The Cultural Layers of Mexico by Robert Richter
I remember the first time I ever
crossed the border into Mexico, forty-two years ago now. When friends and relatives found out I was
going, and hitchhiking and riding trains to boot, they would ask, “Is it safe?”
Is it safe? Is it safe?
That’s all I’d get. Banditos, you
know and ambushers and killers. Won’t
you be killed?
And who would ever know? In those days, when you crossed the border,
you literally disappeared off the map.
Telephones existed in major cities where shabby offices hid booths with
paper-thin walls, the erratic static navigated by an operator trying to connect
you to a larger world she’d never spoken to before. In emergencies, you might find a place to
call; the phone might even work. But who would you call, and for what? Stranded, you found what transport you could
and took your chances. Sick or injured?
Limejuice and prayer were the recommended remedies. Whatever your situation, you were on your own
when you traveled, relying on companions—if you had them—or the local people
around you.
I first traveled alone in Mexico
during the cultural turmoil of the Vietnam Era, and I quickly began to realize
that the official American version of what Mexico is like as a nation and a
people was just as distorted as the official version of that disastrous Asian
war. I was safe there, given shelter,
taught lessons, helped on my way. Now,
forty-two years of world progress later, when I tell friends and relatives that
I’m crossing the border into Mexico again, they ask, “Is it safe? Is it safe?
The Drug War, you know. You could
be killed.” Unfortunately, over these
four decades, American conceptions of Mexico’s government, culture, and
history, including the so-called Drug War at present, remain a politicized
distortion in American schools, the American media, and the American psyche, no
matter how good communication systems are in contemporary times.
I return to Mexico each year, in
part, to remind myself that day-to-day humanity in my own local community and
way of life is the same human nature to be found in rural and small town
Mexico: love of family, devotion to a
higher power, communal interaction for the betterment and pleasure of all. In short, decent human beings, working out
their lots in life, exist everywhere in the cultural milieu they were born
into. I also keep returning to the
Pacific coast of Mexico in search of the day-to-day village life that brought
me to that understanding and because, well, I just like the life style
there. It reminds me of earlier times
when my own American culture was more free spirited, less cynical, more
informal in business, and less restrictive in personal freedoms. But mostly, I return to Mexico because the
history and culture fascinate me with their blend of Spanish colonial and
indigenous character. There is still
magic in Mexico, space where different realities exist side by side, and places
where the passage of time means nothing.
During
my forty years of travel and sojourns in western Mexico, standards of living,
communications, and cultural attitudes have changed, of course. Improved, some would say, but that’s a
value-loaded word. Change, yes.
Modernization, yes. Improvement
is a word loaded with cultural prejudice. Regrettably, those older ways of life
in sleepy fishermen’s villages, tucked away in tropic coves and lost in history
and time, are now being destroyed in the contemporary hurricane of the
corporate tourist industry.
Because
I am also a historian and a writer with a scholarly as well as personal
relationship to Mexico past and present, the country’s history and character
imbue my work, whether I write fiction or historical narrative, and that work
is always composed of personal story telling and sound historical
investigation, intended to inform and entertain readers about some real and
fascinating aspect of Mexico’s rich culture. An example subject would be the Huichol
and Cora Indians who live in the high sierras of northwestern Mexico where the
states of Durango, Jalisco, and Nayarit meet.
So isolated and independent, their ancestors were never conquered by the
Spanish colonists. Their animistic
religious lives, devoted to the worship of the deer, the corn plant, and the
peyote cactus, have never been dominated by Christianity. Their language is unwritten, its
orthographies created by modern anthropologists who have studied their
culture. And Huichol art has come to be
known worldwide for its uniqueness in form, style, and subject. Merely google “Huichol Art,” to verify this
point.
The Huichol culture has come under
stress of onslaught by modern times.
Alcoholism and capitalism work like water seeping into the cracks of a
granite mountain to freeze and thaw, expand and contract, until this particular
cultural mountain erodes way to boulders, then to gravel, then sand. But capitalism also helps keep the Huichol
culture alive in some of its purer forms, too.
Those who recognize the artistry in Huichol craft and buy their art
sustain a contemporary economic base for an ancient culture, allowing a people
to adhere to their cultural values at a level of their choosing. In communities in the highest sierras, some
Huichols still follow the shaman in the old ways, never mixing with the outside
forces. In flea markets and tourist resorts, some merely dress in native
costume and sell their culture’s heritage.
As the saying goes, it’s complicated.
Two (and more) realities occupy the same human space.
I
have tried to present this complication of different cultural realities
occupying the same space in a mystery novel called, Something Like A Dream. Set in 1982, at an early stage of corruption
by infiltrating contemporary culture, the story is meant to introduce readers
to the Huichol people, their cultural and religious life centered on peyote
visions and a spiritual relationship to their environment. While I set a contemporary mystery about a
wife’s search for her lost anthropologist husband against this indigenous
cultural background, the story is really about the nature of Huichol life, and
I include a list of anthropological references and a glossary of many Huichol
terms. The protagonist of the mystery is
an outcast American expat who becomes obsessed with the beautiful wife as he
helps her search for her famous husband in the sierra heart of Huichol
territory. On this strange pilgrimage he
will find a whole new perspective on reality and dream, and on deceit,
self-deception, and human spirituality, in a miraculous healing ceremony that
will change his life forever or simply end it.
You are invited to share the search and this look at ancient Huichol
life in modern Mexico. You may find that
Mexico has much more to offer than its contemporary image portrays.
Blurb:
Something
Like A Dream
Expatriate
beach bum Cotton Waters is known to his cantina buddies as "Algo,"
meaning Something in Spanish.
An illegal alien and ex-political activist with old and unresolved legal
problems in the U.S., Algo scrounges a lazy fishing village lifestyle and a
little beer money out of the Puerto Vallarta tourist trade as a private hustler
of a Mexican Riviera lost-and-found--helping some people get lost and finding
others--if the price is right or the client's cause worth the time and
interest.
In the
summer of '82 the worthy cause is Corina Springfield, possibly the most
beautiful woman Cotton Waters has ever seen, even in a town like Vallarta,
searching for her husband, heir to the Springfield Foundation, missing and
presumed dead for over three years. When
Corina shows Algo evidence that her husband may be living among the Huichols,
one of Mexico's most mysterious indigenous peoples; and when it's evidence
she's held for over a year without bothering to investigate until now,
Vallarta's Something" isn't sure
he can find her husband, but he knows he wants to try.
On a
search for a lost hero-husband living as a shaman in a tribe of peyote
worshipers, Cotton Waters leads Corina Springfield into the center of tribal
dissension deep in the sierra heart of Huichol territory. On this strange pilgrimage Waters will find a
whole new perspective on reality and dream, on deceit and self-deception,
and experience a healing ceremony that
will change his life forever or simply end it.
Bio: Robert Richter
From
Nebraska homesteader stock, I grew up in Colorado and was a member of the first
MA creative writing program at Colorado State University in 1973. But in 1975, I left that to the dogs and
returned to the remnants of the family farm and was a fourth generation dryland
wheat farmer for twenty years. During
those years I also published my first book of poetry (Windfall Journal, Jelm Mountain Press, 1980), my first regional
history (Plainscape, 1987), and my
first novel, a literary mystery set in Mexico (Something In Vallarta, Permanent Press, 1991).
Since giving up my own farming, I’ve done itinerate
farm labor, substitute teaching, and conducted escorted excursions in Latin
America, while continuing to write cultural essays, history, fiction, and
poetry. I still live in southwestern
Nebraska, but also have a relationship with west coast Mexico that goes back
forty years. Experience in both those
cultural geographies continues to infuse my work. In 2000, a biography on a Mexican politician,
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and the Roots of Mexico’s New Democracy, and a
novel, Homefield: Sonata in Rural Voice, appeared. I won the Nebraska
Arts Council’s Literary Achievement Award that same year.
At age 57, I returned to academic studies at the
University of Nebraska, receiving an MA in Latin American History in 2006. In 2007, I was a Fulbright Research Fellow in
Buenos Aries, studying and writing about Argentina’s frontier history. I am currently at work on a historical novel
based on my time there. A new book of
poetry was published in 2009, Days In San Blas. A history, Search for the Camino Real: a
history of San Blas and the road to get there, appeared in 2011.
Amazon buy site:
http://www.amazon.com/Something-Like-Dream-Robert-Richter/dp/1610091132/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395177572&sr=1-8&keywords=Robert+Richter
Marilyn aka F.M. Meredith
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