On the Plain of Snakes

by Paul Theroux

  “I’d like to go to a Huichol village.”

  “That might be a problem.”

  “The village is far from here?”

  “Two or three villages—yes, far. But they don’t want you to visit. There used to be tours. But they’re suspicious of outsiders.” He smiled and took the toothpick from his mouth. “They made a rule banning missionaries from visiting.” He laughed. “They don’t want to see them!”

  “Why is this?”

  “Christian missionaries—evangélicos—many of them gringos from the US—singing, dancing. They wanted to convert them, but the Huicholes have other ideas and other gods.” He gestured with the toothpick, making it a spear. “Evangélicos!”

  “Is there a center of Huichol culture?”

  “In Jalisco. San Andrés Cohamiata,” he said. “You’ll never find it. It’s far, it’s in the mountains. I don’t think there’s a road.”

  “So how do the Huicholes travel?”

  “They don’t travel far. But when they do, they use the paths”—senderos. “They walk.”

  He wished me well and strolled off, grinning into his toothpick. But not long after that, walking down a side street, I saw two women coming toward me, unmistakably Huicholes, highly colored, billowy blue gypsy skirts, yellow shawls, embroidered blouses, and red headscarves. They walked with the confidence verging on swagger that people possess when they wear traditional dress, asserting their difference.

  “Hola,” I said, but they didn’t stop, so I hurried after them and tried to engage them in conversation.

  There followed an epiphany: I had found two people, natives of Mexico, whose grasp of Spanish was as rudimentary as mine.

  “Huichol?”

  “Yes.”

  “You live near here?”

  “No.”

  “Where is your village?”

  Flinging her hand, one woman said, “There. Far.”

  “San Andrés?”

  “No. Another place. Small place.”

  “I want to visit your village.”

  They laughed. “No!”

  “To see you make things.” They were famous for their embroidery, their sewing, their decorated wide-brimmed straw hats, and especially for their intricate beadwork—tiny beads worked into the surface of wax sculptures.

  In their refusal they spoke in their own language, finding this whole encounter ludicrous, the sudden pestering gringo on the hot street in midafternoon. They waved me away, but I was encouraged to look further. I walked for another hour but did not see another Huichol. Maybe, as the man said, they were hiding from gringo evangelists—who could blame them?

  And so I left, boarding another bus.

  Puerto Vallarta

  The bus moved past cane fields—the untidiest cash crop on earth, great uncombed, flopped-over stalks—and teams of people harvesting pineapples—bulky in padded shirts and gloves, to protect them from the thorns and spines—and into steep-sided hills, and groves of mangoes, and finally the descent to the town of Compostela. Compostela’s church was nearly as impressive as Tepic’s, and it is a tribute to indigenous resistance that in spite of all the proselytizing and the ecclesiastical architecture, the Huicholes were still venerating the deer and praying to the eagle and prostrating themselves before the jaguar, indifferent to one gringo’s speculation that “in the juvescence of the year / Came Christ the tiger.”

  The palm and banana groves of the coastal plain lay below, wreathing the pretty resort town of Sayulita, and in the distance the enormous bay—the largest in the Pacific, so Mexicans say, backed by mountains—the great scallop of coastline that contains Puerto Vallarta. I could see it all in panorama, and later I learned that Old Vallarta lay in the middle of the bay, the luxury hotels at the top end, and at the bottom end of the bay the South Zone, then Mismaloya, where Night of the Iguana was filmed. Miles of beach, of malecón and promenade, and bandstands. There were rows of hotels, elaborate ones and gated resorts that possessed great strips of beach, and little posadas on side streets with balconies and ceiling fans.

  The Zona Romántica of Old Vallarta—dense with shops and small hotels, on a grid of narrow streets—catered in the daytime to strollers and families looking for ceramics and souvenirs, and at night became a Zona de Tolerancia for roisterers and gawkers, throngs of whores and drunks, seeking each other.

  I found a hotel bargain in the northerly Marina district, the four-day midweek special: a modest charge allowed me a room and unlimited food. Its guests were a revelation. Once, twenty years ago, for my book about the Mediterranean, I had spent two weeks on a Turkish cruise ship, which made a circuit of the ports of the eastern Mediterranean. Finding this ship had been a fluke: I had simply happened upon it at its mooring in Istanbul and bought a ticket on a whim. I discovered that one way to understand a culture was to spend a longish holiday in the company of a single nationality. Turks at breakfast, at every meal, playing cards, going on shore excursions, joining sing-alongs in the evening. I was the only non-Turk. I discovered how polite, even courtly, they were to each other; how circumspect they were in foreign ports; how abused and cheated they were in Alexandria and Haifa and Rhodes, screamed at in English, browbeaten by immigration officers; and how secure they felt on their Turkish ship, the MV Akdeniz.

  The hotel on the Paseo de la Marina Sur had been built around a stack of open-sided lobbies, dampened and mildewed by the hot sea breeze from the Pacific. It was less than half full in spite of the holiday bargain. All the other guests were Mexican, many honeymooners, many middle-aged couples, but mostly families—not just mother and dad and the children, but the grandparents, abuela, abuelo, two of each in some cases. It seemed from these hundreds of middle-class Mexicans that they married young, they made their parents part of the holiday, they had many children, they tended to be heavyset, and they favored loose and baggy clothes—you’d see their counterparts at Disney World. Except for the small children—who chased each other, shrieking, around the hotel, bumping other guests, and were forgiven for being cute—the Mexicans were excessively polite, courteous toward each other, patient in the long lines at the buffet, and long-suffering at the pool—only a few risked the ocean.

  I saw that a Mexican heaven, a Mexican holiday, is an all-you-can-eat buffet. They were not drinkers, but they were eaters. And the hotel, catering to these appetites, provided two large buffet restaurants, one in the main building below the lobby, another nearer the pool. The tables were always full, the guests padding back and forth, from the raw bar to the roast beef, from the posole and taco station to the pasta stall, from the salad trays and finally to the shelves of wobbly desserts. These Mexicans were a match for the greediest Americans, chewing their way through a buffet on a hot afternoon, going back for seconds and thirds, then looking for a chaise lounge to sleep off the effort of stuffing themselves before heading back once again, to load their plates with gummy chicken legs, fish smothered in white sauce, pizza slices, spare ribs, and an anthology of black clotted beans. None of it looked to my amateur eye like the sort of food you’d find in your neighborhood Mexican restaurant, or even in their neighborhood Mexican restaurant. It seemed the epitome of institutional gringo cuisine, but that hardly mattered, because it was piled high and you could eat as much as you wanted.

  That was a revelation, but of course the hotel was perfect in other ways, too. The kids could run around, the pool was large enough for everyone, the oldies had places to sit or sleep. And if hunger was the common denominator, mealtime—all day, most of the evening—was a constant: the ritual of bingeing and gorging, the objective of the lanky, mustached gallant, the short-arsed salesman, the duck-butted matron, and the hyperactive tot. A Mexican middle-class vacation meant unlimited access to the buffet and a place for the kids to play and for the grandparents to snooze. No one used the tennis courts, no one was reading.

  Now and then I shared a table, usually with a couple or a family, and we talked in general, about the weather, where they lived (many fro
m Mexico City), what sort of work they did (teachers, electricians, drivers, insurance agents, beauticians). None mentioned the president until I mentioned his name.

  “Trump hates us.” This from a young woman at breakfast, holding her baby daughter on her lap.

  “He says we’re rapists and murderers.” This from a dentist, a man who had studied in Texas.

  “He does not know us,” an old man said to me, smiling, spooning soup. “He does not want to know us.”

  “Why do Mexicans go to the States?” a woman said to me, while her husband listened, I think abashed at her assertiveness toward a stranger. “They go to look for work—and they work. All they ask for is to have a job. They are good workers. And what are they paid? Very little. But they don’t complain. And Donald Trump says we are bad people.”

  Her husband said, “And he hires Mexicans at his hotels. I heard that on the news.”

  When the men were alone, away from wives and children, at the bar, by the pool, and we had talked awhile, establishing a bit of rapport, they howled, “He is crazy. He’s a liar! How can a man so crazy become president?”

  On another memorable occasion, a man who described himself as a driver (conductor), said, “He is a traitor! He is Judas!”—and the word sounds crueler when spoken in Spanish: Hoodas!

  To get away from the eaters at the hotel and the hubbub of Vallarta, I took a taxi—one I had used the previous day—to the botanical gardens at the edge of the jungle, Selva El Tuito, driven by Ottavio, an older man, who said, “This is my day off. I told my son to take you. But he said no, and you know why? He doesn’t speak English. I told him to learn English, that’s the way to get business. But he doesn’t do it.”

  “Pero, hablo español perfectamente.”

  “Claro,” Ottavio said, and laughed, continuing in English. “One reason I am busy is, I speak English.”

  “Have you been to the States?”

  “No. Never. I would like to go. You think Mr. Trump would allow me?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  He lapsed into Spanish, saying, “Una rata.”

  Out of Vallarta, southward, along the coast. Cliffside hotels and gated communities and villas and bungalows and chalets and mansions. “All Canadians,” Ottavio said, indicating a tall building, and at a clifftop development, “Gringos, gringos, gringos.” Germans often visited, he said. Some Germans retired to Mexico. British people, too. “Arabians,” he said. And after all this: “But if a Mexican wants to go to their country—hah!”

  We were on Highway 200, the road that extends for another thousand miles, to the border town of Tapachula and the edge of Guatemala. We stopped briefly so that I could examine the decaying sign and the fenced-in ruin of the Night of the Iguana Hotel, then continued inland, where at a bend in the road Ottavio became very nervous, slowing and finally stopping the car.

  “There are no policemen here,” he said. “But there should be policemen. A checkpoint. I need permission to go farther.”

  But there were no policemen on this dark narrow curve, only overhanging trees and an old stone wall, nothing to indicate a frontier.

  “This is not Jalisco. It is a different state. I will have trouble when I come back. They’ll say, ‘Where is your permission?’”

  “I don’t see anyone, do you?”

  “Maybe they see us.”

  He fretted for a few minutes, gripping the steering wheel, then got out of the car and looked around, called out briefly, shook his head, and, sighing, restarted the car and drove onward.

  “We might have trouble,” he said.

  It was the perennial anxiety that Mexicans feel, faced with the ambiguous threat of authority, usually from the police or the army. But the winding road and the dangerous curves, buses and trucks coming toward us, distracted him, and after twenty miles we came to the botanical gardens.

  The best botanical gardens are the oldest ones, with majestic trees like Kew or the one in Singapore, or in Calcutta with its great stands of bamboo, or the oldest of all, the garden in Kingstown, on the island of St. Vincent. The garden here was young, having been planted fairly recently, fifteen years ago or less. But that was not the point. I was merely looking for an excuse to get away from the crowds of eaters at my hotel in Vallarta, and walking the pathways of the gardens with Ottavio was a revelation.

  It started when he rushed toward a plant, exclaiming, “These are tasty. You can eat the flowers of these. You can make tea with them, too—good for the blood!”

  Birds and butterflies, the sunny day, and we came to a section of cactus plants, various kinds.

  “This is nopal,” Ottavio said, salivating a little. “Those ends—the little ones, see them? They’re good to eat. Slice them up. You can have them for breakfast.”

  A fork in the road. We descended the path to a small pond, dusted with gilded gnats.

  “Look at that lily pad—just like a tortilla!” And he leaned closer, looking hungry. “You can eat the roots, you know!”

  His excitement grew when he saw orange trees and lemon trees laden with fruit, and a pink pomegranate on a thorny bough. And spotting a smooth, fist-sized blob hanging from a vine, he said, “Pretty. I wonder if you can eat that?”

  Craving to be alone, I paid Ottavio for taking me there and spent the rest of the morning in the gardens on my own, loving the solitude and the surrounding forest as much as the gardens themselves. And then I walked up to the road and took a slow, stopping bus, past the resorts and the gated communities and the people on vacation, back to my hotel, where it was always mealtime. The day at the botanical gardens inspired two thoughts: that it was time to leave Puerto Vallarta for Mexico City, and that it must be by an express bus.

  It was an overnighter. Back to Sayulita and Compostela, and then the bus wound through the mountains to Guadalajara, an overbright bus station and a quesadilla there; then to Ocotlán and Atlacomulco. Turning south at Jilotepec de Molina Enríques, the bus arrived at dawn at the Poniente terminal.

  This was near the Observatorio metro station, named for an observatory built by the national university for stargazing. But some time after the telescope was installed, Mexico City’s polluted air and glary light rendered it unusable.

  I took the metro back to Hotel La Casona. Rudi Roth said, “I’m sorry to see you go. I liked having breakfast with you.”

  My car was where I had left it, in the secure parking lot near the hotel. There was a bulky package in the back seat. One of my students had left this as a present for me, a framed etching by a celebrated Mexican artist, Sergio Hernández, with a note: Please come back, Don Pablo.

  Touched, a bit dreamy from this sweet gesture, I drove out of the lot, turned the corner, entered a street—unusually empty of cars—and heard a loud yell and a shrill whistle.

  A policeman flapped his hand at me and pulled me over.

  “You are in violation of the law,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “As this is a Sunday, this road is closed to vehicles—notice the bicycles.”

  That was true—bike riders everywhere, swishing past us in both directions. There was no sign saying the road was closed to vehicles. Apparently, the bike riding was a Sunday tradition in Mexico City.

  “We can impound your car for this violation.”

  “How much?” I asked. He then named his price. I handed him the money. He softened, became polite, and thanked me with a little salute.

  “Which way to Texcoco?” I asked. “But not by the Periférico.”

  I wanted to avoid the ring road because it was patrolled by the sort of motorcycle police who had shaken me down before. It was not the direct route to Puebla, but judging from my map, it was the quickest way out of Mexico City, with fewer cops.

  “Straight ahead. Look for signs to the airport,” the policeman said with a friendly smile as he palmed my dollar bills. He then slipped them into his jacket and patted the proud little square of thickness in his pocket. “Keep going eas
t. Buen viaje.”

  Part Three

  Oaxaca, the Inframundo

  To Puebla

  Leaving the city, thinking of my students and the surprise of the handsome gift left in my car, I was glum with nostalgic melancholy. It was the effect of my detour to the border, my side trip to the coast, the end of the writing workshop. I wasn’t busy anymore. The cure for idleness was to hit the road. I was not sad to leave Mexico City—my heart sings whenever I leave a big city and see the thinning suburbs and first green hills beyond them—but I was sad to leave the students, no longer students, but friends.

  My destination was Puebla, and there was a direct route, southeast from where I’d been shaken down. But this would have taken me through Nezahualcóyotl—sinister “Ciudad Neza”—the densest district of Mexico City, and not only the most populous but the most violent, a place of cops much crookeder than the one who had just extorted me on a leafy boulevard in Roma Sur. Neza was notorious for its slums, its seedy underworld, gangs, drugs, and murder—in particular femicides, the rape and killing of women—where I would also be impeded by the slow traffic through its barrios. By taking a detour, I would be in the countryside quicker, and far from the police.

  I was soon in Texcoco and driving clockwise around the slopes of Monte Tlaloc, “the ghost mountain,” with a temple to Tlaloc the storm god, the god of rain and fertility, on its summit at 13,600 feet—one of the highest archeological sites in the world, higher than Machu Picchu. Tlaloc is part of a trio of close-together volcanoes, with the 17,000-footers Iztaccíhuatl (the Woman in White) and Popocatépetl (Smoking Mountain). Popocatépetl was still smoking, still erupting, and the grandeur of this trio of steep, symmetrical flanks and peaks was apparent even cloaked in the brown grainy cloudbanks drifting from Mexico City.

  A bit farther south I was traveling on the old Camino Real, which linked the great capital to Puebla—the Royal Road in name, but humble in reality, a thoroughfare of farms and cultivated land and small villages, passing through Calpulalpan (celebrated for its annual fair, during which, so the town’s tourist office boasted, “people feast on local specialties—maguey worms, pulque, and owls”). This region of plowed fields provided the food for the big city. Keeping to this straight road, I connected to the autopista, paying a toll and sailing to Puebla.