20,000 Miles South

by Helen Schreider

  In the church across from the market candles flickered on dark figures in front of a soot-grimed statue of Mary. Helen and I stood quietly and listened to the murmur of voices in prayer—until two tourists entered talking loudly and all eyes turned, expressionless, yet revealing.

  Afternoons, when the cathedral bells pealed and the city returned to work, we sat in the parks near the fountains. It was a tranquil period, a time to assimilate the sights and sounds and the emotions of the day before the evening commenced with its new set of associations. Then, when the swift twilight turned to night, we strolled through the streets again, stepping around the outstretched feet of people sitting in doorways, past a man with puppies for sale, or a vendor of sugar-coated peanuts who swore kindly at the children who climbed on his cart. Paper cones of pink cotton candy echoed the neon of a Carta Blanca beer sign and a charcoal fire blazed where popcorn roasted—the dancing flames casting weird shadows on the face of the old crone who tended them. In the lee of buildings serape-enveloped shapeless figures huddled to sleep till morning, and in the dimly lit parks lovers made a single form.

  Each night we returned to our room mentally exhausted, our emotions as mixed as the themes of Orozco’s murals. The gay music of the mariachi band on the corner drowned the other sounds from the street but some still remained in my mind—the cry of a child, the whisper of a beggar, the scraping of the cripple who crawled on his hands and knees. When the musicians put away their instruments and the voices from the cafés dimmed, only the whistle of the watchman was heard as he signaled to his companion on the next street.

  At the end of three weeks in Mexico our turtle was living up to her name—we had covered only eleven hundred miles. But our progress was not measured in miles nor our travels in days—at least not at that time. Instead we geared our itinerary to whimsy, our time schedule to fancy, and when the little town of Guanajuato was described as seldom visited, as well as picturesque, we plotted our course to Mexico City to include it.

  Barely half of the less than two hundred miles from Guadalajara to Guanajuato were behind us when we reached another small town, San Juan de los Lagos. Crowds thronged the narrow streets, and at first I thought it was merely the local market day when the people from the surrounding countryside came for their weekly barter and banter session. At the outskirts on the other side of town, however, there was something that indicated it was much more than that. A stockily built youth was being led, blindfolded, down the road, his head crowned with thorns and his bare chest studded with cactus spines. Then a young woman, black dress gray with dust, inched forward on her knees while an older man laid blankets on the ground in front of her. Makeshift camps lined the highway, livestock stood listlessly, and people sat shaded from the sun by blankets or under the bellies of donkeys.

  Farther on a solid mass of people blackened a field of at least two hundred acres, and through the pall of dust we saw the high feather headdresses of an Indian ceremonial dance. Parking the jeep, we uneasily worked our way through the crowd toward the center of the field, uncertain as to how the mob might react to strangers. The hard-baked earth burned through our shoes and the dust from thousands of feet filled our nostrils. Suddenly the crowd surged, and then parted, like the Red Sea before Moses, as two dozen Indians danced through the breach. Wooden spears clattered against wooden swords, pink and blue and brown feathers waved over silver papier-mâché helmets as spangle-caped Aztecs fought breast-plated Spaniards in a mock battle of the conquest. Behind them slowly walked a white-robed priest leading a medieval procession; drooping in the still, dry air, brilliant banners proclaimed the annual pilgrimage of San Juan de los Lagos. Women fell to their knees, faces wet with tears and caked with dirt, men crossed themselves as a glass-enclosed image of the Virgin of Guadalupe was carried past, followed by scores of young girls in once white confirmation gowns. And then came a cross section of Mexico—black-suited businessmen with a week’s growth of beard, aristocratic women under veils of lace, blank-faced mountain Indians wearing short skirts over their knee-length pants, and bringing up the rear were the old, riding burros or carried on litters. All were barefoot, and all sang the same slow monotonous chant.

  The pseudo Aztecs and Spaniards continued the battle in a queer shuffling dance—two steps forward and one back—whirling to the plink of tiny stringed instruments. Helen and I were carried along with the crowd as it rolled like a wave on either side of the procession. And then, as if at a prearranged signal, the mock battle ended, the procession broke up, and the crowd dispersed. It was time for the afternoon siesta. Soon smoke from hundreds of fires curled upward into the cloudless sky, and people sat in groups taking pieces of meat from blackened pots and deftly rolling beans into tortillas with one hand as easily as a cowboy rolls a cigarette. Over each group, like a Lions Club convention, flew the hometown flag. Some of the people had walked as far as a hundred and fifty miles.

  The sight of the meat and beans reminded us that we had eaten nothing since early morning. Making our way back to the jeep, some two miles away, we continued toward Guanajuato, keeping our eyes open for a likely-looking wayside restaurant. Our daily traveling habits had changed somewhat. Instead of preparing three meals ourselves we had become accustomed to stopping for our large meal in the middle of the day and having simply coffee, fruit, and sweet rolls in the morning and at night. The change was partly due to the fact that Dinah’s supply of canned dog food was running low and we had to stop every day at the market to buy her fresh meat. At the same time we filled our wicker basket with mangoes, oranges or bananas. But, more than that, we enjoyed stopping in the small eating places where we could practice our Spanish.

  That afternoon it was too late for the meal of the day when we reached a nondescript restaurant on the outskirts of a tiny village. Pink geraniums grew in painted oilcans and a few chickens pecked hungrily in the doorway. As we entered I whispered hopefully to Helen, “With our dusty clothes and sunburned skins maybe we can pass for a couple of pilgrims today.”

  In the corner was the usual basin and a huge bar of blue soap. After washing we walked, hands dripping, to a table. The waiter, who needed a shave even more than I, quickly flipped his soiled apron to the other not so soiled side, grabbed a fly spray, and filled the air with DDT. Then, after rotating the tablecloth so that the soup stains were away from us, he said, “Now, what may I serve our American guests?”

  Though we were disappointed at having been recognized, our appetites were undiminished. I pondered. Shall we have eggs à la mexicana or steak à la mexicana? Both were fried with onions and tomatoes, which would take the edge from our desire for fresh salads. Then I remembered the strips of meat in the market and the chickens in the doorway. I decided eggs might be the wiser choice.

  “Huevos à la mexicana,” I ordered.

  Helen nudged me. “Ask him not to make them too spicy,” she said. We had vivid memories of previous occasions when all the cold drinks in Mexico couldn’t cool our fiery mouths.

  “No muy caliente” I instructed.

  The waiter hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and headed for the kitchen. There was a surprised protest when he gave our order to the cook, and a woman who obviously enjoyed her work squeezed into the doorway. They both studied us, looked at each other, and then shrugged their shoulders simultaneously. I laughed.

  “They’re probably thinking, Crazy Americans, they don’t like chili peppers.”

  The aroma of frying onions floated from the kitchen, making us hungrier by the minute. We waited. Other customers entered, ordered, and were served, and still we waited. After a half hour the waiter placed two plates in front of us. At the first bite I put down my fork.

  “These eggs are cold,” I said. “And they’re just as spicy as ever.”

  The waiter looked confused. “But that’s what you ordered. ‘Not very hot,’ you said.”

  At the next table a man smiled and broke into the conversation. “If you will permit me,” he said. “In Spani
sh caliente refers only to temperature. We say picante when we mean spicy.”

  Yes, we enjoyed eating in wayside places. And the Spanish we learned was seldom forgotten.

  From the restaurant it was only a short distance to Guanajuato, but since it was almost evening we decided to save a night’s lodging and made camp on a side road a few miles from town. After a none too restful night during which Dinah and a company of overly inquisitive burros joined in a symphony of barks and brays, we drove down the narrow main street of the city that was the birthplace of Mexico’s war for independence. Guanajuato was a bowl of sun-drenched adobe cliff dwellings, of red tile roofs that made modernistic patterns of intersecting angles, of squares of flamboyant colors where clothes hung drying amid green cactus gardens.

  A hotel had been recommended, but one look at the imposing castle-like structure that dominated the whole hill on one side of town was enough to convince us that our pocket-books would flatten less quickly at almost any other place. We decided upon a more modest hostelry overlooking the tiny triangular main plaza at the bottom of the bowl. The only drawback, after we found that Dinah would also be a welcome guest, was that there appeared to be no quarters for La Tortuga, and news of her arrival had already spread in the few minutes she was parked in front of the hotel. When I asked about parking space, the manager was crushed.

  “But, señor, this is a modern hotel. We have fine parking facilities.”

  Thus reassured, we checked in, and the accommodating manager sent a boy named Pedro to direct me to the entrance of the parking area.

  “It’s a bit difficult to find,” he explained.

  It was. The boy led me down the main artery, a zigzagging one-way street, until I was sure I was on my way out of town. All the while he shouted, “This way, this way,” and people popped their heads from windows, as excited as if the circus had arrived and the elephants were being paraded through the streets. We made a sharp right turn and headed in a different direction down an even narrower one-way street while burros scrambled up onto the high sidewalks. I was just about to tell the boy that the “fine parking facilities” were much too far away when he stopped, breathless, in front of the entrance to a courtyard.

  “Here we are,” he said triumphantly.

  I was thoroughly confused. “Where’s here?” I asked.

  “Why, this is the back of the hotel,” he answered brightly. By that time half the town was in the undersized alley giving conflicting directions as to the best way to maneuver La Tortuga into position. I looked at the doorway. It was just wide enough for a string of horses to pass through single file, which I presume was what it was intended for. But some ingenious stonemason had used his head. Three feet from the ground, about fender height, he had chiseled away the sides of the entrance so that it looked like a cartoon I had seen of a doorway designed for a bowlegged cowboy. It would have been all right if he had also cut a place for a ten-gallon hat since La Tortuga’s projections, the gas can racks, were higher than the fenders of a car. While everyone chattered at once I unholstered my tape measure. By removing the padlocks on the racks we were just able to squeeze through. With a relieved sigh I stabled La Tortuga in one corner of the courtyard. As Pedro helped me with the bags he said winsomely, “I’m a guide too.” We normally did not employ guides, preferring to wander by ourselves, but we were taken with ten-year-old Pedro from the first. When he showed up the next morning, his face scrubbed so it shone and his hair slicked back like a black skullcap, we hired him.

  With him we climbed to the top of the town along cobbled streets that rushed precipitously toward the valley, past fountains where women drew water in earthenware jugs like Biblical Rebeccas, and over the old stone road where burros once trod carrying the silver that built Guanajuato. Once second in importance only to Mexico City, Guanajuato faded into relative obscurity with the closing of many of the mines. Now it maintains its colonial atmosphere with pride, resisting the intrusion of contemporary architecture. Only a few of the streets were wide enough for vehicles; built for burros and foot traffic, they would always remain so.

  Here, on September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo gave the historic signal, El Grito de Dolores (The Cry of Pain), that started Mexico’s revolution against Spain. The Alhóndiga, a large rectangular structure in the center of town, first a granary, then a fortress, later a prison, and now a museum, played an important part in Mexico’s war for independence. Pedro related the story of the town’s hero, a miner named Pipila, who, by carrying a flagstone on his back as a shield, set fire to one of the doors, making it possible for the revolutionists to take the building. Later, when the royalist forces recaptured it, the heads of Hidalgo and three other insurgents were hung from the iron hooks on the four corners of the building.

  The thing we liked best about Pedro was his unfailing good humor. Each morning he appeared at the hotel while we were having our Mexican breakfast of sweet rolls and a spoonful of coffee essence diluted with hot milk and told us what he had planned for the day. On our last day in Guanajuato he was a little late. With an impish grin he said, “I have saved the best for last.”

  I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind. He had already shown us his favorite streets, the Street of the Leaping Monkeys, the Street of the Croaking Frogs, and the Street of the Kiss, an alley where the balconies on either side almost touched so that lovers were purported to kiss across the gap. And we had seen all the public buildings, the parks, and the dam at one end of town. “What is this wonderful sight that you have saved until last?” I asked.

  “Today I will take you to the cemetery.”

  Helen and I were not disposed toward cemeteries, but at Pedro’s insistence that this was a very special cemetery we agreed to go along. When we reached the iron gateway in a high walled area Pedro didn’t hesitate but, leading us through the crosses and headstones, he headed for a large concrete crypt where he pointed to a tiny spiral stairway that led down into a black hole. “We go down there,” he said mysteriously.

  Helen must have recognized the gleam in Pedro’s eyes as being the same as we had seen in the eyes of a wrinkled old man who had shown us the catacombs under another cemetery four years earlier. Like Pedro, he, too, had had a sense of humor. With only a flickering candle for light, he had led us through a dank tunnel, all the while mumbling incessantly about the founding of the church in the sixteenth century. At the end of the tunnel he ceremoniously raised the cover of a box and invited us to look. Glaring from within, as if angry at us for disturbing its rest, was a horrifying mummy. “This,” the old man said, “is the founder of our church.” We declined his invitation to see other treasures of the church and climbed out of the dark cavern as fast as we could. But the old fellow wasn’t through with us. He insisted that we see the choir loft, a dimly lit balcony over the altar. There we became so engrossed in a beautiful hand-illuminated choir book that we momentarily forgot about the old man. Suddenly he cackled, “Look, there’s our founder.” Helen and I both dropped the book expecting to see the hideous mummy come clattering across the floor trailing its moldy wrappings behind. The knarled old fellow laughed insanely and pointed to a lifelike wooden image sitting in a carved choir chair against the wall.

  Remembering all this, Helen said, “I think I’ll wait here, thank you.”

  This pleased Pedro immensely. “You’re scared,” he said positively.

  I was of the same mind as Helen, but after that I had no choice but to follow him down into the pit. There at the end of a long corridor, under feeble shafts of light from above, was something that rivaled Picasso’s Guernica for its horror. Standing upright against the wall, their contorted faces grimaced as if in pain, were several dozen cadavers. Brown parchment-like skin covered the bodies, black stringy hair hung in wisps, lipless mouths disclosed yellowed and crumbling teeth, and vacant eye sockets stared into the gloom.

  Pedro explained. All the bodies were natural mummies, preserved by the strange chemical composition of the ground. Because the c
emetery was small, burial space was rented for a limited time only, and when that time was up the bodies were exhumed. Those that had mummified were stood at one end of the catacombs while the bones of those that had not were stacked neatly at the other end—leg bones, arm bones, skulls, etc., all in separate orderly piles.

  “Aren’t you just a little scared?” I asked Pedro.

  “Course not,” he scoffed. “They can’t hurt me.” But I noticed that he was the first to climb the spiral stairway to the flower-scented cemetery above.

  Mexico City’s wide Paseo de la Reforma was jammed with traffic moving at race-track speed. Driving in the capital was difficult at best, but in La Tortuga it was nigh impossible as demented drivers did a double take at our strange boatlike apparition. On the narrower streets La Tortuga’s bow projected so far in front that we were halfway across the intersections before we could see if all was clear. After being trapped in a traffic circle and spending ten minutes on the merry-go-round before we could duck out, we decided to leave the jeep at the Willys agency and went on foot in search of a hotel. But the life of a pedestrian in Mexico City was not without hazard either. “He who hesitates is lost” was most appropriate and our motto became Stop, Look, and Run.

  The hotel where we had stayed before was under new management. They would not permit dogs. After trying several other hotels and meeting several other unreasonable managers, we resorted to a taxi. The driver knew of a place that met all of our needs—the manager liked dogs, there was a nearby park where we could walk Dinah, the rates were reasonable, and it was near the center of town. With that Shangri-La in mind, we asked him to take us there.