Four Postcards from Mexico - Postal Segundo

The comida was to be held at hacienda Los Vientos at the other end of the state, and so the following day, at mid morning we set off to cross the expansive, soil rich, plains of Puebla, lush and green under the clear skies and bright blue celestial dome of the alti-plano.

It was almost a three hour drive through a vast expanse of tree-dotted plains ringed by mountains in the distance and yielding their crops under a bright clear sky. As warm air blew through the pik op we chatted idly about this and that over noise of the engine and the buffeting wind. Driving through a small town, we passed a roadside display of colorfully painted clay pigs. Somewhat beyond that we passed a small rocky hill-mound on top of which stood a white-washed votive niche and a cross. "Have you read Diarios de Motocicleta?," I asked Lara. No, she hadn't. I went on to tell her of a story related by el Ché

"....so he and Alberto were riding the bus through the high mountain villages of Bolivia, when they came to the crest of the mountain at the top of which stood a big pile of rocks and a white-washed cross. Half the Indians in the bus cross themselves, the other half spit. ..."

Lara gave me a look.

"...pues sí, eso también se preguntaba Che-- what gives? Well, as it turns out, before the Spanish came, the Indians had this custom of taking a stone with them whenever they climbed or crossed a mountain. When they got to the top, they'd cast down their stone and their cares and leave them behind. The friars forbade the practice and erected crosses over the piles of stones. So now, some Indians cross themselves while others, for want of a stone, spit."

Stefo and Lara let out gleeful, laughs. Lara loved the idea and said she was going to put up a pile of stones on the ridge above San Pablo.

Arriving at last, we turned into the confines of Los Vientos one could immediately see that the hacienda had seen better days. The huge safe, accountant’s desks and barred cashier’s window in the hacienda office, now preserved as a museum display, indisputably pointed to a villainous pre-revolutionary past. Thanks to the propaganda of a faction and the visual rhetoric of Mexican muralists haciendas have been tagged with images of haughty Spaniards in the saddle sneering at despairing Indians hunched over under their masters’ spurs. Such propaganda was false because it blamed the facade not the realities.

During the 19th century some of the great industrial haciendas were simply corporate enterprises dressed up as grand manors. They were oppressive and destructive of community life not because they were “haciendas” but because they were corporations. They did not draw from and sustain but simply leeched and suppressed...and often on a gigantic scale.

By the looks of it, Los Vientos had not been one of these 300,000 acre mega haciendas; but it had been large. Now, a little short of 100 years later, Los Vientos is a profitable but much smaller broccoli farm hiring a fraction of the workers it used to have on the payroll.

Still, remnants of a greater past glory remained, among them, a handsome chapel all but conjoined to century tall tree that shaded the resting places of gentry past.

Miguel, the haciendas' tall, slim, middle-aged scion greeted us at the door with an air of fatigued remove. He led us up to the first floor balcony where the other hacendados were already seated around a table drinking “escoch,” rum, beer, or sherry and enjoying hors d’oeuvres of chips, cheese cubes, and olives. They were dressed in waist jackets, open collar shirts, slacks or jeans and dusty boots. Despite the grandness of the structure, the tenor of the affair was much more in the manner of la pequeña burguesía than the aristocratic pretensions of the Limantours, Escandons and Creels and other great names of the pre-revolutionary Porfirian oligarchy.

As I sipped my jerez, Miguel’s mother, a neatly dressed, somewhat bony woman in her 6o’s sat down next to me. Some moments later, she lifted up the hors d’oeuvre platter. Se le ofrece un queso? she asked as she held the cheese in front of me. “Oh, no, no thank you very much.” I replied. “Ah,” she said, looking suddenly chagrined. Several minutes passed, and she again lifted the platter and held it before me. “Por favor, no se le ofrece un antojito?” I chuckled politely, “You’re very kind, but no, thank you very much.” “Ah,” she said, looking even more chagrined than before, as she put the platter down in what was almost a gesture of despair.

I figuratively slapped my forehead and berated my stupidity. Too damn long in Gringolandia. In Mexico, in just the reverse of the United States, it is an insult to refuse any offer of hospitality. I might as well have told the poor woman that her cheese wasn’t good enough for me. I back-pedalled as best I could. Mumbling something about “en dieta...” I reached for a slice of jicama and thanked her for her offer. She eyed me suspiciously.

As we mingled around before dinner, my cousin remarked that Doña Rosaura, had asked her why I spoke so “strangely”... “What does she mean strange.? ... Never mind; did you explain? ” “Yes.” “What did she say?” “Pues , ‘Ah’.” Yes, I had been living among the savages up north. That explained everything.

When just about everyone had arrived, we proceeded to the dining room - a small rectangular room adjoining the kitchen, furnished with an assortment of chairs, stained-wood sideboards from the turn of the 19th century with collected bright ceramics and plastic nic-nacs from the 20th (including a Donald Duck), miscellaneous prints of imaginary squires hunting equally imaginary fawns and the obligatory Last Supper by Da Vinci hanging directly under a strip of flourescent lighting.

As Miguel and one of the mozos brought us our courses, the other hacendados talked about drainage ditches and milking cows, the rain this year and similar matters of concern and interest to the agricultural set. Doña Rosaura discretely eyed me from her end of the table. As it turns out, I was hungry and the food was nothing I didn’t like anyways even if, as my cousin later said, she must have gotten the mole sauce out of a can.

En familia Mexicans will eat mole or beans by tearing off a piece of tortilla, and rolling it into a scooping spoon. It is not considered gauche but rather a sign that you've enjoyed your food. As I scooped Doña Rosaura palpably relaxed.

When they brought the coffee and desert, the talk turned from drainage ditches and cows to the proposed association, the advantages of which were explained by Gustavo Ovando, the proponent of the idea; but not before first intoning obligatory and florid encomiums of gratitude to our hosts for the magnificent “reception,” and “delectable” food, after which Gustavo went on to note and commend everyone for anything he could think of -- all not without light jokes, judiciously interspersed amidst the laudations.

Such after-dinner effusions are universal. But in Mexico, they retain an antique flavor that could come straight out of the Iliad or a scene from Henry V, where gentle provenance and valiant deeds are duly remembered and praised in turn. Some of my Spanish acquaintances tell me that they get a kick out of Latin American archaicisms and regret the clipped, functionality of modern Iberian Spanish. In this respect Mexico is still in its own time warp. As I sat there enjoying the roll of rococco flattery that spilled from our speaker’s lips, my cousin leaned over and whispered, “He was in la politica.” “Se nota” I said


After the meeting broke up, we all milled about chatting and wandering through the restored rooms which did recapture the ambience of the waning days of the Porfirian epoch.

At length some of us wandered over the dusty expanse that had, in those bygone days been a vast pond, toward the chapel. The streamers hanging on the outside, and some flowers on the altar inside, indicated that it was still in at least occasional use.

There was a large, statute stood in the central niche behind the altar. Someone remarked that Doña Rosaura had said it was Michael the Archangel. “No, I don’t think so,” I said, “look at the dragon at his feet. It’s obviously St. George.” The person I was speaking to, ran over to Doña Rosaura and said, “Dice él que es San Jorge.” “Eh?” She came over. “You say it’s St. George?” “Yes, look at the dragon.” A moment of doubt flickered in her eyes, before she rejoined emphatically. “Pero como? Look at the wings...” Q.E.D. “But what about the dragon?” I said feebly. Another archangel blew his trumpet. “That’s not a dragon! It’s the devil.” The matter settled, she gave me a broad smile and walked away.

Eventually, before taking our departures, we all drove over to a hillock to get a commanding view of the valley. A large rustic wooden cross hung with paper streamers stood almost hidden amidst the grey pines. As I wondered if I should spit, Gustavo came over, lead me to the edge of the hill and explained that by those mountains at the far end of the valley, they had recently uncovered the remains of an Olmec metropolis of an estimated 100,000 souls. 500 BC “The Olmecs, this far west?" I asked.” “Yes, imaginese...” Mexico hoards it secrets and there is so much we still don’t know about the time-aliens that once lived here.

As we milled about, one Luis B, who had arrived late, took me aside and asked if Lara was of the same Manrique-Villas as were connected to the Villa-Carrascos. “Yes, yes...” His eyes brightened up and he ran over to Lara to announce that his "grandfather era pistolero for Don Maximiliano!"

©WCG, 2008

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