Glimpse of a Mexican Village

On the central plateau of Mexico lies a dusty town of small adobe houses scattered between a new dirt road and some railroad tracks. If the volcanoes, Popacatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, are not too distant, then maybe you've arrived in Vicente Guerrero.

Don Calixto comes out to greet you, pink shirt fastened up to his chin, sombrero pushed back over his white hair, eyes watery and honored guest, friend, to our humble town. Pardon me, forgive me--I cannot express myself well--we are humble. But you are welcome. We are glad that you have come to visit with us." He pumps his right hand in the air, accentuating his oratory with a dwarfed index finger, injured in the Revolution.

If it's summer, you can't see the snow-capped peaks of the volcanoes unless it's early morning, for then the sky is not yet preparing its afternoon torrent. So it's best not to arrive after noon, unless you're wearing a sweater or two and a raincoat, and boots for the thick mud that dries to dust again over night. If you arrive in August, the pink and white plastic streamers from the July first saint's day fiesta still flicker against the sky above the hard, dusty, goat-trodden roads.

And the many children--perhaps a third of the 400 inhabitants--come out to shake your hand, curiosity and warmth in their eyes.

If it's winter, the burros move across the field, instinctively following the course to the spring in the canyon two miles away; they return with castanas full for the day's cooking and washing and drinking. The husbands, wives, sons or daughters prod them on with a stick.

Summers, the castanas and other barrels are left out to catch the rain and the burros dot the countryside only once or twice a month when the rain fails to come. Then the man of the house guides them in case they fall under the weight of their load as they come up the steep incline, slippery from a season's wetness.

If it's Sunday, the men gather to discuss the events and concerns of past and future weeks at the new school, with its thick plastic windows that flick open and closed and its concrete floor. Brought in from the state capital, it stands next to the ghost of the old adobe school. And it's here that the women, veiled and scrubbed and in their city shoes, stand in the dust outside the brick church next door with its store-bought statuary and its school benches, and wait for the padre to arrive. And it's here, also, that the two sides of town meet at the slight ridge on which the schools and church sit. So it's here that the music from the only two record players with loudspeakers meets at 6:00 a.m. and merges with the grunting, clucking and bellowing of the village animals in a cacophony of modern and rustic.

If it's the first Sunday of the month, the padre drives in with his toothless organist and holds the service whenever he arrives. The other Sundays the padre does not come, but the women and girls dress up in their veils anyway and say a few more "God willing's" than usual. The men--and maybe the rich Senora from the nearby ranch--stand about in a circle and discuss the work on the road or the unlikely prospect of raising sufficient funds to pipe water into the town. Don Leonardo is their selected leader--with his tall stature, good looks, blue eyes, eloquence, and strong stance.

For a long time they've been meaning to rebuild and enlarge the old school for use as a meeting hall and recreation center. So sometimes after the meeting the men haul adobes up the hill on backs or burros or bicycles or a broken-down car from Don Francisco's house by the railroad tracks. But usually, on their day of rest from work in the fields, they sit on the railroad tracks, talking among themselves and watching the soccer game.

The soccer team, which organized itself about eight months ago, compensates for its amateur style with flashy red and white striped jerseys. Sometimes a few boys from nearby towns straggle in to challenge Vincente Guerrero.

If many of the doors of the houses are closed, then maybe it's Tuesday or Friday and their owners have gone to the market in San Martin for the week's supplies. They begin their wait at the road at 8:30 when the bus is due, but sometimes it does not arrive until 11:00; other times they must run from their houses at 8:00, colorful shopping bags in hand, money close to breast, as they hear the honking coming down the road. In the afternoon the stuffed buses return at 3:00--or much later if it rains early and the river that needs to be crossed has risen--and disgorge the homecomers with their squawking foot-cuffed chickens, their onions, tomatoes, chiles, and their new levis and sombreros, or perhaps with just a little money in their pockets from selling some extra corn that their families did not need to eat.

But usually you meet the men heading out to the corn fields with their mules and wooden plows, and the older men and older boys, picks and shovels slung over their shoulders, setting out to work on the road. The boys or girls guide their sheep out to pasture, or bring in the hay for the animals, and Don Margorito or his neighbor moves from one maguey plant to the next, extracting the sweet agua miel that soon ferments into pulche, an alcoholic drink. Or, later, you pass the very small children, laden with Pepsi bottles and tortillas for their fathers' early lunch, scampering through the dust.

The men work hard on the road that they completed just over a year ago. Paid by the government, they are digging ditches alongside it to drain off the daily load of water that would quickly ruin it. Before, their only means of transportation was the unscheduled train. And, for many youths, this, or work on the railroad or in a factory in Mexico City, are the only alternatives to working the plots of land, which are not large enough to be subdivided among the many children.

Back in the village, the doors of the houses stand open, and as you walk past, Senora Clara comes out to finish hanging up her laundry.

"Good morning, Senora."

"Good morning, Senorita."

"It's very beautiful today, no?"

"Yes, Senorita, it is very beautiful; yes, it certainly is."

"Maybe it won't rain today?"

"Well, yes, Senorita, I think it will rain; it will rain. But later." She invites you into her house--"Come in, Senorita, come in. It's very humble here, but...You wouldn't like a taco, Senorita?" And she hands you beans enveloped in a tortilla like the ones her children are eating.

Senora Dolores kneels outside her house, scrubbing the family's soiled clothes on a rock. Her small son sits in the large basket with the laundry. Flies perch on his sombrero and face until his mother lovingly brushes them away. The clean clothes hang on the nearby maguey to dry. "How do you like our town.?" she asks. "You are not bored?"

"No. I like it very much. Here the air is fresh and the climate is beautiful. And the people are very nice."

"Yes, here it is very tranquil." Senora Dolores moved from Mexico City when she married her husband six years ago. She found it difficult to adjust to country ways at first--she had never made a tortilla or scrubbed clothes on rocks before--but "You grow accustomed." Her husband won't let her go to the city to see her family because "if I went, I would stay," and he doesn't like her to make friends among the other village women.

"Why?"

"I don't know; he just doesn't like it." So she keeps to herself. You sit with her for awhile, gazing out at the hills and the two volcanoes. And then you're on your way.

"With your permission, Senora."

"Go then, Senorita, go then, if you must."

Her mother-in-law takes you to the spring to wash. She loads her burro with plastic bags full of clothes, in case it rains early, and sets off across the fields with her nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. She re-does your wash after your inadequate job and then her clothes and yours join the bright pattern on the smooth rocks. The little children make a game of washing, and romp through their day's work. The babies are strapped to the nearest tree in home-made hammocks of blanket and rope, safe from stray snakes or spiders.

When you return, you stroll across the road to Don Efren's house. He's sitting outside looking down at his foot, which is swollen and oozing from a week-old axe cut. He's been to the doctor in Calpulalpan, so it should be all right. His daughter, thin, bright-eyed Ofelia, comes out and tells you how she's going to go in the sixth grade in San Martin and then become a nurse. Her younger sisters, giggling wildly, hurl sombreros in the air and watch the wind take them. Her mother, Dona Rosa, invites you in for coffee and sweet breads that she bought from one of the two tiny stores and that Isac and his brother, bakers and sons of a baker, made one morning. Dona Rosa tells you of her fifteen-year-old son who went to live with an aunt in another town and got a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant because "he had to sleep in the same room with her." They married and separated. "Divorce is too expensive...Children are a heavy burden. Each one brings fresh trouble. And each year there's another one. I've had thirteen." Dona Rosa is 43 and pregnant. She shows you the picture of one of her daughters, dressed up in white for her fifteenth birthday, her coming of age.

You find Don Leonardo finishing his new house. He covers the adobe with a mixture of sand and lime, making the walls white and smooth. The doors and windows are trimmed in bright blue. You ask him, as president of the town, what he thinks of the Mexican government. Smiling, he shrugs his shoulders. "Well, Senorita, Echeverria--he is not a bad man; but he does nothing for the campesino. The rich men have money and they pay him and, well--so he can afford to do nothing."

His mother, Dona Lucia, lives just up a little hill. "Good morning, Senorita, or is it good afternoon?"

"Good afternoon, Senora."

"It is hot today isn't it?"

"Yes, it is, but here in your room it is very cool."

"Yes, it is cool." She scoops up a handful of corn meal and slaps it back and forth between her hands until it is thin and perfectly round. Then she puts it on the griddle. "You wouldn't like a hot tortilla with a little salt, Senorita?"

"Thank you, Senora. Do you always make them by hand?"

"No, Senorita, no; when I have time. It takes longer, but they taste better--or so they say." Usually the women flatten the meal in a simple round pressing "machine." Little girls as young as four are accomplished tortilla makers. But the older women remember the day--about twenty years ago--when there were no "machines," and can still do it by hand. Dona Lucia makes tortillas every three days, but younger women with growing families often make them every morning. "And how do you like being here with us, Senorita?"

"I like it very much, Senora."

"But it is very far from your home, no? How do your parents let you come so far by your-self? And our town is very small--there is not much to do..."

Guadalupe Cruz is the oldest grandmother in town. She is Don Leonardo's grandmother. There has never been a happy moment in her life. Her husband died fifteen years ago, and her son died eight months ago. She doesn't get on with her daughter-in-law next door. She invites you into her dark room and hands you some tiny nuts to eat. A grandchild or great-grandchild swings in a makeshift hammock attached to the ceiling over the bed.

"And how are you, Senora?"

The tears begin to well up in her eyes and she dabs them with a cloth. "Life is suffering. The Lord has given us a heavy cross to bear." The child begins to cry, and as she attempts to swing it quiet, you take your leave.

Inevitably, you run into Hortensia. Although she has been in the town only eight days, her presence is well-established. She springs forward in her long black combat boots when she sees you and grasps you by the arm. "Where have you been? You have not come to visit us," she reproaches. She guides you to where the men are drinking in the late afternoon sun. Don Calixto toasts your arrival.

"Senorita, friends, companions--we are all friends here, are we not? (grunts of assent from the gathering)--I would like to welcome the Senorita to our humble town. Senorita: we are humble here, but we are glad that you have come to visit with us. Mario--something to drink for the Senorita." Since you do not want beer, the boy Selso runs to the store to get you a soft drink.

A small blackboard, noted with IOU's, hangs on one wall of the store. If the old Senora is behind the counter alone, and if you buy a few things, then she will have to go out and find the younger Senora, her daughter-in-law, who will go and get her young child, or her husband, if he is home from the fields, to come and figure the sum. Otherwise the Senora adds one more note to the board.

Hortensia invites you to her room. She rummages through the clothes that hang from a hook in the center of the room, finds David's uniform, and takes his medals from the pockets, proudly holding them up for you. He fought in the Revolution under Zapata, Villa, and Carranza--all three--"for the experience. He wanted to try out everything." And he has first-hand accounts that contradict the history books. But David does not have papers to prove that he is a veteran of the Revolution, and so the government will not grant him a pension. "People give us things. But truly it is a hard way to live, very hard."

David enters the room. He is soft-spoken, and his tongue moves through the hole left by two missing teeth on the bottom row. "What tales have you been telling the Senorita?"

"Is it not true, David, that you worked in the United States?"

"Yes. I worked in California, in...Idaho for seven years." David was a migrant worker during World War II. He remembers the need for labor and idealizes the working conditions in the United States. He wants to go back and work. He remembers some broken English. Hortensia will not let him: "It is better that we are here; I cannot learn English--they beat me in school for it."

Don Calixto stumbles into the room, two friends close behind. "Senorita, friends, I am 73 years old. And do you know how many grandchildren I have? 73. You know: you have one woman in one place, another in another."

Suddenly a bell starts ringing. The boy Oton, his plastic-covered sombrero pulled down over his eyes as usual, has run up the ladder that leans against the church wall to the roof and is swinging the bell back and forth. A three-day-old child has died. It was unable to urinate and the doctor could not be summoned from across the fields, over the bumpy road, fast enough.

You walk down to the house. The tiny room is lit only by a candle. The white, intricately carved coffin, carried on the roof of the bus from San Martin, lies beneath the small altar with its cross and holy pictures. Someone opens it, and some children are carried up to kiss the dead child. Then the mother comes and sobs, "My child, my most loved one, why has He taken you from me?" And the old great-grandmother, Guadalupe Cruz, also comes to weep over it.

Outside, the children are prepared with fresh flowers. They file up the road to the church, singing, four of them bearing the little coffin on a crude wooden frame. Inside, Don Efren plays a twangy banjo and Senora Gudelia and Senora Rosa sing an endless song in nasal harmony while two cousins perform a funereal ritual before the coffin. The other children play for their mothers' attention, or titter, or hold back their tears.

Then the coffin is borne through the mud and past the grunting of the pigs up to a plateau where the graveyard lies above the dark hills and valleys. The grave was dug the day before among the similar small graves which comprise more than half of the graveyard. Don Faustino lowers the casket, pours holy water over it in the shape of the cross, covers it with planks and quickly, with the help of other men, shovels the dirt back in.

On the way down the hill, you hear Hortensia saying, "But weddings are much sadder; I cry much more at weddings." The other women swallow their grins nervously. Don Imanuel walks up beside you. "Senorita, you should marry. Enjoy life before you die. For we all have to die sometime, you know." In the town, the brothers are dedicating a song over the loud-speaker to the mother of the dead child: "For Dona Rufina, in her grief."

It's sunset and the boys, covered in plastic, have long ago returned from the fields with their animals. Now, in their miniature adults' clothes, they are playing ball beside the school. The little girls with their dusty legs, giggle playing children's games that you cannot understand, and, if you ask them what they are doing, gaze up at you and say, "we're just here." You ask the youth Felipe, who is leaning against the church wall with his friends, watching the game, if he likes it here in the town. He looks at you shyly, perplexed. "Well, of course I like it: it is my town."

Sage Sohier spent two months in Vicente Guerrero working for the American Friends Service Committee.