Day 7: Missions and Magicians, on Mexican Time

8:30 pm

This morning I woke up at 6:30 am to be ready to leave for the campo by 7 o'clock as Atagualpa and Yolanda, two of our supervisors, told us. We should have known better; "Aquí es México," so they say. Which means that things here run on "Mexican time." Which mostly means, be ready about 30 minutes after scheduled; if not later.

The rural village of Cruz del Palmar is only about 20 miles away from San Miguel de Allende, but it takes more than an hour to get there by way of winding dirt roads. Once we got there, Atagualpa got out of the van to go looking for Doña Vicenta, a woman who was going to "show us around." He walked a little ways up the hill and then disappeared. About 20 minutes later, he came walking up the hill on the other side (?) with a very small old woman. Doña Vicenta welcomed us with open arms and was very excited to see us, even though she didn't speak a word of English (neither did any of the other campesinos that we met) and she couldn't really pronounce any of our names except for Erendira's. (My name has now evolved into something close to "Iyahsha.") Three of the group are going to be staying in Cruz del Palmar next week, and she even seemed a little disappointed that all seven of us weren't staying. She took us around and introduced us to the three families that will be hosting Aneesha, Johanna, and Clea. After that, she said that she was going to "show us around a little." What followed was an amazing 5-hour live exposé of what life is like in the campo. I have no idea how far we actually walked, but we left the community far behind and hiked up the dried river bed of the Río Laja, passing people going about their daily business. I swear, it was like they were all on cue, in place for our tour of the countryside.

Our first stop was at one spot where there still was a little water left in a large puddle. The people of the community have noticed "tierra negra" ("black earth") in their already-questionable water pipes lately. It seems to be some sort of pollution, making their water unsafer than usual. Atagualpa, who is a little crazy, developed two theories: one, that the Cruzdelpalmareños are sitting on top of an oil reserve and are going to either be very rich or severely exploited soon, or, two, that the government is hiding something, which seems to be a classic Ata theory. The people down at the river were cleaning the community water pipes with long pieces of rhebar, like so.



Farther up the riverbed, we saw an extraction project, which is how this community makes all of its money. They separate the riverbed sand from the rocks by hand, with hand shovels and huge sieves, and then sell them separately to rich gringo construction projects in San Miguel. It seems like very hard work, and very rough on the environment. But then, farther upstream, we saw how they build a mini-dam and then let the river heal itself by backing up at the dam and filling in the holes with new sand that it carries from upriver. The riverbed was dry now, but in the rainy season, it flash floods, and Doña Vicenta told us that you can hear the river roaring as it "wakes up again." We also saw a man and his wife chopping wood in the middle of the riverbed, and acres and acres of sorgham plants (now is sorgham season) that varied in size and health depending on the owner's knowledge of irrigation techniques, and a man digging a deeper layer in a well. They dig up the mud and then let the dirt part settle, so there's water on top a little while later.



"How are you going to get out of there?" someone asked him in Spanish.

"With my wings, of course," he answered. A magician never reveals his secrets.

And then we went off on a hike all through the countryside, seeing the way that the people have learned over millenia to harness the power of the river, to redirect it, to use it to grow. Doña Vicenta showed us her little plot of land, that she was very proud of. Here you can see some of the people in our group, Johanna, Simone, Clea and Ata, in front of a sorgham field. Well, you can really only see Simone and Ata, but you get the idea. See how beautiful and green it is?



But then, not too far from Doña Vicenta's land, we saw a little white building up on the hillside. Cruz del Palmar is along the Ruta de las Capillas, or Chapel Route, in Guanajuato, so there are a lot of tiny chapels, built in mission times, that have mostly fallen into disrepair, into neglect, into the deepest parts of the people's minds, barely remembered. This was one such chapel. We were going to walk right past it, but I asked if we could go see it. Doña Vicenta shrugged and said, "Sure," and led the way up the hillside. Did I mention that for such a small, old lady, she could really book it? The rest of us were struggling to keep up with her. I asked what the chapel was called, and she had to dig very deep in her memory before she said, "Capilla Blanca." The White Church. It hadn't been touched; probably hadn't even been thought about, in years. It and the smaller surrounding shrines were dark, crumbling, long emptied by robbers. ("I remember that there used to be angels in here when I was a little girl," Doña Vicenta said.) There was nothing to particularly note it as a house of God except for a white cross scratched into the far wall, above the disintegrating altar. It was amazing. Even though there was nothing left but crumbling walls, I could tell that this place was once important. I could tell that God was still here. In the silence, the stillness, the whispering of the breeze through the doorway in the half-dark and the crumbling angel faces in the ceiling, somehow God was there.



(Here is a picture of me in front of the Capilla Blanca.)

Before we left, Ata had asked Doña Vicenta if we could be back to town by 2 pm so we could get back to San Miguel. "Well, I don't have a watch," she had said, "And it seems to me that keeping track of time is a waste of it. But I´ll do what I can." So, at about 10 till 2, I was thinking that maybe having a watch wasn't such a bad idea. We had been walking for hours; we must have been miles away from the village by now. But then, all of a sudden, she cut a straight perpendicular line to our path and headed directly up the side of the mountain. We followed obediently, panting the whole way. When we came down on the other side, there was the village. Amazing. I looked at my watch as we were walking into town; 1:59 pm. A magician never reveals her secrets. (And so much for "Mexican Time" Theory. I guess now we know the secret; take away their watches! hehe)

Then we left for home. I can't wait to go live in the countryside; I'll be living next week in a village called Cienegilla. Here is a picture of a few of my new friends, on our way home: (from the left) Simone, Aneesha, Erendira, and Erica.


Today was an amazing day. It's the strangest thing. "You can be anyone you want to be in Mexico," Peggy, our other supervisor said today. Anything can happen here. It's a whole other world. The air is all at once hot from the sun and cool from the wind. The sky is all at once the highest and biggest I've ever seen it, and still so close that if I could jump a little higher I might be able to bring a handful home in my pocket to all of you. My heart is all at once longing to be home with all of you, and longing to never have to leave this place. There is an otherworldly beauty here; something that I can feel, though I can't quite understand. It's something that wakes me up inside; something that makes me feel much more alive than I have felt in a very long time.