Then it was through the fields to the restored farmhouse, with recording studio and 25 acres of farm, cows, vegetables and a beautiful milpa (corn field.)  With our meal of bread, fresh cheese and salad, I had two ears of the sweetest corn I've ever had, which I had just picked.  

August 21st: La Ventosa in Southern Mexico

On August 21st 1975 I was on the beach at La Ventosa near Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. 

I'm not sure why I thought that going to the beach was a good idea: surely the name La Ventosa, the windy place, would have given me a clue. 

I went to the market in Tehuantepec in the morning to buy supplies.  The market was an interesting place, run by the women, not unusual perhaps in Latin America, but here the women were completely dominant.  The women were tall, dark and good-looking, wearing long skirts and bright blouses.   As I walked around the stalls I was aware of being looked over by the women, a strange sensation for a man perhaps, though women the world over are used to it.  The previous evening I had walked up a small hill where I could see the river and the bridge and the walled central area of the quiet little town.  I could see these women striding grandly around, while all their men followed meekly in tow, just ordinary little men, inches shorter than their women; with down-cast Indian faces and drab white clothes, they just sat around and waited for the women to do whatever the women wanted to do, and when they were ready they carried the shopping and followed them back home several paces behind.

The beach was near the town of Salina Cruz with big waves but few palm trees.  There was a little bay in the centre where I swam in a rather dirty central area and a had good lunch at the cheapest restaurant run by a big mama in a hammock.  Then I crossed the river to find a good camping spot for my tent.  It was a windy night but it didn't rain till after midnight.  In the morning the beach had big waves and frigate-birds but the swimming was OK.  I walked back off the beach to a little lake which had pelicans and sandpipers and other water birds.

When I left I wrote this in my notebook:

Waiting for the bus back to Salina Cruz on a windy dusty road under a huge Dos Eques sign.  It's a dirty mean sort of place.  Seven or eight lazy restaurants, mostly thatch-covered around a little bay dotted with beer-cans and coconut husks, with a little swamp where the pi-dogs play.  Beyond is a river which you have to ford knee-deep and then the beach stretches a long way to the left.  Big Pacific waves make the dirty bay the best bathing, but there is always music blaring out loud and lots of Mexicans who come in taxis from town.  I camped two windy nights in the scrub and cactus behind the beach.   The villagers are somewhat more friendly than the tourists, but as I wrote it's a mean, rotten, disorganised sort of place, there must be a well, but they'd never think of showing you there.  Remember that the richer Mexicans who come to places like this have money, mainly for beer, they couldn't be friendly towards the villagers.  It's not that sort of society.

The Indians of Tehuantepec are Zapotec, similar to those of Oaxaca.  Their culture is sometimes seen as a matriarchy:  I don't know if it is technically, but it certainly seemed that way.  Pictures of the women here.

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August 3rd: Mexico City

On August 3rd 1975 I was in Mexico City.

It was a Sunday and I went to the Zocalo, a vast square which goes back to Aztec times.  I made some notes as I sat:

Sitting on a stone bench on the corner of the Zocalo, 11.30 on Sunday morning, sun coming through the haze for the first time.  Traffic and pedestrians are also just beginning to increase.  The day starts late in this city.  The Cathedral is on my right, a huge building in a curious mixture of styles, and the only thing of real interest in the Zocalo.  On the left side is a big government building, probably 120 metres long, three stories high, red canopied balconies on the second floor and guards at the three or so entrances.  Opposite are a couple of other colonial-style buildings, 5 or 6 stories with deep arcades all around and not very attractive.  On the far right a block of shops and offices and maybe hotels, nice on the ground floor but less interesting higher.  The Zocalo is physically a pretty barren place, eight lanes of traffic going one way round, though not overcrowded, and a big bare area in the middle where not many people go, no grass and most of the flowers are in the sidewalk where I sit.

Mexico City Zocalo, 2006:  Picture by Audrey H, CC

But the people here are quite interesting as just about anywhere in the city.  Very mixed, more so than in most areas to the west of here.  Many people dressed up for Sunday and for the city.  Not the very poor selling and begging, but plenty of Indian families in their best clothes mix with the middle-class families and young couples in their smartish, colourful clothes.  Plenty of foreign tourists as well as Mexican tourists, couples in their late thirties from America and Germany and France with cameras.  Some older and some younger.  Occasionally a turismo bus stops and a big group gets out, the last lot American high school kids, aged 16 or so.  A shoe-shine man sits on his stand on the corner, not much business and hardly any shoeshine kids around; he wears clothes a bit like the uniform of the traffic cop who is sometimes blowing his whistle on the corner.  Not many people sitting at this time of day:  an Indian group of families on the steps of the Cathedral before going in, a couple on the stone wall of the dry fountain, and in front of me a couple of girls on a stone bench; at right angles to me a man of 55 or so, standing at ease beside this bench and staring at something .

The night before I had been to the market in the poorer east end which was full of people, especially Indian women with their colourful clothes and braided hair selling their goods in the streets.  I returned through thick crowds to the Plaza Garibaldi and was enjoying the scenes.  That is the little square where Mariachis congregate to play music at the request of young men for their girlfriends.  It was a happy scene, the music maybe not as good as in Guadalajara but there were many players, there were fine buildings around, and people were selling all sorts of things, including serapes, the Mexican ponchos, in the Saturday evening atmosphere.

I made trips out to some of the archaeological sites.  First I went to Teotihuacan which goes back to the first millennium AD.  While I was walking around it started to rain and I made some notes:

Teotihuacan, 2007:  Picture by Hector Garcia, CC

It's raining.  First real rain in the middle of the day and I have to choose this day to come here.  I'm sheltering in the Palace of Quetzalpapalotl, one of the few places on the site which has real shelter.  I'm thinking about the fact that I'm probably going to have to get wet before this excursion is over, and just a tenth of my mind wanders back to what I've seen before today, which is pretty impressive.  The big temple first and the good sculpture, sitting among the red ants on one of the pyramids and realising how different are all the flowers and the birds and the insects, especially the butterflies.  Then climbing the super-big pyramid, so austere and savage, yet wondering at the daily life which lurked behind that savagery, what philosophical state of mind was required.  The excited voices of the American kids and the Mexican kids, the bourgeois Europeans and American couples, even two Japanese guys.   Mexican youths selling idoles.  Finally the humidity and tension in the air leading to the rain and the thunder and I came into this place among the rain refugees, two American families and a French couple.  Outside a few Mexican street kids run through the rain. 

When I went to Tula another day, I was determined to make more of the countryside and the wildlife.  Tula was the Toltec capital, and follows the Teotihuacan civilisation.  From my notebook:

Statues at Tula, 2005:  Picture by Nick Leonard, CC

The ruins here are interesting, the statues on the big pyramid, the friezes on certain buildings and the ball courts.  The scale is small and not so grandiose as at Teotihuacan.  Lots of interesting nature also.  I had just found a nice spot to sit and survey it all and to describe directly what I could see when along came this group of Mexicans with a couple or more Canadians, all young, and also the kids selling antiques.  And immediately the atmosphere was blown and in the end I left, and had to write this later.  What I can remember?  Swallows in the sky, making a lot of noise, some doves with rufous markings, the pied shrike, cactus plants with thick yellow juice in the leaves and yellow flowers, a bush with red flowers, little yellow and black daisies everywhere; the black-fronted blue behind butterfly; swallow-tails, little black butterfly with big white spots, also the mainly red bird on a telephone wire.  I looked down across the bushes and the little trees with leaves which hang down as 20 or 30 sub-leaves: a shepherd and his flock were ahead of me, and there was one little house by the river at the bottom and another on the hill on the other side.

I spent a day at the impressive National Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park.  Seeing the anthropological exhibits made me look forward to getting further south.  The huge Aztec exhibits sent a physical shiver up my spine.  This feeling only left me when I saw the more sympathetic, though still somewhat disturbing, Mayan sculpture.

July 25th: Tijuana

On July 25th 1975 I was in Tijuana in Mexico.  I had just finished the process of hitching from Northern New Hampshire into Mexico.

Parts of this journey:    New Hampshire to Denver.    Denver to Monterey.    Monterey to Tijuana.

From Monterey I got a lift early in the morning to the Big Sur area.  I camped quite near the road in a site which seemed to be for hitchers and cheap travellers; someone was supposed to come and get a fee but they never came, and there was a water-tank with a painted sign which said "Danger: do not drink - this water comes from LA.".  I spent the days on the beach, which was a hike away, or on short trails in the forests.  The evenings I spent talking around fires with the other camper: these included a long haired blonde guy who had been shot at while cycling across Texas with his dog on his way to California, and a strange fellow who talked about his time living on the Manson ranch.  Eventually I got a lift from a couple to Venice Beach, just to the north of Los Angeles and spent a few days with their friends in a little wooden house just behind the beach, a suitably bohemian place for young men who were into booze, Kerouac and Henry Miller.  They showed me the sights, Hollywood Boulevard and so on, and we spent time on the beach.

A few days later I walked up Venice Boulevard and spent a long slow day hitching around Los Angeles, not an easy place for hitch-hikers.  After three short lifts in several hours, I got picked up by a young Canadian doctor working in Irvine.  He took me to his house, wife and baby.  They looked upon Southern California as if it were a fantasy land and they were outsiders.  They saw me as fellow outsider, sympathetic to the cause, not hard.  They fed me well and gave me a tour, to Laguna Beach and other spots; we went to a beach for an open Jacuzzi in the evening to give me the Orange County experience. 

Border near Tijuana:  Picture by Kalavinka,  CC

I had difficulty the next day starting to hitch, these two days the hardest I had.  I only really got started when I risked going up on the freeway.  The second lift took me further, from a gay Chicano and his older (say 25) Mexican boyfriend who kept on going on about his wife and how bisexual he was, and how I might fit into the scene.  They were driving to Tijuana to get an upholstery job on their beat-up Volkswagen.  In Tijuana they wanted to show me the sights, but I wasn't too keen on that, so they took me to the bus-station.  It was four hours until the next bus south, so they drove round the dirt streets a few blocks behind the main drag until they found a hairdressers where they discussed the styles and chatted up the girls and discussed how beautiful they would look.  I left when I had had enough.

It was a good bus, air-conditioned and I had a seat up front.  In the evening we had driven to the top of a huge canyon, all lit up by the moon which was just rising, huge shadows all around;  the moon seemed to be far below where I was looking from.  At midnight we pulled into a big city of wide avenues and low houses, Mexicali, and the temperature was forty-one degrees centigrade according to the signs.  Later in the night there was a long delay for a sort of immigration.  In the morning I woke up in a landscape of bare earth and cactus, mile after mile after mile of it.  Now I knew I was in Mexico.

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September 1st: Bachajon

On September 1st 1975, I was in Bachajon in Southern Mexico.

The idea was to go on the direct route from San Cristobal to Palenque and from there on to the Yucatan. The route was established but only recently, and it was not mentioned in my South American Handbook. In addition I had heard that there were landslides on the road and the bus had not been running for several days, so I was not at all sure in advance that the journey was possible. This was probably my first time travelling on what were really local buses in Latin America. But if I could get across I'd have an interesting journey through the Mayan heartland in Mexico. In the event the fortuitous overnight in Bachajon was in a largely Mayan town.

From my journal, written up that night:

Up at 6 to catch the bus that left on time. Colourful journey through high pastures and pine trees to Huixtan and crawling round winding road to Oxchua, beautiful for driving, long clear views. Then a wait in the village, tamales at the square, and the descent into gradually more tropical country, more bananas, monstera deliciosum even.  Women weaving nicely embroidered huipils, men sometimes with colourful patterns stitched in old suit jackets. Very slow picking up passengers all the way, very crowded, even a pig. Ocosingo a Ladino town, hot and dull. Rougher road with a ford and over a pass to Bachajon. One hour late and we missed the connection. Found Berthold at the mission, and his junior doctor Christa, allowed to stay. Discussion of language and customs, then a walk round the village, sitting by the milpa (maize field) with a beautiful view of the valley. Meal of beans and tortillas at restaurant, later coffee and Tzeltal communication.

Link to weaving information

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