Day 14. Mexico 2022. Trek to the mountains

For my last excursion I joined a small group of three ladies to go to the mountains to the north of the city, partly because they are challenging and beautiful, and partly because nestled way up there is the small town of San Pablo Guelatao, where one of Mexico’s most distinguished political leaders, Benito Juárez was born. I was also curious to take a drive-by view of the geology. These mountains belong to the Nudo Mixteco, the mountain massif that forms where the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental meet, and where all rules of mountain belt structure are violated by an incredible tangle of deformation structures and events. As far as geology is concerned, I can confirm that the (Paleozoic?) sedimentary rocks are strongly deformed and sheared, and that here and there appear to be blocks of metamorphic and igneous intrusive rocks. I pity the geologists who have to work in this area.

Breakfast was at a small family restaurant with an amazing view of a deep canyon and the mountains behind. I had an atole con pinole, a warm cornmeal drink topped with roasted corn powder with cinnamon and achiote, and an amarillo con hongos, a stew of chile guajillo with wild mushrooms. The breakfast of champions! The lady of the house cooked with a firewood homemade oven that included a huge comal de barro, a hot plate, and a built-in ceramic pot where water was kept hot, all heated by the horizontal flue that ran under them. I need to build myself something like this!

San Pablo Guelatao is a community of the municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez, which is one of 400 municipalities (out of 500 in the whole state) that has the right to govern itself by its ancient traditions, so called usos y costumbres. I am not sure I completely understand how they mesh with Federal and State laws, but at the local level all decisions and ordinances are taken by townhall discussions, meetings of the elders, or meetings of the mothers. The municipal authorities are selected by the townhall, and are normally stepped up through a series of public offices of growing responsibility. For example, before being eligible for the role of President of the community, the person first has to have served as steward of parks, of garbage collection and disposal, of water supply, of schools, of community treasure, and so on. Each position, including that of President is held only for one and a half years, and then there is always a deputy who steps in for the rest of the one and a half years (kind of training on the job). Folks pay for water, garbage disposal, and other services to support the system, and in the case of Guelatao collect a fee from tourists that goes toward embellishment and maintenance of the community. The system seems to work pretty well, because the schools look modern and well maintained, the community is clean and attractive, and the people seem happy and prosperous.

An interesting costumbre is the way in which “marriages” are handled. Here couples come together at a very early age, maybe 16 for the boy and 14 for the girl, which is below the Federal legal age. So the tradition is for the boy to “steal” the girl and take her to his parents house. The following morning the boy’s father has to go to the girl’s parents, inform them that the two have spent the night together, and asking them for a meeting of the families in the next couple of days so peace can be restored. The girl’s parents are of course very miffed at her absence, but presented with a done deal accept the suggestion, and over the next couple of days each family is busy contacting relatives, and the godfathers of the kids (baptism, confirmation) so they can all come together. On the appointed day and time the boys family comes, carrying a very modest present of bread and mezcal, and contritely asking for La Contentada. The godfathers praise the boy to the best of his ability, to which the godfathers of the girl respond that she is a good girl but knows very little about being a woman. The father of the girl then charges the parents of the boy with teaching her what she needs to know, and with this they express themselves satisfied. The father then asks for their blessing to a marriage, a date is fixed (she is 14, so they will have to wait 4 years for the civil marriage), and from then on they are considered culturally married. Then, it turns out, the parents of the boy brought several baskets of food and cartons of beer (the godfathers provide these), the mother of the boy happens to have at hand enough sandwiches and appetizers to feed an army, and La Contentada extends into the wee hours of the morning.

Benito Juárez is an almost mythical history in Mexican history. He is the equivalent to Abraham Lincoln in the US, in that he kept the country together when a foreign prince was installed by a faction that believed that Mexico was incapable of self-governance (a move supported by Napoleon III). I will let you Google his biography, but will mention here the curious factoid that he was a very short man, at 1.37 m or 4 foot 6 inches, and that in Mexico he is the personification of hard work, drive to succeed, and an iron character. There is an expression “me hace lo que el viento a Juárez” to express that a reversal leaves you unperturbed, just like Benito Juárez would be unperturbed by the wind. I was curious to find out the origin of this expression, so for the last four or five days I have been asking the locals. One of the leading suggestions was that, because he was so short, the wind blew well over his head. The other, however, acknowledges that he was a very dapper man, and that in no photograph, painting, or statue he appears perfectly combed, without a strand of wind being ruffled by the wind.

One of the attractions of Guelatao is a pond, high up on the mountains, formed by a high discharge spring. It has been beautifully landscaped, and on one end has a small convention center where there is an exhibit about maize. What makes it very interesting is that they have a few plants of teozintle, the wild ancestor of all common maize, which was domesticated in Mesoamerica 5,000 years ago. I always imagined it as a grass with the heavy seed pod, but I was wrong. It has the look of a scrawny corn stalk, but the cob is not much larger than a marker. It has only a half dozen grains, but they are attached to a cob rather than a stalk, so they could be plucked and harvested. The early Mesoamericans would then carry the best cobs with them, pluck the grains (and drop some on disturbed ground) and come back the following season just to find that a new bunch of teozintle had grown. Again they picked up the best cobs and the process was repeated again and again to give us the current amazing variety of corn varieties. Truly, and gift of the gods to the world.

Ixtlán de Juárez is also trying to lure tourism, and a year ago they finished building one of those skywalks, where you set out on a steel structure with plexiglass bottom that soars over the cliff, so you are in a sense “flying” on open space. It was cool but very scary.

We ended with a nature walk and descent to a cave where a small stream entered a limestone cave. I was reminded of my youth adventures as a spelunker, but had to admit that the old knees are no longer supple and strong enough to go boulder hopping into the dark unknown.

For dinner I had a delicious mountain trout cooked to perfection in aluminum foil with epazote, onion, tomato, and wild mushrooms.