by B. TRAVEN
The carreteros set about preparing their simple meals. A man from each group ran with a battered gasoline can to the stream for water. Others ran into the bush to get firewood. Others cut the branches from which the pots were suspended over the fire.
It had been an unusually long trek and the evening was well advanced. Soon the campfire of each group burned brightly. Over the fires hung anything and everything that might with some adjustment of the imagination have been called a pot or pan.
The men cooked black beans in quantities large enough to do for breakfast as well, for frijoles take a long time to cook. They boiled rice and heated their tortillas. At every fire coffee was made—the indispensable drink at every meal of all people on the road in these tropical regions. If coffee was scarce, pinol was sometimes used. Pinol is roasted maize ground to a fine powder. If there was no pinol either, then tea was made of lemon leaves picked on the way somewhere.
The beans were cooked until soft and then made palatable with lard, brought with them in bottles and as fluid as oil in that hot climate.
The rice was cooked differently than in other parts of the Republic. Lard was heated in a pan and when hot enough, the dry grains of rice were added and stirred to and fro until browned. Then very slowly, little by little, water was added. If it was done clumsily the flames leaped into the pan and there was a blaze which often burned up all the rice.
Coffee too was made in a special way. A conical-shaped tin can was filled with water and a handful of ground coffee and a good quantity of brown unrefined sugar put into it. This was then boiled together to a thick soup, which was not strained; the coffee grounds were swallowed with the coffee.
The carreteros had plenty of opportunities on the road to catch fowl and little pigs as an addition to their meals, but carreteros never rob a farmer and, least of all, Indian peasants.
One of the men might have caught a rabbit or an armadillo, or someone might have shot a wild turkey; another might have chased a tepescuintle out of a hollow tree with the help of his dog. If anyone had meat, it was game of this kind.
The dogs sat waiting around every fire for bones and other morsels. All the carreteros had dogs with them. An Indian and his dog go together as a carbine goes with a soldier.
2
There were many women with the caravan on this occasion—women traveling singly, women with their children, women with their maidservants. Some were bound for Jovel, others for Balún-Canán or even as far upcountry as Tabasco or Campeche. They were all women in humble circumstances whose husbands were not well enough off to enable them to travel on horseback. Even if the husband had a horse or two, he would have had either to accompany his wife himself, which would have meant sacrificing his time and leaving his business in other hands, or else to hire reliable men to accompany her, and this would have been costly; whereas if a woman traveled with a caravan she only paid a peso or even half a peso for her seat in the carreta. And since there were usually several other women, she felt more protected than if she had been the only woman among men hired to accompany her on horseback.
Sometimes it might happen in a small train of carretas that there was only one woman traveler, but on no account would a carretero molest her either by day or night.
Some of the carreteros took their wives with them. An Indian or half-breed could not do without his wife for long. Carreteros who had their wives with them often proved more reliable than those who were without them. If they left their wives at home, they sometimes had a wild longing and ran off to them, leaving the carreta wherever it happened to be on the road.
The carreteros’ wives shared the rations given their husbands for the journey. The rations were plentiful, though they were only black beans and rice, commodities which were practically given away in that part of the country. Potatoes, on the other hand, were so scarce and expensive that a carretero seldom ate two in a lifetime. Even the patrón used them with the greatest economy in his own household.
It was nothing to the patrón how many shared his carreteros’ rations. It did not concern him at all. He did not care whether a carretero took his wife along or not, and still less did he, or anyone else, care whether the carretero and his wife were legally married. It was a matter for themselves entirely on what terms they lived with one another.
The patrón had other reasons for not counting the few black beans which a carretero’s wife ate. He had the extra labor for nothing; and though the women were not essential to the safe and punctual arrival of a train of carretas, they were useful all the same and helped in many ways.
They helped to find and catch strayed oxen; or if they didn’t help in the search they stayed in the camp and kept an eye on the loads and so set all the carreteros free to go after the lost animals. They cooked for the men while the men were busy mending a damaged carreta; and by doing the cooking and by mending and washing their husbands’ shirts and trousers, they gave the men more time to rest so that they worked better and didn’t doze off on the road. And when there was an easy stretch of road the wife drove the oxen while her husband took a nap in the carreta. What more could the patrón ask in return for the handful of black beans which a carretero’s wife shared with her husband.
3
Not all carreteros had wives; and of those who did, not a fifth took wives with them on the road.
Many of the women lived with their parents or with married brothers or sisters at some place on the road. Others lived in the house of the patrón when they were not on the road. Others, again, had small children and the wife remained with them in the hut where they lived.
Some carreteros had had wives at one time who had since left them; or wives who had tired at last of the endless trekking on wretched roads night and day in tropical heat and torrential rains; or wives who were pregnant; or wives whose parents or husbands’ parents wanted them to stay at home with them.
Again, there were carreteros who were bad husbands. They soon got tired of a wife and got rid of her—peaceably, or with blows and abuse. Others were inveterate woman hunters who wanted a woman occasionally, but otherwise, and particularly when on the road, could not bear a woman near them. They made merry over the domestic brawls of their married companions.
So now and then there was a train in which not one carretero had a wife with him. It was here they had the merriest, jolliest, and wildest time of it. The men could indulge their humor and gave themselves up to the pleasures of hearing and telling the broadest of tales and anecdotes. According to them, the worst thing about wives was their way of interfering and getting mixed up with their lives. The ideal wife was the kind that could be put in a drawer and taken out only when needed, then wrapped up carefully in tissue paper again and put away till next time. But such a wife is a blissful dream of male fantasy. She is rarer than the egg of the Phoenix.
Carreteros, certainly, had no time to go in search of such treasures of an ideal world. Like the rest who sigh and groan under the yoke of the flesh, they had to be content with what they could get and try to avoid the thorns on the rose-strewn way.
4
Besides the women who had to make a journey to see a doctor or to visit relations or the devil knows whither or wherefore, and besides the carreteros’ wives, there were often women engaged in trade to be found traveling with the caravans, women who had bought goods in Arriaga or Tonalá and were now traveling upcountry to dispose of them at markets or places where fiestas were being held.
None of these women traders and except in rare cases none of the other women travelers shared the camp and campfires at the halting places. There were usually ranchos nearby, and as soon as the caravan came to a halt they went to the rancheros’ houses.
There they found other women, the wives, daughters, mothers, aunts, and all the rest who make up a family in Mexico. Often they were even distant relatives; or if not acquainted they would usually have mutual acquaintances somewhere in the state. And so there was enough gossip to keep them up half the night. Women on lonely
ranchos are always eager to hear news and scandal and gossip from other places.
These women travelers had their meals at the ranchero’s table. Usually they paid nothing; and if they did it was only twenty or thirty centavos, more for form’s sake than for profit.
When they had all talked themselves hoarse and had come to the end of their gossip and eyes began to close, they were offered a bedstead or else mats were spread out for them on the floor, which had been thickly strewn with pine needles. Here the women could lay out their bedding, which the carreteros had obligingly carried along for them.
If there were no ranchos or haciendas in the neighborhood, the women had to be content with sleeping places in the carreta, on top of the loads. That was very uncomfortable. But what else could they do?
5
The wives of the carreteros, less tied to the habits of domestic life, slept wherever there was a spot. They were used to a hard life from childhood on. They could sleep wherever they lay down, no matter where. If there was room in the carreta, they slept in the carreta. If there was no room or if the bales and cases and packages were too lumpy and irregular to afford them a bed, they slept on the ground beneath the carreta; or just crouched, their backs against one of the wheels; or lay on the grass nearby. In some way or another they managed to spread the mosquito net over themselves at those stops along the road where insects abounded.
As for the carreteros, they did not know the meaning of the word discomfort. When they had their wives with them they did their best to find them as good and comfortable a sleeping place as they could. But for themselves it was only the sleep, wherever, that mattered. They were always so done in by their work that when they once dropped down beside the carreta it took a torrent of rain that soaked them through and through to wake them; and when they awakened it was not to crawl for cover under the carreta—not that it would have helped them very much to crawl under, for in a good tropical downpour the whole camp was soon turned into a lake and any planks or ropes lying about very quickly floated away. No, the carretero jumped up not to protect himself but to see to the goods in his charge. He fastened firmly the matting which curtained each end of the carreta against dust and weather, so that the rain would not whip in and damage the goods. He tied the awning down tighter and plugged its rents with grass or rags.
The dogs sought out dry places between bales and cases. The carretero was not a dog able to squeeze himself into crannies. He was a human being with a soul which, after the toils and cares of earthly life, would take flight one day for paradise. He was a human being who loved and wept and laughed. He was a human being, born of a mother who loved him and agonized for the well-being of her child.
He was a human being just as the patrón was; a human being quite as much as don Porfirio, the dictator president of his country, the great statesman, hung about with medals and orders.
But his employer could not spare the money to provide his carretero with a little tent and cot, which when the camp was a swamp would have ensured the man a dry sleeping place. The transport of goods did not run to that; the patrón had other expenses to meet which were more important than nonsense of that kind. And though don Porfirio, whose portrait hung in a large and glittering gold frame in the patrón’s principal sitting room, decreed so many thousands of wonderful laws, there was not among them all a single one that put the carretero on a higher level than the oxen he harnessed to his patrón’s carreta. Oxen can take their rest in the open in pouring rain, so why in the name of all the saints should laws be made to protect a carretero from it?
All the better if he sleeps out in heavy rain. He will not oversleep himself when he’s not too comfortable. He will get up in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, put the oxen in, and continue his journey; and that will be half a day gained. The patrón then gets the name of a good carrier who keeps on schedule. This helps trade and increases the prosperity of the country.
6
After El Calvario and farther on into the interior of the state there was no more fear of bandits. There might be a slight risk in the neighborhood of Balún-Canán. There was an occasional holdup on the roads there, but there were only three or four bandits, who apparently were brothers. They never attempted more than two or at the utmost three carretas. The larger trains were safe. These lone wolves were more of a danger to single travelers on horseback. They had the repute throughout the state of being highwaymen who murdered their victims so as to lessen the chances of discovery.
As the next hundred and twenty kilometers were safe-going, and as, too, many of the carretas, more than three-quarters of the train, were bound only for Jovel, or perhaps for no further than Shimojol, the long caravan began here to break up again into small strings of from eight to ten carretas.
Each train had its own leader, or encargado, who was responsible for it and decided on the day’s journey. There was no timetable laid down for the daily journeys of a train of carretas. The encargado arranged the timetable according to his judgment.
In the hot plains the carretas traveled only by night and rested by day. Oxen will not travel in great heat, or, if they do, they are utterly exhausted after two hours. They are beasts of the temperate zone, and such they remain even if they are reared on the grasslands of a tropical region. It is not only the heat that diminishes the oxen’s capacity for work; there are the thousands of large horseflies which settle on them in swarms and drain their blood. These flies bite only in the sunshine. If there is even a cloud over the sun they vanish.
In the cool of the uplands the carretas traveled by day as well. They went for four or six hours at a stretch according to the difficulty of the road and the distance between one good camping place and the next. Then there was a halt of four or five hours before setting off once more.
A train of carretas needed from five to seven days for a journey of a hundred kilometers. The freight charges were reckoned by distance and weight; sometimes, too, by bulk. The weight of the goods was not ascertained by scales. It was judged by the encargado; so was the distance. And the units of measurement used were the old Spanish ones.
The measures of weight were the arroba and the quintal. An arroba is eleven and a half kilos; a quintal is forty-five kilos. The charge for an arroba for a distance of a hundred kilometers was usually one peso, although sometimes it was three-quarters or even a half. The distance was reckoned by the legua. A legua is about four kilometers, but the encargado estimated a legua by time. Many a distance which he computed as ten leguas may in actual measurement have been only eight-and-a-half or perhaps only seven leguas; while another bit of road which he estimated at twelve may really have been fifteen. But the distances on the main routes were settled for good. They remained unaltered even when the roads had been surveyed and measured accurately. The carreteros who first estimated them had died over two hundred years before and their names had been long forgotten, but all freightage was still reckoned by the estimates of the distances they handed down.
However inefficient and primitive this may seem to an outsider, it worked out in the long run without a hitch and with perfect harmony. Nobody cared very much whether the five leguas were a little less or more, or whether the weight was half an arroba less or more. The carrier came to terms with his clients either when he took on the goods or when they were delivered.
“Now listen to me, don Laureano, you have reckoned this case at ten arrobas. It’s scarcely eight. How can you charge fifteen pesos carriage?” says the merchant.
To this don Laureano replies: “Don Miguel, whatever it weighs, you can’t deny it’s a good size and weighs a lot. I don’t know what you can have inside it. Fifteen pesos is not a lot to charge. And I don’t see where my profit is to come from. Maize gets no cheaper and the muchachos are always wanting more money. You know yourself, don Miguel, it’s close on forty leguas and I’ve only reckoned you thirty-five. All the same, I don’t want to be hard on you and this is not the last deal we shall make together. Give me thirteen-fifty
. You can surely pay that, don Miguel.”
They come to terms at twelve-eighty. Everyone is happy and the transaction leaves no rancor behind it.
When don Miguel forwards goods by rail he pays to a centavo what the waybill says, for the railroad does not care whether don Miguel remains its friend or not; and the clerks, who have no say in the charges, refuse to discuss the matter with don Miguel. They have their fixed hours of work, and when the time is up they go home whether don Miguel has received his case or not.
7
The campfire of one of the trains was already blazing up again at one o’clock in the morning. The encargado had observed that the oxen were in good shape, and as his carretas were not too heavily laden he had made up his mind to be at Ixtapa by the early morning. Ixtapa was only six kilometers from the pass and he had goods to deliver to shopkeepers there.
The carreteros gave their oxen the feed of maize. Then they ate some beans and drank their coffee; and when they had finished they began to yoke the oxen and put them in. Then a boy ran across to one of the ranchos and knocked on the door of the room in which he had been told the evening before that the women who traveled with the carretas were sleeping.
“Hola, señoras, vámonos, listo—we’re off and all ready to start.”
“ ’Orita, muchacho, right away,” a woman answered at once.
The women got up without wasting time to stretch and yawn. They quickly put their skirts over their heads and opened the door. The boy rushed in and swiftly grabbed hold of their bedding, rolled it all up in a bundle, and tied it together.