18. Chiapas Town Park

18.

Every night a carnival with midway rides, beer pavilions, and burlesque shows takes place right under my window.

I prowl the village around the clock and get quite caught up by the festive mood. There are no other tourists here. I am the only foreigner to hear and see this display. I have lived in Hawaii so long—where only “professional natives” perform all the folkloric activities and shows for the tourist dollar—that the idea of ordinary people doing fun, entertaining things just for themselves seems extraordinary!

So, in spite of the outrageous racket, I find this fortnight refreshing.

I meet one of the young musicians who plays with a local rock group called “Moses and the Resurrection”. He tells me he was with his girl last night in the Town Park and thought it was the most beautiful place on earth. Today, without the girl, he sees that the park is really desolate and filthy.

They walked together in the park
So green and fragrant in the dark;
Today the park is dusty brown—
He’s sitting in it all alone.

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17. Chiapas de Corso

17.


Chiapas de Corso, Mexico:

I meet a young man in this village who urges me to stay here for a couple of weeks to experience a yearly religious festival which features a famous “combate naval”, on the river that flows through this off the beaten path village.

The Parisians must return home soon anyway so we bid each other bon voyage and they head off to Isla Mujeres which they say is a Mecca for female tourists from France.

I discover a tiny room, costing one dollar per night, on the second floor of a pension with a balcony overlooking the town plaza The religious festival is in full cry when I move in.

Ye gods, what noise!

Skyrockets whistle and bang at two minute intervals all day and most of the night, deafening amplified music and announcements blast from loudspeakers mounted on tall poles and crowds of people, motorcycles, trucks, buses, and animals, all generating their signature noises at top volume, surround and fill the square.

This indescribable racket lasts without pause for the entire two weeks I stay at the pension.

The strangest noise is music produced by roving bands of costumed boys. Wearing identical white-faced staring-eyed masks, blond rope wigs, colorful serapes, chaps and sometimes boots, these kids are supposed to represent the Spanish conquistadors. Each gang chants a song honoring a saint accompanied by enthusiastic shaking of gravel-filled rattles.

...

16. Tuxla, Maxico

16.

Tuxla, Mexico:

Night clubbing with my charming Parisian fellow travelers is something new.

All Mexican men seem to find them irresistible and ply them with the smoothest combination of free drinks, food, and offers of sightseeing jaunts I have ever imagined.

I thought “The Latin Lover” was a literary fiction, but here they are, alive and well and slick as grease in Tuxla, of all places! And hitchhiking (they call it “auto-stop”) is a backpacker’s dream.

No automobile seems able to pass them by without offering them (and me) a free ride to wherever we want to go! The French girls are doing the “Two weeks with a pocketful of money” touristic thing so while we are together we really move around seeing the sights! I also discover that with the proper motivation, I can speak French!

...

15.Tepanatepec, Mexico

15.


Tepanatepec, Mexico:

Two lively French tourist girls, continental and sleek, are going my way—or maybe I’m going their way—anyway we are traveling together in the bus now.

After a short ride, the pleasant driver claims this village (Tepanatepec) is as far as we have paid for (probably hoping we will pay more to go to a reasonable big town) but we like the look of this charming little village and get off without a quarrel.

The bus rolls away in a cloud of dust and here we are.

The only human being around is a small child who asks us if we came for the wedding celebration.

Why not?

We say, “Yes” and he gives us directions to a bower of leafy branches the locals have built for their “novios”.

These same locals—the entire village it seems—are on hand, knocking themselves out with pulque, feasting and dancing.

They welcome us with enormous joy—it seems it is great good luck to have uninvited guests from outlandish countries in attendance. A band with electric guitars, microphones and big amplifiers is laying out some mean Mexican rock and roll, so the French girls and I move right in showing them how it’s done in Paris and Honolulu!

Elizabeth once told me that “Dance is the third form of prayer” and I never miss an opportunity to pray this way!

The wiry little brown men of Tepanatepec seem to think that the French girls are the most interesting things to come thru town since the conquest and these men are into dance/prayer as much as I am. These farmers sure can dance!

I do some fine prancing with the local girls and the crowd hollers for more. Hot as hell and clouds of pinkish dust, but what a party!

When we finally collapse, we are provided with rickety chairs and surrounded by good-looking big-eyed children. One young girl dressed in a bottle green sequined dress and with the make-up of a Hollywood starlet makes my day when she tells me she thinks I have beautiful eyes. They are blue, which is rare down here. The exotic is always appreciated.

We find a cheap pension and after nightfall, silent groups of people with candles stroll around in the darkness softly playing flutes . The effect is delightful.

...

14. Oaxaca

14

Oaxaca, Mexico:

Pink, turquoise, orange and brown,
That’s the way to paint a town!
Pea-green, sea-green, tea-green too,
Blood red, brick red, yellow and blue…
Painted like the evening sky,
Crowds of people strolling by,
Gilded lions guard Fountain Park,
Sunset, lamps lit; now it’s dark.
(Now it’s time to go to bed,
Sharpen up the pencil lead.)

This town peaked out during the Spanish occupation in the seventeenth century. Nothing now to keep the settlement together except some agriculture and a bit of tourism, but it must have been a splendid city during it’s hey-day judging from the leftover bits and pieces.

Hip-type Americans crowd the Town Square’s benches “Buenos diasing” each other. The townsfolk seem to tolerate this new invasion, which brings back a little wealth. Here and now, “American green” is as beautiful as Spanish gold.

A tan monastery-fort has changed into a museum containing church relics, folk costumes and pre-Colombian jewelry that looks like it was made by children cutting out shapes from gold-foil. Though the jewelry is pretty crude, the gold foil itself is flat, shiny and well done. There are also artifacts which Von Däniken might see as crystal insulators from a spaceship of his ancient astronauts but which the museum curators call “earrings”.

What I like best is a statue of Santa Lucia hijacked from some old church. The female figure is holding out a plate containing two large blue eyes.

Thanks. I can use those!

...

13.Mexico City

13.

Mexico City

The country people have all come here--Mexico City--of course!

Exactly one year ago I was a tourist here with two weeks of vacation time and a pocketful of money.

I like Mexico City. It’s old—built on Pre-Colombian ruins—and it’s got everything including classy places for the rich and the tourists with a pocketfull of money like I was--but nothing much for the vast majority--the several million poor people from the country.

The big old pyramids rise in a nearby meadow so as soon as I can I go over to stand on top of the Pyramid of the Sun--I've been here before.

Far below me, tourists amble among the ruined stones of the old people’s city. Right beside me on the top a gang of cheerful Mexican teenagers enacts the bloodless “human sacrifice”of one of their giggling members.

I wait for the interesting (and probably imaginary) vibrations I sometimes feel in these old power places. Yup. There they are. Zap, zap!

(Well, maybe so--"pyramid" has something to do with "fire" after all.)


Enough of Mexico City!


In another bus heading south, I discuss life with Senor Santana. He says he is a Mixtec/Yaqui from Tonala, which is translated: “Land of the Sun, Land of Fire”, if I have understood his Spanish. He says there are petroglyphs in the shape of spirals near his house—very old, he says.

We pass through Pueblo Matamoros, “Moslem-Killer Town”—I guess they were still remembering the good old crusade days here in the colonies when the town was founded.

The highway-- so twisty it’s called “Cat’s Quest Road”-- winds through fields of sugarcane. “This is the land of eternal springtime.” Senor Santana says.

There are no other American tourists on my bus, but at a village stop I meet four hungry, dirty and broke ones heading back to the states without a peso. The Mexican baggage-man snorts in anger when they noisily refuse to tip him.

Good luck to them and their Ugly American attitude.

...

12. Darkness and Light

12.

Light and Darkness

I find my way back to the eucalyptus trees in the park.

Good old Doctor Tree!

(I call every tree in the eucalyptus family "Doctor Tree" and whenever I need medical advice or healing I go see "Dr. Tree". It saves a lot of money and other foolishness since Dr. Tree knows me inside and out.)

Some eucalyptus seed-berries are scattered beneath the trees. I scratch a green one with my thumbnail and inhale the fragrance.

Heal. Heal. Heal.

And try to remember the great lesson of duality in this world of illusion—simplified beyond uncertainty in the last few minutes for me here in Guadalajara—--without darkness there could be no light.




On another bus going south from Guadalajara--the countryside rolls, nestling small round lakes. The old woman on the seat beside me munches something from a paper bag. All the houses we pass are deserted and their chalky red roof tiles are caving in.

Where have all the people gone?

...

11. Ghastly Worship

11.

Ghastly Worship

Two yellow melting ice cream cone steeples decorating the city cathedral attract me. Curious, I go in.

A creepy fear trip is going down inside—a Disneylandish Chamber of Horrors.

Flickering candles in red jars give an illusion of tortured movement to a waxy life-sized figure of Jesus in agony. Realistic skin tears away from His exposed knee bones while painted blood trickles freely from the ghastly wounds of a horrible beating…

An old woman in black is muttering confidentially to Him, her wrinkled face stretched close to His uncanny, glittering glass eyes.

It is something to worship all right!

Almost staggering back outside, I am blinking in the sudden sunlight, bless it, when I stumble against against a newspaper kiosk featuring the latest front page visual freak-out of the Mexican press: two big photographs side by side: a hanging dead man, garroted with a length of wire and some smiling naked women displaying their hairy sex organs.

South of the Border sex and violence culture--here it is in the daily news.

Tomasito, 2009

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10 Guadalajara

(Click on illustration for higher definition)

10.

Guadalajara:

After a one day and one night journey, my bus arrives at the Guadalajara Central Bus Station at four in the morning.

A drowsy girl sits in a dirty booth selling trinkets and cheap jewelry. There are no customers. A pile of blankets beside her moves and a little child’s face peers out.

This is a hard life for a young mother I think.

At this hour the city is very dark and very cold. I always thought Mexico was hot!

I find a cheap place to stay and then wander around the City of the Song. Lots of cars and lots of dust. I am feeling rather depressed by everything but especially by the squalor and blankness of the place. There are lots of people in the streets, but to me they seem like shadows or the inhabitants of an unpleasant dream.

There are eucalyptus trees in the dry parks. Sturdy world travelers, these trees—their healing scent reminds me of the green forests of Hawaii--that memory makes this dreary city a little more bearable.

Tomasito, 2009


...

9. MEXICO

9.

Crossing the Mexican Border:

I backpack across the long bridge into Tijuana after an early morning rain—on the heels of two brown girls.

They merrily hop mud puddles in their modish platform-soled sandals.

The sun is bright, the earth is fresh and I am happy to be out of America.

I am up against the Spanish language, but some friendly humans direct me to the local bus depot. The ticket-man accepts American money and I’m on my way south!

The name painted on the side of my bus is “Gabo Kenedy” which seems appropriate enough for the “lift-off" of my journey. Every hour or so the bus halts at a police checkpoint. Sometimes the local people are asked to unwrap and show the contents of their parcels, but I am not asked. At this time I have long hair, am clean-shaven and am wearing jeans and a neat shirt.

About one hundred miles into Mexico a customs officer comes aboard the bus and asks to see my visa. Since the customs police were sleeping when I crossed the border I didn’t bother to get one. The officer writes out a 30-day tourist visa for me with no hassle.

Soon the bus driver moves me into a front seat beside a pretty girl. She speaks no English, but my brain starts providing data from somewhere and I find, much to my surprise, that I can make some meaningful noises.

Look ma! I’m speaking Spanish!

...