“When we saw it on the television,” he loudly said to the other passengers, “and my loved ones cried, ‘This is what we had,’”
He went on to say, “It all came from that dirty place. ... The symptoms they are suffering are the same that we are suffering from here.”
San Juan de Dios and San Juan del Diablo, two very quaint brother towns in which I had a chance to look up my distant cousins, turned out to be infected as well; the local chamber of commerce informed me that about half of the residents in each town live and work in and around the centers of the Veracruz outbreak. They could easily have infected others as they commuted between other Veracruz towns, especially the Port of Veracruz where the largest number of infections were now being reported.
Later I learned that Granjas Baltimore de Mexico, mostly owned by a Maryland-based Foods company, has nine farms in the area. Curiously though, none of their American employees working at the Veracruz ventures, or anywhere in Mexico for that matter, had any clinical signs of the flu strain or even of its presence in its pig herd. Consequently, some began to entertain conspiracy theories, whilst others considered the obvious; Mexicans were far more susceptible to this particular strain than Anglo-Saxon Americans, which is all the more remarkable considering the amount of pork products consumed by your average Mexicans.
I have always been bothered as much as the next guy by the fetid smell of those sorts of farms, and they always seem to have been founded down-wind of any given community; I am sure, while others just suspect, that Veracruzanos have had their water and air contaminated by the said waste.
A couple of days later, I jumped at an opportunity to visit one of those farms just to satisfy my festering curiosity. When I entered the premises the morning of the following Monday, everything and everybody was sprayed with some chemically-treated water and handed white overalls, rubber boots, and masks before entering any of their odorous warehouses where the delightful pigs were housed. Only after we’d all been humiliated by this unannounced precaution, the farm fore-man informed us that, after we had been through their grounds, we’d be pressed to shower if we were to avoid carrying any undesirable germs to other parts of the state.
During the grand tour, the fore-man showed us a gray plastic lid that covered a swimming pool-size cement container of pig feces to prevent exposure to the outside air; without a doubt and without a second thought, pig feces has to be the foulest smelling of all forms of feces ever conceived by Mother Nature.
“Our pigs have been responsibly vaccinated, and they are all nurtured according to current sanitation regulations In Mexico,” (small comfort, I thought), and he went on to complain, “What happened in San Juan de Dios and San Juan del Diablo was an inevitable coincidence with an awful dilemma that is happening now with this new flu alarm.”
Murmurs of resentment felt by the residents of said towns filtered though the small talk; apparently the poor folk had been fighting the said company for more than a decade to force them to clean-up their pig-waste management, in more ways than one. Later, it was discovered that the source of the disease was traced back to La Gloria to a type of fly that reproduces in pig shit ~ Surprise! Surprise! Who would have thought it was all due to the filthy flies?
Naturally, the accountable officials, stinking in the perfidy of their own cowardice, downplayed the revelations or any claims that the epidemic could have started in this or that town, or anywhere else for that matter. All that anyone knew for certain is that mucous was pouring out of an increasing quantity of victims’ noses, infants as well as the aged, and the number of cases was likely to increase exponentially unless Mexicans themselves finally looked up the meaning of Hygiene in a dictionary (assuming they can read, of course ~ this is no joke, and illiteracy abounds).
A couple of days came and went, and I found my way to Puerto Alvarado, a lovely, colonial-style town that nearly charmed the pants off of me, literally. I mean, with the warmth, the refreshing Caribbean winds, the tropical atmosphere, the palm trees, the cloistered hostels, the balconied restaurants, one is left helpless before overpowering sensuousness, and it made for a picture-perfect escape from the impending reality of pestilence, which had pervaded every facet of Mexican society. As far as I could gather, or was concerned, there were no signs of pig flu amongst the pigs, actual or of the human variety, anywhere in Veracruz, just the normal maladies associated with lazy living and an indolent indifference to misery. People will be sneaky though, and the common folk weren’t going to step forward with their problems, only ignore them and hope they would just go away ~ you know, the typical Mexican solution to all of Life’s troubles.
With a mix of the lecherous with the lugubrious, the Mexican character asserts itself against all onslaughts. With no evidence of sick or dying swine, on the farms or in the cantinas, the average person’s etre sans espoir et sans gene attitude would bear all sins, particularly those suffered from their own leaders. The whole pig situation was under control, though the actual virus was still out there, still waiting to find my weak spot, and my unrequited longing just might prove to be the opening it was looking for and would exploit. More worrisome though were the rumors that people, especially visitors like me, were being spied upon, surveillance systems hastily placed in public stations, specifically transportation depots. The state’s commercial pig population wasn’t safe from the espionage, but most people agreed that it was a good way to eliminate related or unrelated diseases, which are indications that they, the responsible authorities, were on the job conducting adequate reviews of people with pig flu, as well as pigs for bird flu, and maybe even birds for people flu (?) ...
I don’t know! To me these bird-brained excuses for people are a bunch of pigs with no real concern for social health issues, or the spread of viral illnesses. The recalcitrant epidemic in and around these quaint towns was more like a viral and bacterial combination of sicknesses, made worse by the heavy, dry atmosphere and Spring-time heat. Since it was the dry season in Veracruz, as in elsewhere, dust dries up the mucous membranes and eases environmental conditions for the transmission of viruses of this type. At this point, I would have been grateful for a very wet nose.
KNOWING YET NOT
KNOWING ABOUT NOTHING
Traipsing about the colonial-era charms of Veracruz gave me more than cause to abandon myself to the sultriness and salacity that the sensual atmosphere afforded me. Here, small things take on a greater importance than I could have imagined; here, small things are regarded with great concern, whilst greater matters are defied as merely impediments to innate human happiness.
At this juncture of my aimless vagabonding, I had many an occasion for pause and introspection. While gazing at the faces of Veracruz natives, I recalled many of the people I had met while growing up, including some Veracruz cousins I’d once met and never saw again, and all the dumb questions I’d asked them about life, fairness, justice, the cruelties of Fate, and the positive examples ~ the role-models I’d sought to emulate in order to make of my life something besides a mass of trivialities and anxieties.
I grew up restless and frustrated after experiencing more than my fair share of the injustices of life, and the fact of my being the introspective, philosophical type, impelled me to share my feelings, my complaints about the unkindness and violence I had witnessed and suffered over the years with potential sympathizers. I was, however, always disappointed with the puerile, self-satisfied answers they would give me, and one could sense the self-importance that drove their persnickety little egos. Whether invocations of the Bible, specifically Old Testament condemnations of human weaknesses caused by the very deity that created humanity, or invocations to the memory of their bigoted, religiously intolerant forebears, these people I had confided in always had some smug, narrow-minded reply that revealed their ignorance more than showed up my confusion, which was their real objective when answering my questions. They were quick to reply, “Oh, grow up, that’s Life!”
Or, they’d say, “God willed i
t, so just accept it.”
I wouldn’t, and shall never accept it, however, because the problems I’d discuss with them had nothing to do with God or Nature, or Life in general ~ I’d talk about apples, and they’d insist on anuses. The problems most of us suffer, strive against, and sometimes survive, were, and are due to the failure of Society to take care of its own; the failure of people to uphold their promises to each-other. Therefore, I shall always defy their timid resignation to ignoramuses who think they have all the answers, and their habit of scape-goating everyone ~ including God himself!
In begging their word, I had lent myself as a pawn of their stupidity. In begging their indulgence, I played the fool.
Part of my motivation for traveling through Mexico included the desire to find some sincerity in these droll and practical people. Boy, was I misinformed! Not only did they wallow in their own ignorance and superstitions, but are as narrow-minded as the presumptuous, yet ever so pious, morons I’d known back in America. None were up to the challenge of answering my questions about life, love, and the liberties we mostly take for granted. None were forthcoming about their own experiences, or weaknesses. All were content to be brainwashed, content to find security in their religious prejudices ... all content to spew out their superciliousness, vomit their vindictiveness, ejaculate their execrable exhortations upon me with the false notion that I actually respected them so much that I’d follow their stupid sermons or asinine advice without question, thus making them feel superior to me. Ah humanity, how base is your ego that I should suffer your pusillanimous pussyfooting, or tolerate your preposterous pablum-puking for the sake of discovering the truth about Life? Forget about it! It took me many years, but I finally awoke to the inscrutable fact that all they had to offer was more ridicule. My complaints and cries unto heaven were carried away by the wind breaking out of the anus of ignorance.
Thus, I wondered, what would come of asking Fulgencio San Roman the same questions, posing the same riddles for his singular, puzzle-loving conceit? He seemed to hold all of the answers to the muddles and bizarre apparitions that greeted me every step of this Mexican way. What could he tell me about the significance of such lowly objects of Mexican lore, like huarache sandals, the large-brimmed Charro hats, or the rebozo shawls of the native women? Probably nothing. Possibly the most obvious, which I’d ignored.
So, how could I know that I didn’t know anything about nothing of no importance? For example: Is one supposed to know inherently what a “Sarape” is? I didn’t before coming to Mexico, and never suspected it held some deep significance for the natives. A Sarape, I found out, is the striped blanket that the Mexican Indio, the Mexican Charro ... just about every Mexican is familiar with, but has no idea it contains some historic or cultural clues to their ancestral origins. A Sarape could be the metaphor of Mexico, or at least of her culture; so striped and violently contrasting are the cultural hues in Mexico today, living next to each other, and, at the same time, separated by centuries of human wretchedness. No mystery, no riddle, conundrum or enigma could run through their historical Sarape without being false or contrived. And, a riddler like San Roman could take the contrasting, yet integrated links of its violent colors as the collective symbology for constructing his films. For similar reasons, I thought, I wished to experience Mexico as though living one of his films. As each destination offered its own set of experiences, the temporary periods I’d spend in each place would be like episodes in the true-to-life film, following each other as the strange, as-yet unwritten plot unfolded. I was, and would be, a different character in each chapter, and different people, different fauna, even flora and seasons would flavor my expectations in each region. And still, by the very character of the Mexican people, the raison d’etre of my story held the unity of the weave. It would be, just like one of his films, a lyrical and musical composition, and an unraveling of the meaning of Mexico.
And what of San Roman himself? Death ... skulls of people, and skulls of stone, these would be the metaphors of his legacy ~ the same symbols, the same conclusions; the same ingredients that contain the possibilities of things to come. He knew what he was doing, and he knew what they meant in the scheme of a Mexican’s life. The frightful Aztec gods, and the truly bizarre Mayan deities near the mysterious ruins and pyramids, what could they all mean to the modern Mexican who has no inkling about the origins of his/her own culture ... no inkling to find out the reason for his/her being? A world that was, and is nothing more than an endless becoming? The great Olmec heads of Veracruz, just faces of stone, but they reflect living faces of flesh; rows and rows of carved volcanic rocks, carefully set by the Mayans or the Toltecs to reverberate to the rhythm of the cosmos, they seem to reproach the ignorance of today’s inhabitants. The typical Mexican of today is the same man who lived thousands of years ago, but now the wisdom of his ancestors has been replaced with the confusion of modernity. And yet, that character that has endured the endless siege of Time itself remains unchanging, intractable, perhaps even eternal. The great wisdom of his ancestors guards him against death, yet befriends death for the next becoming. Therefore, San Roman reminds me to focus on that unity of life and death, the birth of one proceeding the passing of another, and nothing changes, nothing moves. It is an endless cycle Americans could never really comprehend, and yet Mexicans are ignorant of that very wisdom, which has supported Mexico throughout the centuries; the wisdom to celebrate the endless cycle.
November was still far off on my travel schedule, but on the first of November the whole country celebrates the Day of the Dead, “Dia de los Muertos.” It is a day of mirth and merriment, and a day when the living mercilessly mock and defy death, and yet honor the dead. Death is but a door-way to another plane of being, a passage to a new beginning. Hence, fear of it is quelled, fear of the unknown is laughed at, fear of themselves is rejected for a new meaning of love.
All types of stores display skulls wearing straw, Charro or top hats; candy takes the shape of skeletons in chocolate or vanilla, and coffins in confectionery. Family groups wander solemnly to the local cemetery, taking food to their buried; parties romp about and sing on the graves, and the food brought for the dead is then eaten by the living. The drinking and the singing grow louder. Next comes the Night of the Dead, and all ghosts and ghouls take the field.
The food of Veracruz and other parts of this region was quite good, I cannot complain; peppered with exotic ingredients and enlivened by many spices, no wonder so much beer is consumed around here.
The Day of the Dead is, at the same time, the actual birthday for new lives. This reality is ironically manifested when the brimming face of a new-born peeps beneath the striking skull of the masquerade of death, hence affirming the immutable law of existence that death follows life as life circles around death.
Life ... in Veracruz as in Oaxaca, or the rest of the sultry south, it emerges from the moist, muddy, sleepy sumptuousness of the tropics. The branches of trees heavily laden with fruit, dreamy waters emptying into placid lagoons, and the dreamy eyelids of the indigenous folk are barely lifted to allow their eyes to drink in all the light and color that waft in from Caribbean horizons. Dreams of love-making, of lovely youths, of future pregnancies (no one’s right to reject them is recognized), and of future strife, all part of the rhythm of the Cosmos reverberating in each one of their lives. The Mexican mother, representative of the fore-mother of all, rules in these regions, from the ruins of El Tajin along the Costa Esmeralda, to the ruins of Monte Alban in the foothills of Tehuantepec.
It came as a fascinating lesson, in this land of male-chauvinistic bluster, that the matriarchal hierarchy has been upheld and honored for centuries, and still holds sway in the 21st Century. The people seem to meld harmoniously and imperceptibly into the surrounding eco-system. The indigenous folk are like branches on the patriarchal trees, and like serpents are the branches of the strangest trees I’ve ever seen; their respective blossoms serve as food as well as aphrodisiacs. Like insinuating serpen
ts are the braids of raven-black hair framing the dreamy, almond-shaped eyes of maids waiting for their men ~ toilers of the sea, field or forest. In the ancestral towns, toil is the lot of women, and from girlhood the individual woman begins nurturing the cradle of a new family. Hours and hours wasted at the market-place, food preparation, butchering animals, fruit-picking, hawking house-hold wares, weaving, and simple idleness ~ thus are the slowly moving, yet crowded, typical mercados (market-squares) of Southern Mexico. Day in and day out, the joyful toil is undertaken, but it does take its toll as seen on the shriveled faces of the grandmothers. A golden chain with hanging gold coins is regarded as the reward of a life-time of sacrifice ~ coins with the Mexican eagle, and coins with the Spanish Imperial Coat-of-Arms are the most highly prized.
According to tradition, a Wedding is called “Casamiento” in Spanish in recognition of its natural meaning ~ foundation of a new casa (house). A new home spells a new family, hence the understanding is clear. But how do these simple, often illiterate, folk pay for these considerations? All with grandmother’s coins, and all displayed around her neck and wrists; all can rely on their doting matriarch to provide fortune and liberty, bank and dowry. All may have a new home to rejoice in with their own family. Through loud and colorful fiestas, with vestiges of their most ancient customs like scarring the face with red colonial irons in memory of the Spanish invaders who branded cattle and Indians, their dances illustrate the destiny of a human life. They are performed in traditionally fashioned robes of silk, embroidery, and gold, and some of grand-mother’s borrowed coins.
Dances follow love stories, and stories of adventure, or of the sowing and harvest, so important to the soul of their culture. Their customs and rites move their collective myths from the harvest, to love and coupling. The “Sandunga”(dance) of Oaxaca, in particular, hails the casamiento, though is overshadowed by the snowy white and embroidered “huipil,” or native dress, and the mountain-like headdress of the triumphant mother and wife. Life is affirmed, and the new couples head off for the lucky palm-shaded new home. These simple rituals of society respond to the rhythm of all existence.
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