“The engine seems hot, I wonder if the radiator is working…What’s that funny rattle when I brake? Did that oil on the pavement come from my bike?”
My worries were rewarded in Texas, when my progress came to a shuddering halt. It was the day before I was to cross into Mexico. I was riding through Big Bend National Park, where the road went over a long series of small rolling hills between candelabra-shaped saguaro cacti. At the bottom of one hill there was a jolt and a rattle, and the rear of the bike sagged as the suspension gave out.
I gingerly rode to El Paso, three hundred kilometres in the opposite direction from where I wanted to go, and found a motorcycle shop to do the repairs. But it was Friday afternoon, and they said nothing would happen until Monday morning. So I checked into the Coral Motel for the weekend. It was a seedy joint bathed in traffic exhaust, where the grubby curbside pool was now a sandbox. My room was dark, stank of stale cigarette smoke, and the girls staying next door didn’t look like the sort you’d bring home to Mother.
My rear tire was bald after 7,000 kilometres, and this was the perfect opportunity to change it for the new one I’d carried strapped to my luggage. As I’d ridden across the country I’d accumulated a tool kit that I thought would cover all my needs, including three small pry bars to use as tire tools. They were not designed as tire tools, but they were lighter and cheaper than the real thing, and I congratulated myself on my cleverness. I’d saved a few dollars like a good Mennonite, who uses every part of the pig but the squeal.
On Saturday morning I stripped the old tire off the rim and then grunted and cursed as I stretched the new one on. My clever, lightweight tools were rubbish. They flexed and slipped off the tire, catapulting across the parking lot with a twang. When the new tire was on the rim, I started inflating it, but my portable pump broke within the first ten strokes. I carried the tire to the gas station across the road and inflated it. By the time I had the tire back on the bike, it was flat again.
The tube showed a dotted line of the nicks that I’d made with my improvised tools, which had viciously sharp corners. I put another new tube into the tire, this time being more careful as I pried the tire back onto the rim. When I tried to inflate it, the air escaped as fast as I could pump it in. I’d nicked another one.
I imagined how this would amuse all the self-reliant Mennonite farmers I’d grown up with. They’d know better than to set off on some soul-searching motorcycle trip to begin with. Where was my Mennonite resourcefulness? It was a trait that was lauded above all else in the story of our immigration, replanting, and restarting. Started with nothing, whole world against us, everything built from the ground up, and now look at our righteous success. Mennonites might preach humility, but when it comes to our own perseverance and resilience, we are wont to boast.
I needed the resourcefulness my father had shown. Dirt poor but eager to work, he and my mother had lived the frontier life in the 1950s, at a time when most young Canadian couples were swing dancing and throwing cocktail parties in their affordable suburban homes. Instead, my parents cut down trees with handsaws and then borrowed bulldozers to rip roots from the soil until there was space to plant a crop, and that’s how they built our family farm in the Interlake, between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba.
Now, when his growing flock of grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered, the story was retold for the hundredth time. We knew the details better than Dad remembered them.
“Built a fire right under the engine of that old International truck, right, Dad? Truck was frozen solid and that’s the only way it would start, eh?” He nodded, his watery eyes coming alive with the memory. “Weren’t you worried that the truck would catch fire?”
He shrugged his shoulders and hee’d and hawed.
“It didn’t seem that dangerous at the time,” he always said. “We were too stupid to know what danger we were in. We had to get the work done.”
“All this, the farm, the house, everything, you built it from scratch.”
“That’s how we did it in those days.”
All I had to do was fix a few inner tubes. If I couldn’t even change a tire, how would I complete this epic ride I’d dreamed up? When I told my white-collar friends about my ocean-sailing adventures and traversing deserts by motorcycle, they often asked how I’d learned to fix the boat or get the motorcycle running again when it died.
“Well, I’m not a mechanic, but, you know, I grew up on a farm, so…” I’d say with a large dollop of false humility. The fact was, I didn’t have a clue how to fix an engine. Or a flat tire, it appeared.
I patched the tubes and walked to the nearest mechanic’s shop, the flat tire banging against my leg with each step. One of the workers kindly took time to work the tire back onto the rim, without cursing, breaking a sweat, or dropping a tool in the process.
But when I filled the tire and was checking the pressure, I heard it…the accusing hiss of air. Even my patches weren’t working!
I had only one patch left, and I applied it carefully. Then I carried both tire and inner tube back to the shop, where the mechanic had it back on the rim in minutes, tight as a drum. We pumped it up to full pressure—there was no hissing. By that evening the motorcycle shop had replaced my suspension, making my bike as good as new. And then I bought a set of proper tire tools, designed especially for changing motorcycle tires. They cost only US $5 each.
CHAPTER 3
Mexico
A Fight for Water
Directly across the US-Mexico border from El Paso is Ciudad Juárez, one of the most violent cities on earth, rife with drug cartels and thugs. I was terrified at the prospect of riding through this den of transgression. Living in the relatively safe cities of Asia for many years had made me soft.
I’d heard it would be safest to cross early in the day, while the bad guys were still recovering from the night shift, so I was queuing at the border as dawn broke. I’d eaten a big breakfast, my fuel tank was full, and my bladder was empty—there should be no need for me to stop until I’d reached safety. I felt like a weak swimmer setting off across the pool, eyes firmly fixed on the safety of the far side while dog-paddling for all I was worth.
I rode at the speed limit—I’d heard many a story about being stopped by Mexican cops and the bribes that were required. There were also crosses stuck into the sand beside the road to remind me that a lapse in concentration could be fatal. Some were painted white or draped in wreaths of faded plastic flowers. Here and there stood small shrines, painted gay blue and pink and yellow. Lives picked out in flowing script. José Luis Rodríguez, Jan. 3, 1983–Sept. 4, 2008. Luciana Evelyn López, July 12, 1978– Oct. 12, 2010.
The most elaborate of them had small glass windows that looked onto photos of those who had lost their lives on this road. Smiles that were innocent of the horrors to come. Eyes wide open were now closed for good, right here, on this patch of sandy roadside. I passed a whole crop of white crosses, a dozen, maybe more, two rows standing at attention in the ditch. A bus crash? A gruesome cartel killing?
I didn’t stop until I had reached Cuauhtémoc, named for a sixteenth-century Aztec ruler but now a Mennonite capital about four hundred kilometres south of the border. A shiver went up my spine as I rode through the crowded streets, heard the soft lilt of Spanish, and smelled the tacos cooking in street stalls. Now I felt like I was on a real adventure.
I found a café and waited for Abram Siemens, or Bram, the only person I knew in all of Mexico. Bram was my elementary school teacher and the principal of our three-room Mennville school for several years. Bram was Mennonite, but had grown up in Paraguay, rode a racing bicycle to town on the weekends, and spoke with a distinct German accent. He was a different kind of Mennonite than us. He was strict and his otherness only added to his authority.
I was a troublemaker in grade five. I’d once accepted a dare from the older boys and wrote Bram is a fag on the side of th
e school using ripe dandelion heads as my paintbrush. I wrote the letters as large as my short arms would allow, rubbing the yellow flowers into the white stucco of the school wall. Bram didn’t find it funny and the time of reckoning was painful. The sun took a long time to undo my work, and the slur remained for several weeks. I had been nervous to contact him again, but he immediately agreed to meet.
I recognized him as soon as he walked into the café, even though I hadn’t seen him in more than twenty years. Now in his mid-fifties, he was thinner of hair and the creases in his face had grown deeper, but he still had the same erect stature, intense eyes, and broad smile. Bram was the publisher of the Deutsch-Mexikanische Rundschau, a German newspaper serving the Mexican Mennonite colonies. He was also the host of a popular radio show that thousands of Mennonites listened to every day. We shared news of our families, and I gave him an abridged version of what I, one of his least-promising students, had done with my life. I told him about the journey I had only just begun.
“You’re a Menno on a moto,” he said, grinning at me. Menno. It was a self-deprecating term, usually said in jest. “The Mennonites you meet may not always see you as one of them, even though you think there’s a connection. But it’s worth a try.”
“I’m hoping you can help me. For starters, where are the colonies located?”
“Okay, this is where we are, right in the middle of Cuauhtémoc,” Bram said as he pushed aside our coffee cups and drew a map on a scrap of paper. “This road here leads to the Corredor Comercial Menonita where most of the big businesses are. This is the heart of the colonies, and here is where the radio station is, and my home is down a road to the right, down here.” He drew Xs and circled key intersections, pointing out Mennonite schools, senior citizen homes, supermarkets, and the most popular cafés.
Many Canadian Mennonites still live in tight-knit villages, but few still practise communal land ownership. However, when they came to Mexico the Mennonites bought large plots of land under a single title and created colonies where the infrastructure was owned communally, in a system that mimicked the one used by Mennonites in Russia. They divided the land among the farmers, with plots set aside for a church, a school, and a common grazing pasture. The colonies also export dairy and beef as a community, buy farm supplies in bulk, run their own banks, and build roads and infrastructure when the local governments don’t serve them to their satisfaction. There are about thirty colonies fanned out to the north of Cuauhtémoc, reaching almost all the way to the United States border.
“There are about 50,000 Mennonites living around here, and some more down in the south of the country,” Bram said. “Here’s Manitoba Colony, that’s one of the bigger ones, and here’s the road north to all the other colonies.”
I’d heard about a fight over water that was threatening not only Mennonite farms, but their pacifist ways as well.
“It’s an issue affecting all of the colonies,” Bram said. “It’s what everyone is talking about. It’s not a new problem, but it’s been dry lately, and now the conflict has become a bit more tense. Here’s a number for a guy, John Friesen. He’ll show you around.”
John was an avuncular retired farmer who drove a white Chevy 4x4 truck that was so new there was still protective plastic on the insides of the doors. John and his wife had lived in Canada for several years, but they had missed their lives in Mexico so much they returned. He took me on a driving tour of the colonies.
“Look, isn’t it beautiful?” John pointed at the green fields on either side of the road. “The Mennonites have built all of this, made these farms what they are today.”
About 120,000 hectares of land in Chihuahua was converted from lower-impact ranching to crop farming in recent decades. The Mennonites planted wheat, beans, and corn. They also made a popular soft white cheese known as queso Menonita. They embraced every technological advance they could lay their hands on to boost crop production, from irrigation and heavy tillage to the most toxic of chemicals and fertilizers. Hurting the earth to make money didn’t undermine Mennonite virtue.
“Look at a farm and you can tell it’s Mennonite because it’s much nicer than the Mexican farms,” John said as we drove through the colonies. “The Mexican farmers are often poor around here. They are not very good farmers.”
The Mennonite farms had straight rows of corn and tidy houses fringed with flower beds. White fences contained fat, well-bred cattle. Shiny tin buildings stood out crisply against the verdant land. Houses were built of red brick or concrete blocks painted white, with black- or red-trimmed windows, and they were always ringed by planted trees. Women were bent over hoes in their gardens, watering plants and mowing grass in their long skirts. Often, they were barefoot, dirty ankles peeking out from under their dresses. John was right, the Mennonite farms looked prosperous.
“Mennonites, they always try to make the farm look nice. Look at all the flowers you see, the gardens, that’s a Mennonite thing,” John said as we passed yet another immaculate farm.
But their success came at a cost. John turned down a dirt lane that cut across a farm. We came to a barbed-wire fence, where I hopped out and picked my way through the cow patties to open the gate. I inhaled the fragrance of pasture and manure as I waited for John to drive through. The rutted lane dipped towards a narrow creek, where the peacefulness of the Mennonite farm was interrupted.
The grass had been trampled and torn up by machinery and a herd of cowboy boots. Chunks of concrete littered the banks and a broken dam stood jagged and raw, like the open mouth of a brawler. John jumped on a broken piece of concrete and surveyed the damage, making quiet noises of displeasure. Dark water rushed through the ragged hole, and the pond behind the dam was nearly empty, its banks exposed and naked.
The armed Barzónistas had been here a day or two earlier. They had warned the police to stay clear, and the police listened, standing aside as the Barzónistas put their excavating machine to work breaking the dam. The Mennonites tried to stop them, starting a scuffle. The police, at first too afraid to intervene, finally waded in, firing their guns in the air to break up the melee. But by then it was too late, the water ran free.
The Mennonites were not only competing with the indigenous and Hispanic farms for land, but their intensive industrial farming practices pushed their fragile land to its very limits. The water table under the valley, which was surrounded by distant blue mountains, was running dry. The greed of the Mennonites over the remaining water was offending their neighbours.
“The Barzónistas say they help those that have been treated badly by others,” John said. “If they see one person getting very rich, they see to it that he has to share that wealth. And that’s what they say is happening here, that we Mennonites are not sharing the water with others. But the Mennonites didn’t even build this dam, it was here when the farmer bought this piece of land many years ago.”
The Barzónistas were named after the yoke ring to which a rope is attached to pull a plow, a term used in a Mexican revolutionary song about injustices against the farming class. They took up causes such as high electricity prices and indebtedness to banks. They blocked roads, picketed banks, bullied Mennonites, and planted the fear of mass revolt with their protests.
“Debo, no niego, pago lo justo,” (I owe, I don’t deny it, I’ll pay what is fair) they chanted in front of banks.
The socialist in me sympathized with the Barzónistas, and it was hard to ignore the better-than-them attitude of the Mennonites. Recent droughts had only made the disparity worse. The Mennonites had closed a few wells in concession, but they weren’t being closed fast enough for the Barzónistas. So far, the Barzónistas had destroyed five dams, with twenty-three—or forty- three, depending on who you spoke to—more on their target list. “Those dams provide water for a lot of cattle and irrigation, and without them these farms can’t exist,” John said.
Stories of standoffs between Mennonites and Barzón
istas were multiplying by the day. One Barzónista interviewed by a newspaper described the Mennonites as Germans burning up Mexican lands like the Nazis had burned up the Jews. A Barzónista leader and his wife were shot dead, and their bodies turned up in a field near a Mennonite colony, raising suspicion that the Mennonites were involved in their deaths.
“What do the Mennonites in Canada say about this? Do they support us?” John asked. He cared deeply how other Mennonites viewed those in Mexico and asked repeatedly how different aspects of Mexican Mennonite life were perceived in Canada.
I had to confess I didn’t know, it wasn’t something I’d heard discussed in Canada. I suspected that Mennonite farmers in Canada would take the side of their brethren in Mexico. Their conflict with Mexicans was comparable to the view most Mennonites took of Indigenous people in Canada. Yes, it was too bad, all that poverty and abuse and victimization, but they should fix it themselves, like the Mennonites did. It didn’t matter if you didn’t have bootstraps to pull yourself up by.
“It’s not good, the image that this gives Mennonites here in Mexico,” John said. “One farmer, when the Barzónistas came to his farm to tear down his dam, he told them they shouldn’t do this, that it was wrong. But they wouldn’t listen. So he told them he would cook them a meal, and then after they’d shared a meal maybe they would leave the dam. He kept his word and made them a meal, but they wouldn’t eat the food, that was just too much for them, although they did take a drink from him. There were government officials there with the Barzónistas, and the farmer showed the officials that his dam didn’t block a river, it just kept water that was already on his land from leaving. The government officials agreed, told the Barzónistas not to destroy the dam, and then left. As soon as they left the Barzónistas knocked the dam down, and the farmer just stood there, there was nothing he could do.
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