REPORT FROM SIERRA MADRE #3

David Werner

Copyright by David Werner
1966

THE TOLL OF THE RAIN

Earth, air, fire, and water are still the basic elements in the barrancas, but the most momentous, most prayed for, most fearful of these is water. Earth can be tilled or molded into homes. Air is forever and is of little threat; the worst wind storm this year was in May, and while it felled trees across the trails, ripped tiles from roofs, and raised a sea of dust which coated the casas inside and out, it caused little irreplaceable damage. Fire is man's servant, obedient if treated with respect, more readily managed than a mule. Although sometimes it escapes from burning milpas and destroys whole mountainsides, or drops hot coals from cooking fires to sear the surprised feet of children, on the whole it is little hazard.

But water! Water obeys no one in the barrancas. One day it serves, the next it reneges, and the next it masters. While it consents to follow roughly predictable seasons, its hour and extent come as it chooses. It is a sorcerer who can change the face of the landscape or the fate of a village overnight. It can be as fickle or, as faithful as a woman; as tempestuous or as tender as a drunk; as delightful or as cruel as a child. Water, in fact, is as creative and as destructive as man himself.

Man is the victim of the water's whim. If the summer rains are scant, the harvests fail. If the summer rains are bounteous, the trails wash out and the river and arroyos become impassable. In either case the water takes its toll.

This summer in the barrancas has been as exceptionally wet as last summer was dry. Those weather-prophets who, when it rained more than normally in las cabanuelas, predicted heavy rains during las temporadas, were right. Except for the water logging of some of the more level milpas, and of those higher in the sierra the relentless rains this season give promise of a boon harvest, for the corn has grown fast and fat. Heavy rains mean hard work, a constant battle to suppress the prolific weeds which shoot up even faster than the corn in response to the pounding raindrops. But the people do not mind this extra work, which means at the same time more food to come, except that many are hungry and underfed as a result of the crop failure from last year's drought. It is not easy for a man and his children to work all day on a mountainside with their stomachs empty.

From the time I arrived in Verano in early July, until now in mid-September, there have been only three days when in the afternoon it did not cloud over and rain. Yet not one day during the whole summer has passed without sunshine. Usually the days dawn clear and fresh, with fluffs of thin mist rising from the crevices of the lush and dripping hills. The temperature rises with the sun until, by noon, the day is hot. Then, sooner or later in the afternoon, usually between three and four o'clock, great billows of black rain-clouds come rolling down from the higher sierra, flashing lightning and grumbling like a convention of giants. With magic speed the clouds radiate out over the heavens, gushing a foreboding wind ahead of them, and the rain, in a grey,
sibilant curtain descends from the head of the valley. From mid-August on the rains have tended to come later in the afternoons, some times not beginning until after dark, or holding off into the wee hours, so that the dawn steals in through a misty drizzle. Invariably before noon, however, the sun breaks through, and the cloud banks dissolve within minutes to leave only a few silvery swirls of mist cavorting in slow motion through the steep ravines of the green and rocky mountains.

Sometimes the afternoon rain comes in sprinkles, sometimes in showers, but more often with a force so violent that --like a rainbow, or a lovely face-- it demands one's attention no matter how often one has seen it. How many afternoons, as the sky, like a dam, has exploded under its overload of water and --booming thunder and lightning—has descended in a torrent toward the earth, has a tremor of awe, a mixture of fear and delight, passed through each one of us, young and old, sheltered under the streaming tiles of the stout Casa Vidaca! Dropping our chores of the moment, how often have we hurried to the edge of the portal to stare out at the silver sheets of water pelting the dark leaves of the habas and palos colorados converting the yellow-red soil of the hillside into a cascade of soupy mud, while the stoic burros stand with their ears folded back, streaming water, the chickens poise tall and stiff on rocks and logs on higher ground, their tails bent down in a straight line with their bodies to better shed the water, and the invincible, oblivious hogs root on, as hungry as ever! How
often, peering over each other's shoulders, have we watched the thrashing arroyo rise, inch by leaping inch, sweeping logs and boulders in its surf, or waited to see if today's flood would exceed the level of yesterday.

The flooding of the arroyos is a special problem for those who live on one side and go each day to work their milpas on the other. The Arroyo de Verano is constantly playing games with such villagers, who drop their tlacuaches at the first rain drops and race down the steep mountainside to try to snake it across the arroyo while they still can. Frequently the water rises slowly and they have no difficulty, but if it has been raining hard farther upstream, the arroyo may rise as much as a foot a minute. I have seen it rise six feet in half an hour, covering the deeply-fluted base of the huge higuera on the bank below the casa Vidaca. I watch with suspenseful fascination as Bonifacio and his children, boys and girls alike, run by on their way from the milpa and dash fearlessly into the muddy, surging water.

One day a stout youth named Pablo returned late from his milpa. He came springing down the mountainside like a deer, a small sheet of plastic clutched over his shoulders in a vain attempt to shed the hammering rain, his pants rolled up above his knees. The arroyo was already a dangerously churning wake.

"¡No se puede pasar ahorita!" warned Irineo. (You can't pass it now!)

"¡Como no!" cried Pablo with a sunny laugh, "¡Lo paso volando!" (I'll pass it flying!) Which said, he turned and bounded into the avalanching water. A moment later he emerged on the other side, gave a triumphant whoop, and made his way up the muddy trail toward Verano.

"¡Que valiente!" (How brave!) I commented.

"¡Que tonto!" (How foolish!) retorted Irineo. "Hay muchos que han perdido la vida así." (There are many who have thus lost their lives.)

One day I myself had a close encounter with the arroyo. This was the day I went with Enrique and his son, Chon, over the high ridge and down to the Rio Verde to see them cross the flooded river on a wire cable stretched above the rushing water. On my return trip, welcoming the solitude, I had poked along, pausing here to look out upon the rugged scenery, there to watch the insects and flowers by the side of the trail. The afternoon rains, with brief warning, broke loose as I was descending the steep trail toward the canyon below E1 Rancho del Padre. This trail winds down the side of a steep ravine and enters the canyon about 400 yards downstream from Irineo's house. The rain was falling in a torrential cloudburst when I reached the canyon. The water had already begun to rise noticeably, and I debated whether I should risk wading upstream out of the steep-walled canyon, or should weather the storm where I was, which might mean spending all night in the wet ravine. Had it not been for my camera, I think I would have stayed, but there is a limit to how much rain the thin leather case can shed, and I decided to take the chance. I splashed into the rising water. Now the rain was falling so hard it blurred vision a few feet away. I hurried up the canyon as fast as I could, stumbling through the deep, rushing water and sinking at times into thick washes of mud. The churning torrent rose steadily until at the deeper points it was waist deep and I had to battle to keep my footing. I arrived at the casa Vidaca drenched and tired. Irineo laughed when he saw me, not so much at my bedraggled appearance as with relief. When it started to rain and I had still not returned he had begun to worry, and with reason.

Beremundo Vidaca and his family had an even narrower escape in the same canyon late in July. In El Tule, near the junction to the Arroyo de Verano with the Rio Verde, Beremundo had built a small hut of poles and thatch so that he and his family could pass las aguas near his milpas on the adjacent slope. The jejenes however, proved unbearable. In the late afternoons the clouds of these tiny insects were as thick as mist, and the skin of his children was peppered with bites. One of the little boys had scratched so much that one ear and the side of his face had become seriously infected, and at last Beremundo decided to bring his family back to E1 Rancho del Padre where the jejenes, if bad, are at least bearable. Unwisely, he decided to take the shortcut through the canyon, for the trail over the ridges is nearly two times as long.

Again the rain came early and suddenly. Quickly the water rose above the capacity of the children, and their parents had to carry them, Eulalia bearing the smallest child, Beremundo the other two, one piggy-back, and one in his arms. They arrived frightened and exhausted, but safe. I could not help but marvel at how they had made it through the rushing water, rolling rocks, and quagmires bearing their children as they did. But the people in the barrancas are as sure-footed as goats. They have
to be.

Sometimes, however, the villagers overestimate their capacity to cope with the floodwaters. I have already related how Dimas Lomas narrowly escaped drowning while trying to cross the flooded Rio Verde. Over the years the Rio Verde has taken its toll of lives. One of the fords below La Amargosa, for example, is now called "El Vado del Inocente" because several years ago, a brother of my host, Solomé Macías, in Huachimetas, was drowned at this spot, trying to make a crossing when the river was in high flood. Late this August, word came back up to Verano that the body of a man, hooked on a snag in mid-river, had been spotted by a child. The body was retrieved, but was already too far gone to be recognized. Around the dead man's neck was an empty bule (gourd) stoppered with a corn cob, which evidently he had contrived as a life-preserver in his attempt to cross the flooded river.

The Rio Elote, north of the Rio Piaxtla, whose tributaries we crossed on our journey into the high sierra, has also taken its toll of lives this summer. A man and his wife were trying to make the crossing to their casa when the woman slipped and was swept downstream. Her husband swam after her to try to save her, but the woman clutched at him and they were both drowned.

A few days ago Florinda Alvarado paid me a visit. She had come to ask for medicines to calm her sister, who, she said, "volvió loca" -- had gone out of her mind. Her sister, she explained, lives on a relatively small tributary of the Rio Piaxtla between Tayoltita and Verano. The family's milpa is on the far side of the arroyo. One afternoon, a little over a week ago, it began to rain unusually hard, the arroyo rose suddenly out of its banks. The worried mother went to the water's edge to await her husband and 12 year-old daughter who were weeding the milpa. By the time they arrived on the far side, the water had risen dangerously high and the mother shouted to them not to cross. But the father hoisted the little girl onto his shoulders, and despite his wife's cries of protest, waded into the flooded arroyo. Half-way across, with the water up to his shoulders, he stumbled and the little girl fell into the swirling current and was swept quickly downstream. Neither she nor her father knew how to swim, for during the dry season when the water is quiet enough for swimming, the stream is too small to permit it. The father himself narrowly escaped drowning. Four days have now passed since the drowning, Florinda told me, and still her sister remains hysterical.

Florinda also confided to me that now, after the drowning of her niece, she herself is more worried about the safety of her own children. Their milpa is also on the far side of the arroyo, and ever since her husband died "because he ate guayabas when he had a cold in the chest", her young sons have had to care for the milpa alone. Each day they must cross the arroyo, which in a normal rainy season rarely rises enough to be dangerous...

"But yesterday it was so deep we had to swim across!" asserted 14 year-old Pancho, a note of pride in his voice.

His mother shuddered visibly. She said she would like to forbid her children crossing the arroyo, "¿Pero si los niños no traspasan el monte, que vamos a comer?" (But if the children don't go through the weeds, what will we eat?)

And so, in mid-September, the rains continue to fall. How long they will last no one knows for sure. The weather-prophets say that because the new moon entered with water the rain will continue until the moon goes out. Nearly every afternoon the arroyos continue to flood. The river below remains high and -- but for the one cable in the barrancas -- is impassable except at great risk. The trails connecting the higher country with Ajoya -- although re-opened -- remain treacherous. The time is overdue for me to send off the third "Report from the Sierra Madre" (this) and to do so I must return to the lowlands. I would have preferred to wait until the arroyo and the river were less flooded, and the trails more easily traveled, but I have other reasons for wanting to return to Ajoya. During the rains, communications have been all but severed between Verano and the world beyond. On September 7th I received two letters which had been mailed from Palo Alto on June 28th! I have also received a hurriedly written note from Old Micaela, in Ajoya, saying, "Tenemos la Sofía muy mala. Favor de venir para curarla." (Sofía is very ill. Please come and treat her.) But the note did not arrive until two and a half weeks after it was dispatched, and as Micaela did not mention what sort of illness Sofía has, I have no idea whether by this time she is better, worse, well, or otherwise. So I am eager to get back to do what I can, for the Chavarins have treated me like a son. Also I have heard nothing from Goyo's family, and although I may be unable to cress the river to Las Chicuras, I would like to see if it is possible. And so, although somewhat delayed, this third Report should soon be in your hands, si Diós quiere.

AHEAD OF THE RAIN

After I returned to Ajoya from my brief visit to California in early June, it took me several days to get underway to Verano with my cargo. Dimas Lomas had once again offered to transport my supplies, but at first I could not locate him and then, as ever, he could not locate his mules. As the days passed I began to get more concerned. First, the weather! It was my hope to get all my supplies for summer and early fall up to Verano before las aguas began, and there were all the signs that the rain would begin early. Nearly every afternoon for more than a month dark clouds had built up over the mountains to the north-east and sometimes they had covered the entire sky. It was reported to have already rained hard higher in the mountains, and even in Ajoya there had been days of preliminary drizzles, called agüita as well as several short showers. There were nights when the flashes of lightning were so consecutive that one could easily walk over the roughest terrain without a light. Everyone was delighted, and said, "¡Habrá mucha agua en esta temporada!" (There will be a lot of rain this rainy season!)... Yet if the heavy rains came before I got my supplies up to Verano, not only would the short-cut via the Arroyo de Verano become impassable, requiring me to make the loop past Jocuixtita, half again as long and with more hard climbing, but I would run the risk of soaking my cargo in the cloudbursts or the flooding river. The medicines I had in water-tight cases, but not so the clothing, blankets, school supplies, and milk. . . Another cause for concern was that on June 24th, "El Día de San Juan", Dimas and everyone else who owned mules would be turning them over on rent to campesinos for use in plowing when the rain softened the soil. Past June 24th, therefore, it would be almost impossible for me to secure the animals I needed to transport my cargo, and that date was now approaching fast.

At last, on June 21st, Dimas turned up in the morning with five mules. Three were his own, and as he still had been unable to track down his remaining mules, he had borrowed two machos (males) from Chuy Manjarréz. But now there was a new hangup: Dimas apologized and said he would be unable to go himself, as he had to attend the funeral of an aunt who had just died in Culiacán.
With this news, Goyo's brother, Martín, who had arrived early from Las Chicuras with Goyo to help me pack, took off on the run to see if his father would help me drive the mule team to Verano. Although Remedios had been planning to leave himself that day for Candelero to hunt for a mule for plowing, in less than two hours he arrived in Ajoya, all set to go with me. As we had only one mule with a saddle, we quickly set about looking for another, so that we both might travel mounted. We called at half the houses in Ajoya, apparently with no success, and Remedios was
resigning himself to go on foot when two mules were sent simultaneously
from two different casas.

"Whoopee!" cried Goyo, "I can go too!" His father hesitated, then nodded his consent. Martín, who was quietly helping lash the cargo on one of the mules, ducked his head slightly, but said nothing.

"Y Martín?" I asked Remedios, "No puede ir también?" (Can't Martín go too?)

"Pues, como no," said Remedios, "Pero tiene que ir a pie." (But he'll have to go on foot.) And turning to the fourteen-year-old he asked, "Quieres ir, Martín?" (Do you want to go?)

Martín could not conceal his delight. "¡Sí!" he grinned.

It was nearly noon by the time we set off. We decided to go only as far as Bordontita, spend the night, and continue on the next day to Verano, returning all the way the following day (June 23) to Ajoya--a hard push, but we had to have the mules back by the 24th. Our pack mules were not the most manageable. One of them, a huge black macho, took off on a side path before we were even out of Ajoya. It crossed the river and traveled some distance downstream before Martín succeeded in circling ahead to herd it back. Martín rejoined us, dripping from the waist down with river-water and from the waist up with sweat, for the temperature was near 100º F. One of his sandals he carried in his hand, the cord having broken during the pursuit. Goyo, atop his small palomino mule, laughed with delight at his brother's appearance. And so did Martín, for he was glad to be of help.

Leaving Bordonita the next morning we might have made an early start, but again the black macho with his headstrong homing instinct escaped from us and took off at a. gallop back in the direction of Ajoya. Remedios and Martín chased after it while Goyo and I rounded up the remaining mules and tied them securely. Hours later, the mule retrieved, we continued our journey up river.

In Bordontita we were warned that it had rained in Verano and the trail following the arroyo down to the river was muy feo in places. However, we were told, it was still passable, as long as it didn't rain again. We determined to chance it, for, if we were to get back by the 23rd we did not have time to take the longer route.

Although the river was muddy with the runoff from the hills we stopped for a swim and a bath before entering the Arroyo de Verano. The water-level in the arroyo had dropped since the rain, but some of the stretches where the trail followed the stream bed were made difficult by washouts or deep deposits of soft mud... Martín was walking on foot. Part of the time he had been riding en ancas behind Goyo on the mule, but he became irritated because Goyo had several times made the mule rear so that Martín, on the rump behind the saddle, had to hang on for all he was worth. Martín said that if he fell, the mule might kick him, and it was safer to walk. So walk he did, one foot sandaled and the other bare, for miles, and was a little proud of himself for doing so.

At one point along the trail when I was bringing up the rear, Goyo suddenly reined in his mule and turning to me with a grin asked, "¿No quieres leche?" at the moment we were passing a number of range cattle, and one of the cows had an udder temptingly full. I was debating whether to say yes or no when Goyo, a piece of rope in his single hand, bounced off his mule and tore after the cow, which bounded away in the opposite direction. The cow circled around a thorny clump of bushes and headed back in my direction, Goyo close behind. I swatted my mule so that it danced forward, causing the cow to stop an instant in wonderment. That instant was all that was needed. Goyo caught hold of one hind leg, and a moment later, using his feet, teeth, and single hand, had managed to bind the baffled bovine's two hind legs together. The cow and I looked on in astonished silence.

"¡Bajase pa' tomar leche!" shouted Goyo, looking enormously pleased. I laughed and climbed down off my mount. I knelt by the cow and Goyo squirted the warm milk into my mouth, laughing all the while. When I'd had my fill I went to the stream to wash my face, beard, and hair, for Goyo -- rather intentionally, I think -- had been none too accurate with his aim... After he drank, Goyo untied the cow and we remounted, setting off at a gallop where the trail allowed, to catch up with the others.

We were approaching a spot where the stream plummets in a narrow, spouting falls for some 40 feet into a deep pool, and were going slowly of necessity because of rocks and mud, when Goyo, looking ahead, cried, "¡Mira! ¡Se cayó un macho!" (Look, a mule has fallen!) There, ahead of us to the side of the falls was the floundering mule. Remedios was standing beside it looking worried. Goyo whipped his animal to hurry, and I followed suit.

"¡No puede levantarse!" (It can't get up), said Remedios as we drew rein. I asked if the mule had broken a leg. Remedios said he didn't know, and added, "¡Se atasco!" (It's stuck!), and pointing to the soft mud in which the animal lay wide-eyed, said, "¡Una ciénega!" (Quicksand.)

The small bog was only a little wider than the laden mule, and flanked on either side by protruding boulders. Perched on the stones we managed to unlash the cargo--which included two 50 pound duffles of powdered milk and two other sacks of clothing and blankets--and lifted them to the side. Then, pulling the halter, Remedios tried to make the mule fight its way out of the loose mud. The mule made a few feeble efforts and then remained quiet, its head thrown back and the whites of its eyes gleaming with fear. Remedios began to beat the animal unmercifully with his leather pial. Harder and harder he beat it, until he was streaming sweat and the mule was rearing its head from side-to-side in agony. At last, with an enormous, thrashing effort, the mule managed to stumble forward and out of the quicksand. We led it, dripping mud, up over the rough stretch to a small clearing, and there relashed the cargo.

For more than are hour now, the sun had been concealed behind fast building clouds, and as we were repacking, a crash of thunder announced the oncoming storm.

"Va a llover." said Remedios, looking up at the dark sky through the narrow slit in the high canyon walls flanking the arroyo. "Tenemos que apurarnos." (We must hurry.)

And hurry we did, as much as we could over the rugged trail. We splashed through the stream, plowed across mud deposits, scrambled our mules up smooth channels of rock down which the stream cascaded. The thunder continued to rumble and the sky to darken, although it was still only mid-afternoon. Our concern, now, was not only for our cargo. If the storm came quickly and was heavy, we might well be trapped in the narrow canyon by a flash flood. I remembered Irineo's account of how this same stream, now so small, had left its banks, uprooting giant fig trees over a meter in diameter, and carrying in its tumultuous wake "un chorro de reses ahogados" (a torrent of drowned cattle). On the rock walls to either side of us, well over our heads; we could see the high waterline of the floods from previous years.

At last the canyon widened to form a steep valley, and we arrived at the rancho of Irineo Vidaca. No more than ten minutes after we had finished unloading the animals the storm broke. The rain streamed off the tiles of the roof in a translucent curtain of water, gushed down the mountainside and around the house and poured into the arroyo. Within fifteen minutes from the start of the rain, the arroyo had risen over two feet, here below the casa where the banks are wider. There in the canyon who knows what it was like! We had been lucky.

As we sat in the portal looking out at the deluge, old Irineo told us of a time, several years ago, when a group of children followed by their mothers were making their way down the arroyo toward the river some 8 km. below to wash their clothes, for it was near the end of Las Secas and the arroyo was reduced to a few puddles, scarcely enough to provide drinking water. Although the sun was shining brightly where they left, higher up in the mountains an early storm had hit the headwaters of the arroyo, and the run-off converged on the arroyo. At the moment when the waters came rushing past Verano, the frolicking children had strayed far ahead of their mothers into the canyon. The mothers, who had entered only a short distance into the steep-walled part of the canyon when the flash flood hit them, managed to fight their way back upstream to where they could climb out to refuge before the water rose beyond coping with. There they waited desperately for the waters to subside. But at dusk the arroyo was still flooded and the terrified mothers returned to their casas to seek the aid of their men folk. They had no more than arrived, however, when the children came running up, laughing with the excitement of the day. As luck would have it the flood had caught them at a point where the canyon widens and a small, precipitous trail scales its flank and leads off in the direction of Las Calaveras and Pueblo Viejo. The children had scampered up the trail to the top of the canyon and slowly made their way back to Verano por los altos (via the ridges).

As we Stood in the portal, looking out, the rain continued to pelt down, the arroyo continued to rise. Irineo told us that another time, a few years ago in the month of May, an arriero (burro driver) and his two sons were driving a train of ten burros and two or three mules up the arroyo when a freak flood came rushing down the arroyo at them in a wall of water two meters high. The father and his sons caught hold of
descending roots of a Tescalama (type of fig) growing from a crack in the rock cliff, and hoisted themselves out of reach of the flood. Five minutes after the flood the arroyo was again seco de atiro (stone dry), but the entire train of donkeys and mules had been drowned. The arriero and his sons spent the next day hunting up and down the arroyo for the bits and pieces of their cargo, and recovered the parajos and gamarras from their dead animals. "¡Se pone muy feo a veces, el arroyo!" (It gets
pretty ugly at times!) concluded Irineo.

The rain continued to pour down. This was the first violent storm in Verano this rainy season, and it was good luck that I happened to be here when it came. Although I had been assured that the grain shed,, where I had my medicines arranged on improvised shelves, did not leak, when I entered it during the cloudburst it was like entering a cold shower. I called to Irineo's nephew, Alvaro, who scrambled onto the platform under the roof and begin reshifting the tiles, while I hurriedly rearranged my belongings to keep them as dry as possible. With luck we caught the leaking just as the downpour began, and nothing was seriously damaged.

After half an hour or so the rain subsided to a drizzle. On the opposite side of the arroyo the children of Bonifacio ran out into the muddy yard to play and shout. Their frolicking was too much for Goyo, who set off to cross the arroyo to join them. Martín and I both called to him, for his father was out back at the moment. We warned him not to cross, for although the rushing brown waters were at the moment only waist deep (no threat to Goyo who is used to crossing the flooded river at Ajoya), the arroyo might continue to rise, and he might not be able to return. Goyo, however, paid our warnings no heed, and taking off his sandals and his pants, waded out into the rushing stream. Feeling his way among the rocks and roots of the bottom he passed the swirling water with utter fearlessness. Remedios arrived on the scene just in time to see Goyo trot out on the far bank, was about to shout to him, and then shook his head and let him go...

Where Goyo goes excitement frequently follows. A short time after he crossed the stream, in the dusk, we heard triques and cohetes (firecrackers and rockets) being fired off on the far side. The arroyo continued to grow as night fell. It had risen at least another foot from the time Goyo had crossed. And now the rain began to fall again. more heavily. Still no sign of Goyo. Remedios stood in the portallooking out into the dark, a worried but resigned look on his thin, scarred face. Bringing up Goyo had not been easy!

I remembered some weeks before in Ajoya when Goyo, lying to me, insisted that his parents had given him permission to spend the night in Ajoya, and I loaned him a blanket on which he curled up on the floor in the casa Chavarin. Back in Las Chicuras, his worried parents waited up for him until after midnight, and then Remedios set off to look for him, fearing he might have slipped while crossing the river or fallen in the night from the narrow cliff trail ascending from its banks. Remedios arrived at about two in the morning, found Goyo asleep on the floor, and shook him to waken him. Goyo either did not wake, or, more likely, pretended not to waken. Remedios, above all else content that Goyo was safe, left his son without disturbing him further, and made his way through the dark night across the river to Las Chicuras. The next day it was I, not his parents, who scolded Goyo for his mistruth. Since the loss of his arm Goyo has been, without question, spoiled. His parents are frank to admit it, and to explain their lenience relate of another child they knew of who, like Goyo, had had his hand amputated. Two years afterward, "because the child's parents had continued to spank and reprimand him", "le cayó cancer" (cancer struck him) and he died.

Because of their dread fear of cancer, Goyo's parents are hesitant to raise a finger against him. "Cancer", it seems, is one of those mysterious modern diseases, the news of which has come up from the cities below. No one is too sure just what it is, and for this reason it is all .. the more terrifying. The villagers know that people die of it, and deaths which are unaccountable in other terms are therefore quickly accredited to it. As the undoubtable cause of otherwise unexplained mortality cancer is the enlightened villager's substitute for witchcraft. However, the cause of the cancer must also be known before the people can sleep easy, for they must know what precautions to take. Luckily there are always knowledgeable persons to make up sensible-sounding teleologies -- as, in this case, the spanking of the amputated child. The unquestioning acceptance of such explanations by Goyo's parents is typical.

As the night in Verano grew darker and the rain continued to fall, Goyo's father became increasingly nervous. At last, unable to stand still any longer, he walked out into the wet darkness and made his way toward the still rising waters of the arroyo. As he neared the stream I heard him call back to me, "¡Hijo de la fregada! ¡Aquí esta!" And sure enough, Goyo had just emerged out of the tumultuous arroyo atop a mule he had borrowed from Bonifacio, and was trying to chase it back to the other side. The mule was already in the water again, and Goyo was hurling rocks at it to make it hurry. Bonifacio, standing on the other side in the rain, was waiting to receive it. Remedios and Goyo returned to the house arm in arm, both of them wet and laughing.

That night Remedios, Martín, and Goyo slept on the floor of the portal under a single blanket. Neither Martín nor Remedios slept much, for an incisor tooth which Martín broke a year ago, and which had subsequently turned bluish, was hurting so much that he wept most of the night. Previously the pain had frequently been checked with aspirin I had given him, but this time even Darvon proved inadequate. By morning a portion of Martín's face was badly swollen. I started him on tetracycline, and determined to take him to San Ignacio to get the tooth extracted at the first opportunity.

In the morning, the sky was clear and the water in the arroyo had dropped nearly to the level of the day before. Although we had no idea whether the river below would be flooded, we decided to chance going back down the arroyo. There were some new and difficult washouts, but the trail was not much more difficult than it had been coming up, and we traveled more quickly for lack of cargo. When we arrived at the river some two hours later we found that it was indeed in flood, but not so much as to be impassable on mule back. At this point Remedios borrowed one of the mules and left on a shortcut for Candelero. Now that the heavier rains had begun, he was afraid if he put off going any longer he would not be able to make it, and he was counting on securing a mule for plowing from his father there. Remedios set off upstream, and the two boys and I, downstream, driving the empty pack mules ahead of us.

The river crossings were fierce enough to make the trip great fun. Of the thirty-two fords from the arroyo junction to Bordontita, many were so deep as to come half way up the bodies of the mules. At each vado Martín, who was balanced atop the broad parejo (pack-saddle) of one of the pack-mules, hung on for all he was worth, grinning quietly. Meanwhile Goyo -- hoisting up his feet as the swirling brown water reached nearly to the back of his small, strong mule -- could scarcely contain himself, and whooped and shrieked with laughter.

The pack mules gave us no problems this time, as they knew they were headed homeward. One of the mules took off ahead of us and arrived nearly half an hour before we did. In the afternoon it clouded over once again, and a kilometer or so before arriving in Ajoya we were caught in a downpour. The mules began to run and we let them. We arrived tired and laughing.

SAINT JOHN'S MADNESS

In a village like Ajoya, where there is little entertainment other than the self-provided, people are always on the lookout for an excuse to celebrate. For instance, everyone effectively has two birthdays each year. One is his cumpleaños, the anniversary of the day he was born. The other is his día del santo, the day of the saint whose name he bears. Thus, on the 19th of March, "El Día de San José", everyone named José is celebrated. On the 9th of September, "El Día de San Gregorio", all the Goyos are celebrated. Thus, for nearly every day in the year. Each village also has its own patron saint. San Jerónimo is the patron saint of Ajoya--the full name of the village being "San Jerónimo de Ajoya"--and when September 30th rolls around people come to share in the festivities from as far away as Caballo and Verano, in spite of the river which is frequently still flooded at that time. In Campanillas the big fiesta is on August 4th, the day of Santo Domingo, who is patron saint of that village. In addition to these saint's days for individuals and villages there is an array of national holidays to be observed, such as "El Cinco del Mayo", celebrating the Battle of Pueblo; the 10th of September, which is Independence Day; and the 12th of October, commemorating the discovery of América. Apart from Christmas, Easter, and the other standard religious occasions, there are of course the days of the more notable saints, which everyone in all villages celebrates. No sooner had the villagers finished feasting "El Día de San Juan Bautista", June 24th, than they were again feasting "El Día de San Pedro", June 29th, and I was invited to a chicken dinner in the casa of Pedro Celís. And so on, ad infinitum.

There is an element of jovial madness in all the days of fiesta, but Saint John's Day on June 24th is the maddest of all. It is the Day of Baptism in every sense, for, in the minds of the villagers of Ajoya, it is the day that demarcates the commencement of las aguas. In Verano the rains begin somewhat before the 24th of June, in San Ignacio somewhat later, but whatever villager you ask in Ajoya will reply that "Las aguas empiezan el día 24 de Junio." This is the day when the owners of the mules turn them over to the campesinos for use in plowing during the rainy season. This is the day when every spirited soul in the village -- devout or not, and most are not -- rises before dawn to plunge, clothes and all, into the river. This is the day of parading and of horse racing in the dirt streets. But most of all, it is the day that demarcates the new season of water and of growth, of the plowing and planting, of the sowing of the coming year’s food. The weather on this day is an omen for the season. All day people watch the sky saying, "¡Ojalá que llueva bién!" (Oh, that it rains well!) In short, the day of baptism has taken the form, as much as anything, of a ritual to the rain-gods.

This year, long before dawn--it must have been about 3:00 A.M. -- there were the sounds of explosions in the streets., People were setting off firecrackers and skyrockets. A few minutes later the big drum of los músicos began to beat, first slowly, then in crescendo, until it was rolling like thunder. The sky was lightly overcast, dimming the stars, and the cagüite -- fine mist-like drizzle preceding las aguas put a chill in the air. After several emphatic thunder-rolls of the drum, the "Banda de Ajoya" began to play. From the central plazuela its players slowly made their rounds through the streets, blaring forth in a wild, Latin beat. Doors opened as they passed and sleepy tenants, mostly children, stumbled out and followed. As they gradually woke up they began to shout and frolic, calling out others to join. The stream of villagers behind the musicians grew and grew, and with it the pandemonium. At last "La Banda", like the Pied Piper, left the village and made its way toward the water. The people swarmed after. When the musicians reached the dark river, flooded by rains higher in the mountains, they stepped aside, still playing furiously, and the villagers plunged like lemmings into the churning water, landing on top of each other, striking heads, smashing into hidden rocks, shouting and dragging themselves out, only to be knocked in again by those to follow, laughing, shrieking! Never short of the Ganges itself was there as insane a "baptism" as this.

As dawn crept in slow and red from the east, I commented to little Goyo -- who had spent the night in Ajoya so as not to miss the festivities, and was now standing at my side -- that I marveled how apparently no one had been injured or drowned. Goyo replied that some years there had been serious injuries. He added that, "Ahora cuando zamputió un chamaco, le quebró un diente contra una piedra." (Today when a boy dove in he broke a tooth on a rock.) It was not until later that afternoon, when Goyo suddenly burst into a grin, that I realized that the chamaco he had referred to was himself; he had cracked off the end of one of his canines in the morning's mad plunge! I was far more upset about it than he.

There was a lull of events during the morning. The haze cleared and the sun rose,
sweltering hot. Every female in town from tiny tot to tottering viejita was busy bathing and primping and dressing in her best. María put three clean costumes on little Bene, who promptly piddled on each one of them. "La Banda de Ajoya" continued to mosey through the streets blasting forth, and now there were other groups of guitarists and singers as well. Men folk with enough money to afford to drink -- and many without enough to -- were beginning to get drunk. But still it had not rained.

Shortly before noon there was a crash of thunder over the mountains upriver, and everyone gave a whoop and cried, "¡Va a llover!" (It's going to rain!) The clouds built up with surprising rapidity and drifted, black and billowing, toward Ajoya. Slowly, like the eyelid of a big owl, the cloud-front closed off the sun and the sky. The thunder and lightning grew closer, louder, and more frequent. Around one o'clock the storm broke like a dam! Water poured from the sky flooding the street. Children danced in it.

La Aguas had begun! And on the day they were supposed to! Before then there had been a few brief showers, but nothing, nothing like this. Although the storm did not reach even as far as San Ignacio, from Ajoya to Carrisál the road was obliterated within hours. When the rain started Antonio Manjarréz was in Ajoya with his four-wheel drive truck, and he tried to make a run for it. But where the road passes the arroyo the rain had already washed it out so badly, unburying boulders up to three feet, that Antonio had to spend several hours hacking a new trail up through the village and cross-country back to the road again.

The heaviest downpour lasted only about an hour and a half, then shifted to a shower which varied in intensity as the cloud mass rained overhead. The people in their fine clothes, impatient for the rains to stop, began to appear in the streets regardless, on horse-back, on mule-back, on burro-back, and those who had no mount, on foot. They went this way and that, the rain pouring down on them, then slowly began to amalgamate into a group. The musicos fell in ahead, and the wet but happy parade began. At times a child atop a burro or riding horseback would challenge one or two others to a race. The competitors would line up at the far end of town. Someone would give the word, and they would splash neck and neck down the muddy street.

The Casa Chavarín is the last house on the lower side of the main street. At a right angle with it and blocking the end of the street is the house of Carlos, the barber and butcher. As I was standing in the Chavarín house watching events, two valiant horse racers, both drunk, came galloping down the street in our direction. They had started at a given point but had neglected to establish a finish line, and here they came, lickety-split. Women screamed and children jumped out of the way. One of the horsemen had a slight lead on the other. They dashed past the Chavarin house and straight at the house of Carlos gained speed. Just as the lead horse was entering the portál full-speed, the drunken rider noticed the overhang and ducked sideways just
in time to avoid decapitation. As the horse suddenly braked, he went flying through the air and landed with a hard thump six feet ahead of the bewildered beast. I held my breath, expecting another tough medical repair job, but the inebriated jinete staggered to his feet, and loading his bruised horse back out of the portál, he looked up at the other contestant who at the last moment had succeeded in drawing a crowd and cried drunkenly, "¡Le gané!" (I won!)

LAS AGUAS

Suddenly, with the coming of summer, 'springtime' arrives in the Sierra Madre. The flanks of the mountains -- which from March to mid-June are as lean and leafless as an Ohio woods in winter -- explode into life. In the awakening trees, luminous green leaves unfold like ??? at the touch of the falling raindrops. Even the earth, which
has looked like a yellow-white powder baked by the harsh sun, is transformed into a dark sponge, carpeted with an eager vegetation that each day reaches higher toward the light. The air -- which in the dead days is misnomered primavera -- hung in a heavy haze of dust, and then of smoke caused by countless burnings in the hills --becomes so clean that the most distant peaks seem but a day away on foot. Birds begin to carol with new vigor. Butterflies are rampant. Even the tropical heat, so stifling back in May and early June, is eased by the pounding cloudbursts. Each day since the first tempestuous storms, new flowers have burgeoned forth. On the shaded slope near Goyo's casa in Las Chicuras, a delicate garden springs up, of wild ground orchids called cebollín, whose slender petals give them the look of soft, white spiders. And all along the cliffs overlooking the Rio Verde, the waxen, candle-like buds of sacalosuche -- a tree rhododendron -- curl open into white bouquets...

Now that the soil of the newly-timbered milpas has been well soaked and softened by the rain, the campesinos have begun to plant their corn. A few are tilling with borrowed mules or oxen, others with teams of burros, but the majority still sow their corn with a planting stick, or güica, as did the Indians before them. Already the first
pale shoots of new corn are breaking through the wet soil with their promise of next season's harvest...

Surely, all these awakenings are the signals of springtime. I must remind myself that the first days of July have already passed.

To a norte-americano like myself, the seasons of the Sierra Madre seem all mixed up. When I arrived in Ajoya in early December, the weather was hot, like Summer. But almost at once the winter rains, or las cabanuelas set in and the weather turned cold, like winter ought to be. Yet within a few weeks many of the trees, such as of amapa prieta and rosa amarilla burst into a profusion of bloom, giving winter the aspect of "Indian spring". Then spring came, or at least the months of spring, and everything died. Leaves fell from the trees as in autumn; and March, April and May passed with the lifeless look of winter coupled with the sweaty heat of summer. Then, finally, summer came, with its rain and its rebirth of trees and flowers, its cooler temperatures, and the first sowing of grain, a renaissance for all the world like spring.

A REAL DOCTOR

On June 26th, Dr. Price, pediatrician from Palo Alto, together with his wife Joan, and three small children arrived in San Ignacio according, to schedule. I was there to meet them with my jeep. This took some doing as mine was-the-first vehicle to travel from Ajoya since the storm of "El Día de San Juan." As the road was now impossible for the Prices' microbus, we transferred their gear into and onto my Jeep and returned over the rough track to Ajoya. Helped and hindered by a troop of village children, the Prices pitched camp on a hilltop overlooking the pueblo. Every day for the eight days of their visit, and without being asked, one villager or another -- sometimes a child, sometimes a woman, sometimes an old man, on foot or with the aid of a donkey --brought up water for them from the river.

The greatest number of patients whom Dr. Price examined during his visit were children with diarrhea. Now that the rains had started there was scarcely a house in the village where children were not stricken with el chorro. Dr. Price informed me that recent studies indicate that supportive treatment for dysentery is more significant than medicinal. Bed rest and a liquid diet with adequate salt intake are the most important. We ran into some real problems, however, in trying to apply this course with our patients. A mother would come with a child with diarrhea and we would tell her, as simply as possible, to withhold all other food and to give the child a mixture of one teaspoonful of salt and three tablespoons of sugar in a liter of boiled water. We would repeat the instructions several times and the mother would assure us she had understood. Then we would ask her to repeat back the ingredients and she would titter with embarrassment and say "Ya se me olvidó." (Now I forget.) We would repeat again and again until she had it straight, or would write out the formula if she knew how to read, which was rarely. Then the mother would leave, showing obvious disappointment. She had hoped for some magic potion from the new white doctor and all she had got was the advice to give ingredients she already had and knew weren't magic at all. I think it was for this reason she found it so difficult to remember. Two or three days later the mother would return, entreating us to go to her house. There we would find the child, or children, still stricken with el chorro and the mother would entreat us again for "una medicina buena" or better yet, in her mind, "una inyección". We would ask her if she had followed the formula and she would assure us "¡que si!" But on asking her again to repeat the proportions, more often than not we found she had confused them. Or we would ask if she had been giving other food, and she would reply, "¡No, nada!" . . but on pressing her further, she would confess "pues yo le di unas tortillas," or "un poco de frijoles." (I gave him a few tortillas/beans.)

Dr. Price and I concluded that the solution was to give out the sugar and salt mixed in the right proportions and ready for adding the boiled water. We thought to include baking soda as well, for apart from its own value, it is fizzy and therefore more like medicine. In addition, when we went to Mazatlán we purchased a batch of Kool-Aid, strawberry-flavored because "medicines are red", to add taste and character to our new magic powders I have since been giving out the "red fizz" to mothers to add to one liter of boiled water for their stricken little ones, and have been having better results. Because it is now a medicina, the mothers are careful to ask "¿si no tiene dieta?" (Is there a diet?) I tell them to give absolutely no other food while the child is taking "la medicina colorada" and they follow the instructions because they fear that food "se contrarea con la medicina" (will oppose the medicine).

Another discouraging battle we had was over the question of boiling water. If the water is for mixing with medicine, the people will boil it religiously. But for everyday use, no. They will nod in agreement that much of the diarrhea comes from "los microbios en el río." They will concede that every year many children die as a result of this water. They will even concede to boil the water, saying it is "muy importante." But when we return a few days later to see if they have really been boiling the water, they will say, "Pues, no... " Es que nosotros no estamos acostumbrados hacer esas cosas." (Well, no. . . It's that we're not used to doing these things.) Nevertheless, here and there, there is a family that has begun to boil their water regularly, and I suppose that is a start.

One of the most critical patients we examined lived "en la loma" (on the hilltop) not far from where the Prices were camped. The family is pobre de atiro, for Juan, the father, has been too ill to work for more than two years, and before that most of the money that came his way he used for drink. From his drinking has come his sickness, namely cirrhosis. His abdomen is bloated to three times its normal size, while the rest of his body has become emaciated in extreme. He lives on the hill crest in a tiny shack, together with his wife and children, ranging from fifteen down to less than a year. (Although too ill to work he is still well enough to have babies.)

We gave Juan medication and powdered milk, advised him as to diet, and told him to remain lying down or moving about but not to sit with his legs hanging over the edge of the bed as he was accustomed to do all day long, for his feet are also edemic. His wife informed us that they had scraped together 200 pesos and were thinking of taking Juan to Mazatlán for examination. We told them Juan stood a better chance of recovery if they were to spend the money on protein-rich food, perhaps buy a flock of chickens to provide eggs. I had already sent Juan and his wife to Mazatlán two months before with a cover letter to the Director of the Centro de Salud, providing 100 pesos for the trip; but they had spent the money on a curandero (healer of witchcraft) instead of going to the Centro. Juan had not improved.

One evening while the Prices were in Ajoya, the baker woman, Rosaura, Ramona's grandmother, made a social call at their camp. With her came old Nicolasa, the lavandera (washer woman) who lives on "la loma" in a but next to that of little Goyo's great-grandmother. We began to chat, and in the course of the conversation mentioned that we had been to see Juan.

"¡No me gusta nada esas gentes!" (I don't like those people!) cried Old Nicolasa in her sharp, scratchy voice. "¡Tienen la lengua larga!" (They have the long tongue')

I tried to draw from Old Nicolasa what she was referring to, but she was non-committal. She added only, "Les andan con las mentiras como los mayates andan con la mierda!" (They move along lies like beetles move along dung!)

We could not account for Old Nicolasa's vehemence until Rosaura explained to us that Juan’s family had spread rumors that Nicolasa had placed a hex on him, causing his bloated condition. They claimed she was a witch!

"¡Chismeros!" cried Nicolasa. (Gossipers!)...

I recalled that old Micaela had told me that Nicolasa had killed a man years ago with a hex which had made him panzón (pot-bellied) and that now she was hexing his son. It suddenly dawned on me that this must be Juan. "¿Como murió el papá de Juan?" (How did Juan's father die?) I asked.

"Pues, de la misma enfermedad," (Of the same illness) replied Rosaura.

"¿Tomaba mucho tambien?" (Did he drink a lot, too?) I asked.

"Mucho!" asserted Rosaura, and by way of explanation added, "¡Pues los dos eran musicos!" (Both of them were musicians!)

Rosaura defended Nicolasa, saying that Nicolasa had been working in her house and doing her wash for years, that often she worked until after dark, and then went straight home, where she cared for her grandchildren. There was no conceivable time that she could be sneaking to the graveyard to make clay monos and cast hechizos.

"Yo no creo nada en las brujas." I said (I don't believe in witches at all.)

"¡Yo tampoco!" (I don't either!) creaked Old Nicolasa, and she threw up her gnarled hands and cackled.

Before his departure from Ajoya, Dr. Price had begun to gather a reputation he had not gambled on, that of a witch doctor, a curer of witchcraft.

One morning while the Prices were breakfasting, María, the old woman who cured Jose Vidaca's baby of caida de la mollera (sunken fontanel), brought on her head a bucket of water for the Prices, and proceeded to inform Val of a transient paralytic cramping she suffered on one side of her body. To demonstrate she crooked her right arm in a grotesque fashion, recalling the seizures of Dr. Strangelove. Neither Dr. Price nor I had a clue to what might be the cause, unless psychosomatic, and after hinting around a bit, María volunteered that she thought she might have been hexed by an old witch in Pueblo Viejo. We decided to give her vitamins and assured her, as a kind of psychotherapy, that soon she ought to be feeling better... Word spread fast that the American doctor was now curing hechizos. That same afternoon Old Lupe, Micaela's sister, although she had not bothered to come all week, made three visits to the casa Chavarín in the hopes of having her hex lifted. She is loquacious, fat, and has an endless series of complaints. For over two months I treated her for a necrotic buttock which had resulted from an injection with an unsterile needle. Lupe blames all of her ailments down to the deaths of her children, of which she has lost all but two of her eight, on witchcraft. Micaela insists that it is the work of either Old Cecilia, Nicolasa, or both. Unfortunately (or fortunately), when Lupe made each of her three visits we happened to be out on house calls, and next day the Prices left for Mazatlán. Hence Dr. Price was denied the opportunity of providing a cure for Lupe's manifold hexes.

• • •

Up to the time the Prices left Ajoya, Val and I paid several calls on Juan, the cirrhotic, and, in spite of our advice, each time we found him sitting with his swollen feet hanging over the edge of his bed. The morning of the Prices' departure Val passed by Juan's shack, and neither Juan nor his wife was there. The day before we had heard rumor that they were preparing to leave for Mazatlán, and we had stopped by to advise them once more against it. They had assured us that they had given up the idea.

In my jeep, I drove the Prices to where they had left their microbus in San Ignacio. Sure enough, half way over the rough 27 km. stretch of dirt road, Val said "There they are." And there they were, Juan and his wife, trudging along, Juan laboring under the load of his swollen abdomen, his wife laboring under a large suitcase she carried balanced on her head. We stopped the car. They were embarrassed to see us. We asked where they were going, and they said to the Centro de Salud in Mazatlán. We told them again they would do better to go home, and spend their pesos to buy chickens.

Our advice, of course, did no good. They were probably on their way to see another curandero to have the hex lifted. Perhaps they even suspected us of wishing them ill, for had not Old Nicolasa spent an evening with us in the Prices' camp...? Juan will probably die of cirrhosis. When he dies people will say the hex killed him, and in part, alas, they will be right.

MY KINGDOM FOR A MULE

To assure that one is well provided for in his old age, it is advisable to have a goodly number of sons. Next best is to have a goodly number of mules. A man with half a dozen tiros (pairs) of mules can live off the income of his mules alone. Old Manuel Gallardo, with whom I stayed in Caballo de Arriba, has as his only effective capital, seven tiros of mules. Now in his seventies, he is too old to work the milpas, and his sons have spread out in various directions. Yet as long as his mules outlive him, he is secure. Each June he rents them out to campesinos for the duration of las aguas. Renting is no problem, for the demand is always greater than the supply. Not only can the farmer -- where his land is level enough -- plant his corn better and quicker in a plowed field than with a güica, but if he is to sow ajonjolí (sesame), which is the major cash crop in the foothills, a plowed field is imperative. A mule team, far better than horses, can pull a crude wooden plow over a remarkably steep slope. At the steepest, I have seen one man working mules on a slope of nearly 45º. Nevertheless, most of the country of the upper barrancas is still too steep to use anything but the güica, and each June, Manuel Gallardo drives his fourteen mules some 50 miles to Espinal, in the flats below, where he has long-standing contracts for rentals. Mule rentals are almost invariably paid off later in corn, once the sun-dried harvest is taken
in each December. The seasonal rent for a team of mules is usually ten centílitros of corn (about 2000 lbs.), and while the selling price of corn at harvest time in December is only 50 pesos the centílitro, by June its value has doubled. A young mule will cost from 1200 to 2000 pesos, depending on its size and manners. At this rate, a mule, which has a working expectancy of from 25 to 30 years, can pay for itself in three or four years. Or, if the owner also rents out his mules (10 pesos a day), or uses them transporting cargo during the dry season, a mule can pay for itself in as little as one or two years. For the man wino can afford it, there is no better investment.

• • •

In order to travel mounted during the rainy season, it became :apparent that my only solution was to buy a horse or a mule, for all my friends who during the dry season were so ready to lend me animals, and to accompany me, I found were committed for both themselves and their bestias during las aguas.

I debated for a long time whether to get a horse or a mule. My experience -- limited as it is -- with horses has been good; my experience with mules, bad. Horses, like dogs, have an exaggerated respect for human beings. They tend to be not only more manageable, but cooperative. The better you treat them the better they respond. Mules, like cats, are more independent. True, if you condition mules by feeding them corn every day, they will mutter when you approach the corral, and come trotting. But they never get to like you, to trust you, no matter how friendly you try to be. They are constantly eyeing you as if, for no fault of their own, you are going to put a pin in their backside. And, alternatively, they are always waiting for that moment when they can, plant a hoof in your forehead. I have treated nearly as many "patadas de mula" as I have "hachadas de machete", and the kicks from mules have been worse Between Carrisál and Platanár is a small wooden cross where a 15 year old boy was kicked to death by a mule; on the way to Las Chicuras lives a young man, partially paralyzed and unable to work as result of a kick to the spine; and such examples are endless. Yet I know of no one here who has suffered such abuse from a horse.

Another advantage to a horse is the price. A good horse can be purchased for as little as 600 pesos, one half to one third the cost of a good mule. Nevertheless, all my friends have insisted I should with a mule. A mule is stronger, if I plan to carry any equipment in addition to myself, which I do. A mule is surer-footed than a horse; for the narrow, precipitous trails of los altos (the ridges) which I must follow now that the river is flooded, and for the treacherous crossings of the river and flooded arroyos, a mule is safer. Furthermore, if a spot is too dangerous to cross safely, a mule will stop automatically, while a horse, relying doggedly on the judgment of its master, will barge straight ahead, be it to destruction. A mule is easier to care for than a horse, and cheaper, for a horse is more chiquión (picky) about its diet, requiring corn and good fodder regularly. A mule, like a goat, will eat most anything, will browse in a weed patch where a horse will starve. A mule can go longer without food or water; it has more endurance. Finally, although the initial cost of a mule is greater, when the time comes, a mule is easier to sell than a horse.

I decided on a mule, although I insisted on "una mula mancita" (very tame.) I hunted high and low but to no avail. I went as far as Agüines and Campanillas on a wild goose chase. Benigno Ríos had three mules to sell, but the only reason he had not already sold them was that they were still "broncos", too wild to be hitched to a plow. His father, Daniel, also had a mule for 1000 pesos, seat and all, which he admitted was "un poco flojo" (a little lazy). However, my friends insisted that this mule was well over 20 years old, and while it might hold up for the time I needed it, no one would buy it from me when I wanted to sell it. Next, the bartender, Fidel, sent word that he would sell his mule. The mule, like Fidel himself, is quite fat.. "Por la misma razón," says Dimas Lomas, "No trabajan." (For the same reason: they don't work.) Dimas advised me 1000 pesos would be a good price. But when I went to see Fidel, he told me that "just for me" he'd sell his mule for only 2500 pesos. "¡Mi esposa va a llorar!" he added sadly. (My wife will cry!) His price was just for me all right! He wouldn't dare ask that much from anybody else. I told him that I would buy it at once except that I didn't like to make women cry.

Both Dimas Lomas and Chuy Manjarréz have mules which are about as tame as they get, and they offered to swap with me for the duration of las aguas if I obtained a mule which would be suitable for plowing, if not riding. The problem still remained to locate one.

The day before I had planned to leave for Verano arrived and I still had no animal. I had too much luggage to make the trip on foot, most notably my typewriter. I thought of borrowing Caytano’s horse to take my things, bringing it back and then returning to Verano on foot. Then, about noon, Dimas arrived with a broad smile, and said, "¡Ponte tu sombrero!"

"¿A donde vamos?" I asked.

"Vas a ver," he replied. "¡Vamanos!"

Dimas took me to his corral, saddled his mule for me to mount, and he mounted another which was standing, already saddled, nearby. We set out in the direction of Las Chicuras. When we were a short way out of town, we both dismounted and Dimas handed me the reins of the mule he was riding, saying, "¡Esta es...!"

It was the funniest looking mule I had ever seen. Its color was pardo rayado, a dark reddish-brown with strange fuscous blotches and stripes, which made it look moth-eaten and therefore old. But Dimas insisted that it was only seven. He said that it was supposed to be half zebra. He had never seen a mule of that color before.

The mule took my fancy at once. My own coloration is unusual for the region, and it seemed to me fitting that my mule should be a little odd as well. At least I would have no trouble recognizing it. Dimas said it was "muy mancita." (Very docile.) I mounted, and the animal responded well. It was more lively than the mule of Dimas. We rode to Las Chicuras, and went to see Remedios and his sons, who were planting with güicas in their steep milpa. Goyo hopped on behind the saddle, and the mule did not protest. I dismounted and tried removing the saddle. The mule suddenly kicked, but Dimas said that was because I was inexperienced and had tickled it in the backside.

I was pleased with the mule, and yet was not quite sure about it. It seemed more nervous than many of the mules I have handled. I would have liked to try it out for another day, and under a wider variety of circumstances, but Dimas had to return that evening to his rancho and had all the papers for the sale. The mule had been sent from San Ignacio, where news had reached that I was looking for one. The price, although it included saddle, bit, bridle, and the works, was 1800 pesos, which I thought was high. Dimas assured me it was a good price, and I trust him. At 1800 pesos I would have to cut deeply into the money I was keeping for the "Agua Potable" project, but as the collection would not take place until after the rains, I decided I could resell the mule if necessary. And so I bought it.

No sooner had I completed the purchase, however, than the mule began to give me trouble. It needed shoes, and Ramona's grandfather made them for me specially. The next morning the Sindico helped me shoe the mule, which I had decided to name Albóndiga (Meatball) in memory of a canoe which we had once brought into Mexico. Albóndiga was not happy about being shoed, and with a sudden kick, nearly made "Albóndigas" out of the Sindico. Next, I took my mule to the water, but I could not make her drink. The river was in flood, dirty, and deep, and she was apparently afraid that I was going to make her pass it. All I wanted was for her to put her nose in it, but she was not about to get that close. She reared and bucked, and I pulled the reins and swatted her backside, but she wouldn't enter the water. At last I had to take her to a quiet, shallow spot, and there she drank, thirstily.

"What," I asked myself, "am I going to do in the rainy season with a mule that is afraid of water?"

LAZARIN

My search for a mule led me at last to the village of Campanillas, some six miles to the west of Ajoya, and linked with the Ajoya-San Ignacio road by a dirt track which apparently had not been navigated by a vehicle in more than a year. I managed to get my jeep in to the village, but not easily. It involved towing fallen trees out of the way, filling in washouts, and lumbering across freshly-plowed fields which obliterated the remains of the roadway.

This was my first visit to Campanillas, although many of its villagers had come to me for medicines, and I had a long-standing invitation to go there. It is an attractive village with about 20 loosely scattered, whitewashed adobe houses. I was hailed at the first house and invited to enter and to eat. My arrival was celebrated; I was conducted from house to house. I encountered an overabundance of patients, but no mule! In truth, it was what I expected.

Nearly all of the citizenry of Campanillas belong to one or the other, usually both, of two large and interbreeding families, the Manjarréz and the Arriolas. One stout woman complaining of epileptic fits asked me to go with her to see her aged father who, she said, was going deaf and blind, and was partly paralyzed and arthritic. The house was full of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of various shapes and sizes. The old and declining patriarch of the family, hunched and grizzled, was perched on the doorstop of the inner house. Eighty-two years before, Domingo Manjarréz had been christened after the patron saint of the village, Santo Domingo.

I examined the old man. One hand especially had a shrinking, almost stumping degeneracy, especially of the outer joints of the fingers. His daughter explained that this had resulted from an infection with persisting sores which had resulted from a golpe (blow) he had received while working the milpas. One of the old man's feet, also, was considerably more shrunken than the other, and the big toe was entirely missing. This the daughter related to a severe machete cut on that foot some 40 years before. I asked the old man when and how he had lost the toe.

"Se me cayó sólo hace dos años." (It fell off by itself two years ago.)

"¡Sólo!" I exclaimed:

"Sólo, mi hijo, sólo. Yo to enterré ahí atrás." (By itself, my son, by itself. I buried it out back,") And then he added, stoically, "¿Pues, que le hace? Ya no me duele... ¡Son las rodillas!" (Well what does it matter. Now it doesn't hurt. . . it's my knees!) And he touched his knees tenderly with his shrinking fingers and said, "No puedo andar." (I can't walk.)

Looking at old Domingo was to me like an experience of deja vu, I had seen those hands, those feet somewhere before, myriad feet, as in a nightmare. Suddenly I remembered with a shudder: hundreds of such hands, young and old, on the rocky road to Luxmanjula, lining the ancient pilgrim route of the Himalayas, near Rishikesh; hands reaching out to me as I passed on my way to the Ganges,
hands of the diseased and starving, begging, entreating for the wherewithal to hang on a little longer to the last worn thread of life.

I asked the old man if he could feel anything in his hands and feet, any pain or sensation at all. He said he could not. His daughter explained that he had burned his hand with a cigarette not long ago and had not felt a thing. I nodded and quietly asked the daughter if I could talk to her alone. There was little doubt left in my mind.

The term lepra (leprosy) is used indiscriminately by the villagers of the Sierra Madre to describe any condition characterized by large, persistent, suppurating sores. From my first days in the villages children have been brought to me with a so-called lepra is actually staph or strep skin infections which for the most part have responded readily to soap, water, and antibiotic ointments, sometimes with the addition of systemic antibiotics. But the term "lepra" worried me. During one of my early visits to Mazatlán I asked the chief doctor at the Red Cross if there was any chance of true leprosy (Hanson's Disease) in my region, and he assured me there was, and that there was a preparation for testing for it which I might be able to obtain at the Centro de Salud. However when I checked in at the Centro (my first visit) the Director told me, with a chuckle, that if there were, God forbid, any leprosy in the mountains of Sinaloa the entire Department of Health would be up in arms about it. I went away somewhat relieved, and wondering how the Chief Doctor of the Red Cross could be so mistaken.

However, as I resided longer in the mountains I heard the people refer at times to another disease which they appropriately called lazarín, and which seemed to have all the earmarks of leprosy. One day a man named Pedro Nuñez from a small distant village high in the sierra came to me with his body, particularly hands and face, eyelids and nasal passages covered with large, strange, purplish sores. Unsure of his condition, I sent him to the Centro de Salud in Mazatlán, together with a "carta de recomendación" to the Director suggesting the possibility of leprosy. That was the last I heard of Pedro until, a few days ago, Dr. Price and I visited the Centro de Salud in Mazatlán and I asked the Director if by chance the man's disease had turned out to be the "enfermedad de Hanson". The Director, reflecting back, replied that yes, he thought it had been. Ready at last to take us into his confidence, he announced that in Mexico one out of every 1000 persons is a leper! The region where I am located is an area of the highest concentration.

In Campanillas I found myself in a dilemma as to what to do about old Domingo. Leprosy is a contagious disease, although mildly. Outside Guadalajara there is a federally operated leper colony. By rights the old man should be sent there until he dies. But he loves his family dearly, and is loved and venerated in return. In talking to the old man's daughter I found that, although she had attempted to explain his condition in terms of previous injuries, she was not surprised when I suggested lazarín, and admitted that for a long time they had been keeping his dishes apart from the rest of the family. I learned from another resident that Campanillas has a long history of leprosy.

If there is anything I dislike it is playing the villain, even for a good cause. I was not eager to have old Domingo, as result of my reporting his disease, hauled away to Guadalajara with the family protesting. I asked his daughter to consult with the family, explain the danger of leprosy to the others, especially to the children in the house, and then, if they agreed, I would inform the Health Department and they would likely see that Domingo was cared for in a place where his disease would not be a danger to others. Domingo's daughter agreed to this. She said that when the men folk came back that evening she would talk with them and send me a note to Ajoya as to their decision the following day.

The following day a child came from Campanillas to pick up medicines I had agreed to send to various patients, but he brought no note. Day after day I waited, and finally, the night before I left for Verano, I sent off a letter to the Centro de Salud in Mazatlán, advising of Domingo's condition.

LOS ALTOS

Albóndiga and I left for Verano fortified by Ramona's parting gift of a bundle of oven-fresh bread. To avoid fording the river I took a roundabout route through Chinacate. The trail passed an isolated cornfield where I was hailed by a man named Juan, who asked me to stop at his home in Güillapa to see a sick daughter. His seven year old son, who had brought Juan breakfast, led me to the house. Ironically, when we arrived I found that Juan's wife had left with the sick child for Ajoya that same morning, to take her to me for treatment. She had taken a shorter trail (which I had not heard of) and so we missed each other. However, I gained a traveling companion: Juan's brother, Toño, was leaving for Jocuixtita the next day.

We set out a little after dawn, I on Albóndiga, Toño on foot. Toño said that the first two fords of the flooding river were still shallow enough to pass easily, and after that we would have to take to "los altos" -- the ridge trails. I arrived at the water's edge with Albóndiga, but she refused to pass. I coaxed her, yelled at her, beat her on the backside, but she kept twisting and bucking, refusing to enter the water. Finally, with Toño taking the halter and leading the way, while I swatted her rump, she stepped gingerly into the fast current. Once in, she crossed in good order. On the other side, however, we had to pass a drainage ditch with a little water in the bottom of it. Albóndiga balked, bucked, backed into the fence, and even with Toño hauling on the halter, she stubbornly refused to step down into the ditch. At last -- deciding she had no alternative--she made a sudden leap, which took me by such a surprise that I nearly fell off backwards into the ditch.

"¡Mañosa, la mula!" said Toño. (Ornery, the mule!)

After yet another battle we crossed the river again and ascended the trail for "los altos". It was here that I learned that Albóndiga was also afraid of heights. Not that I blame her much, for at points the steep trail was no more than six inches wide, overlooking a straight drop of ragged rock to the churning river 200 feet below. At such spots I had to beat the mule to get her to budge. Thus we struggled along, crossing several high passes and the deep arroyos between.

In Bordontita, where we spent the night, I described my exasperating experiences with Albóndiga to Victoriano Murillo. Victoriano said that he himself had a mule that was "muy mancita" (very tame) and good for the water and for rough country, but was useless for plowing because it kicked the other mule in the yoke with it. He offered to trade his mule for mine. I, however, have learned my lesson in mule trading. I offered to accept Victoriano's mule on a two-week trial, he doing the same with mine. And so it was that I left Albóndiga with Victoriano and continued my journey mounted upon "Hormiga", which means "ant."

Victoriano explained to me that he named his mule "Ant" because of its reddish color, but now, having covered many tedious miles with her, I think he named her that because she is so slow. On an uphill grade she heats up and stops like an old car. And that is just her problem: age. Victoriano assured me that Hormiga was no more than twelve years old, while Albóndiga, instead of being seven, was at least ten. Yet whomever I have asked has assured me that Hormiga is as old as she acts, namely twenty or more. Nor is she quite as "mancita" as Victoriano claimed. In any case, he was right that she is "muy bueno por el agua to feo," and she is a gem going downhill. Unfortunately the trail to Jocuixtita was uphill all the way ....

LOS PINOS

I saw the clouds forming over the mountains to the north-east, and wanted to get away from Jocuixtita early, in the hopes of reaching Verano before I was caught by the afternoon rains which promised to come early. But last minute patients kept arriving, one after the other, and it was nearing 11:00 by the time I got old Hormiga saddled and ready to go. The "camino real" over the high pass between Jocuixtita and Verano was said to be completely sanjonado (washed out) by the rains, and I decided to go via the less used trail which passes the beautiful and recently abandoned rancho of Higuerrita. As I had only been over this trail once before, and remembered the maze of forks and cross trails connecting with it, I expressed uncertainty, and 13-year-old Josué Valenzuela offered to guide me to the ridge top.

The slope, which had been leafless and parched when I had last traversed it in March, was now a verdant tangle. There were many species of plants I had overlooked. Josué explained to me that a prevalent small tree with delicately scalloped compound leaves, called Copalillo (Bursera sp.) is used to cure asthma, a tea being brewed from the bark. A tall brushy plant with sleek, laurel-like leaves, called Jarilla, is excellent for firewood, burning well even when it is green. And a small white-flowering species of Lantana, called confite blanco would, in August, produce numerous white fruit which the villagers of Jocuixtita will gather by the liter, grind on the metate, and use to make gordas.

Josué accompanied me to the top of the ridge overlooking Verano, pointed out the course of the narrow trail as it wound its way down the mountainside, and bid me farewell. As we were parting the first drops of rain began to fall, and I put on my poncho, spreading it over my cargo as well. The rain at first fell lightly, and was refreshing. Hormiga wound her way down the mountainside among the oaks, reaching out here and there to chomp at the delicate, freshly sprouted grass. Her pace slowed as she did so until she came to a complete halt. I had to remind her frequently with a cluck or a swat on the backside, of her man-given duty.

A third of the way down the mountainside, as I was approaching a recently planted cornfield, a blue-clad figure came hurrying in my direction, hailing me. This was 68 year old Esteban Sanchez, who insisted I stop for lunch at his "casita" before continuing on my way. I was eager to get to Verano before the rain got heavier, but Esteban's insistence was irresistible, and I followed him across the sprouting field to his home. The homestead was comprised of three small structures, with walls of closely-spaced poles and with roofs of grass thatch. The smallest building was the troja or corncrib, the next largest for the family, and the largest--but still not large--was for the storage of fodder and for pigs, of which at present there was but one.

Arriving at the hut, Esteban introduced me to his young wife Juana and three small daughters ages 6, 5, and 4. Like Esteban, Juana is trigena (wheat-colored), has a round face, an impish, upturned nose, and a figure which makes her look perpetually overdue. "I hear you visited my homeland", she said, and so it was that I found she is the younger sister of the músico Pedrillo, next door neighbor of Goyo's family in Las Chicuras.

Juana is Esteban's second wife. Formerly Esteban lived with his first wife in Coyotitán, where he raised seven children. He also started a small store which in time became the most successful in the village. Then one day without warning he left the shop, his wife and his daughters, and made his way to Verano where, on the mountainside 1000 feet above the village, he built a thatch but and planted his corn and calabazas. He named the isolated rancho "Los Pinos" because of a pine-covered ridge back of the house, and lived there completely alone for nearly three years, grinding his corn on a stone metate, making his own tortillas, and hauling his own water. During the rains he brought water from the arroyo near the house but during the dry season had to had to go to a larger arroyo half a mile away. Then, some seven years ago, when he was 61, he met and married 23 year old Juana, whom he took to live with him in "Los Pinos". Each year for the first three years they had a daughter and, then Esteban se secó (went dry). The girls, slender and alert, already are big enough to help Esteban plant and weed the corn fields beside the house, and to carry stones to the edge of the field. "A veces las pisan las brotas y a veces no" laughs old Esteban. (Sometimes they step on the corn-shoots and sometimes not.)

Juana, as she worked the stone mano back and forth over the metate to make tortillas explained to me how relieved her husband was en la barriga (in the belly) since I had given him medicine. Esteban had first come to me some months before in Verano with a weathered piece of paper dated 1942 in Mazatlán, documenting a stool analysis positive for amoebae. Typically, Esteban's treatment had been inadequate, and for the last 24 years he had been suffering from amoebiasis of the liver, with chronic headaches, loss of appetite, and, more recently, with spells of incapacitating pain in his abdomen. I treated him with chloroquine, entrovioform, and vitamins, and now his pains had disappeared and his appetite returned.

As we lunched it rained harder and harder. The downpour made the daylight wane, and the air turned cold. For lack of warm clothes or anything to do, the three little girls curled up under the burlaps on the single bed and went to sleep. Gusts of wind carried sprays of rain into the hut, and there was no escaping them, as the narrower stick walls were only eight feet apart. Yellow-brown puddles formed in the rough dirt floor. I shivered in my damp tee-shirt. I had neglected to carry a jacket with me, as the temperature had been stifling in Ajoya below. The thatch roof began to leak here, there, and at last everywhere. No one minded. Things could be dried in the sun the next morning. Juana put buckets under the major leaks, not to prevent puddleing, but to obviate the trip to the arroyo for water. Esteban noticed that the pumpkin seeds which hung in a half-gourd from the low roof were getting wet, and as he had already planted all he was going to for that season, we decided to make a feast of what were left. Juana built up the fire and spread the seeds on the 50-gallon drum lid above the flames. When the seeds were "bien tostadas" she scooped them into a wooden bowl and we began to crack and eat them -- a slow and painstaking process tolerable only on a rainy day in a leaky hut. For two hours we shelled and ate pumpkin seeds, and talked.

Finally the rain slackened to a drizzle, and I began to think of continuing on my way. Esteban, however, pointed out that not only would the trail be muddy and slippery, but that the arroyo would probably be too flooded to cross. He suggested that I spend the night, and I agreed.

TRANSFORMATION

There is so much ordinary beauty in the universe that we are in constant danger of becoming inured to it, much in the way we lose consciousness of the ticking of a clock or the chant of crickets in the night. We are like an old man I once knew who when asked by an excited youth to look at the sunset over the lake, grunted "I've seen it before." It is a good thing to have our senses stretched and awed now and again by a spectacle so entirely new, so penetrating, that we suddenly feel we have left the old world behind and stumbled into a wondrous new one.

I had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to spend the night with Esteban and Juana in Los Pinos, for I was eager to get on to Verano. But my reluctance was short lived. As the rain slackened and the view slowly opened again, I witnessed a spectacle such as never before: the transformation of the Sierra Madre! It was as breathtaking as that of any northern mountain range the morning after the first heavy snowstorm. Yet here the mountains were not cloaked with snow, but with white billowing and streaming clouds. The cloud-cloaks opened and closed and opened again like dancers in slow motion, and with every shift they revealed what seemed a new and strikingly different range of mountains. Like the multiple curtains on a modern stage -- but how much grander in scale! One misty veil after another rose and descended. The effect was Japonesque. Jagged, green-fringed monuments of stone lunged silently out of the mist in random yet emphatic harmonies. One instant they would stand out harsh and dark against the clouds, the next be muted by a diaphanous veil, or engulfed by an opaque billow of white or pewter-grey. This was indeed like leafing through an album of mountain scenes by the great sumi masters, only here the album was four dimensional; the medium was earth, air, water and lightning; and the master... well... who knows? I stood, rooted, for one hour... two... under the thatch overhang of the hut looking out at the moving mist in the mountains, while the dipping fringe of grass blades formed the upper frame of my vision. The silver-bellied droplets forming on the overhanging grass tips would swell little by little like mosquitoes feeding, until they vanished downward. Generations passed in seconds. Now in the mood to see, to me the dried and dripping grass blades seemed fully as beautiful and astounding as the kaleidoscope of cloud and mountain.

So this was the Sierra Madre! I looked and looked and looked. And the more I looked the more I seemed to see. New peaks, new pinnacles, new canyons and new crags. Silhouettes against the fleeting fog. I could not cease to wonder that the mountains I now saw were the same I had so often seen -- but never really seen before. Where, then, I asked myself, lay the transformation? Here or there?

Suddenly, perceptibly, night began to fall. The contrast of white mist against dark mountain became less sharp. The green of the ridges and of the large higuerilla (castor) leaves close to the but began to soften into grey. The drizzle had stopped. now, but more rain was moving in from the high sierra. With increasing frequency lightening lit the panorama, returning for instants the full color of the countryside. Thunder grumbled. Ground crickets began to chirp, and were accompanied by the high, drone-like calls of their tree-dwelling cousins. Between the sudden flashes of lightning, occasional fireflies flicked on and off their tiny tail-lights as if competing. With a whirr a large longhorn beetle, his fore-wings hoisted in a "V" over his head, his heavy abdomen dipping at an angle, and his long antennae sweeping up and back, flew close by through the descending night.

"Ya esta la comida," announced Juana, and realizing my hunger I went in to eat.

EL RANCHO DEL PADRE

The house of Irineo Vidaca, with whom I am passing las aguas in Verano, is not located in Verano proper, but in a much smaller community called El Rancho del Padre some two kilometers down the arroyo from the main part of the village. It is thus called because nearly a hundred years ago a "padre" -- a missionary of some sort -- is said to have lived here on the small flat at the head of the canyon.

When Irineo's father, Magdeleno Vidaca, first moved to the flat in the huge valley eighty years ago, there were no other houses. But as his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren have married and made new cases the little community has gradually expanded, until now there are six dwellings in El Rancho del Padre. On one side of the family or the other, the occupants of each of the six casas are related. The households are as follows:

(1) Irineo Vidaca, age 75, lives with his wife, Eustalia Gonzáles, age 70, in an enormous adobe case he built with his own hands some 50 years ago. Occupying the same house is his hard-working grandson, Alvaro Vidaca, age 28, and Alvaro's taciturn, temperamental, and pregnant wife, Evodia Soto, age 19.

(2) Across the arroyo from Irineo are four more widely-separated dwellings. In the closest -- that built by Irineo's father 80 years ago --lives Bonifacio Santos, husband of Inéz Vidaca, Irineo's niece, together with their ten children (one adopted) and a tontito (simpleton) named Fernando. Bonifacio is father of the little girl, Herminía, who burned her leg badly at the sugar-cane mill last year. Most recently, this spring when the mother, Inéz, failed to void the afterbirth of her tenth child, Bonifacio, José Vidaca and others carried her for 30 miles downstream, and across 40 river fords on an improvised stretcher, until the afterbirth shook loose passing Güillapa.

(3) Behind Bonifacio's house is that of Lino Madriles, age 28, the bastard child of Irineo's son, Pastor, who left for Tijuana after killing a man in Verano when borracho. Lino lives with his young wife, Alvina, and their single very malnourished child.

(4) The third house on the far side of the arroyo is that of Beremundo Vidaca, age 27, half-brother to Lino, and a somewhat more legitimate son of the same Pastor. (Legally, the Pastor married neither woman, but he lived for a while with the mother of Beremundo and only slept with the mother of Lino). Beremundo, light-hearted and energetic, lives with his delicate 20 year-old wife, Eulalia Pereda and their three sons. Eulalia was an orphan girl, whom Beremundo "rescued" -- married -- when she was 14 years old.

(5) The fourth house on the far side of the arroyo is at the moment vacant. When I came to Verano last February it was occupied by Juana Soto, age 36, and her eight children. Juana is the wife of Leopoldo Campo, a nephew of Irineo and brother of Chavelo Campo, the assistant comisario of Verano. When I was in Verano in February, Leopoldo had many months before abandoned Juana and the children, after a scrap they had had, ostensibly because Juana had got drunk in a dance in Verano. Thus, Juana and her 16 year-old son were working to support the family, planting and harvesting their own milpa. Juana washed clothes for better-off families in Verano, sometimes -- when the arroyo dried up in las secas -- carrying the bundles eight kilometers down the arroyo to scrub them in the river, this at a wage of 20 centavos (less than two cents) an article.

(6) The sixth house in E1 Rancho del Padre is a tiny, one room adobe structure which Jose' Vidaca, (one of Irineo's 12 children) built adjacent to his father's house 15 years ago when he married Angelita Flavela. In this little house were born six children, three of whom are alive at present: the somewhat retarded Concha, age 14; Maruca, age 10; and Juan Jose, age 6. A year and a half ago, when José Vidaca, under threat of a prison term for rape, abandoned Angelita to "marry" Sofía Chavarín in Ajoya, Angelita continued to live in the little shelter adjacent to the big house, and her parents-in-Law took over their support. Rearing of grandchildren is no new experience for Irineo and Eustalia, as they have already reared the abandoned children of two others of their eight sons.

The little house next to Irineo's big house was still occupied by Angelita and her children when I came to Verano last February. Now, on my return this July, there has been a change. Without Jose Angelita got lonely in so remote a spot, and moved with her children to the house of Eustalia's sister, next to the tienda in the center of Verano, where she could be near the dances and the ruido de la gente (noise of people). The little house remained vacant until about two weeks before my arrival this summer. The morning of "El Día de San Juan" Juana Soto came from across the arroyo with the side of her face swollen and bleeding, and begged refuge for herself and her children in the small house. She explained that her husband, Leopoldo, after abandoning her and the children for more than a year, had returned to the area and wanted to the area and wanted to live with her again, but she had refused. Now, on the eve of San Juan, after Juana and the eight children had bedded down on the floor of the hut, Leopoldo had come and angrily demanded some old doctor's prescriptions which he had left in the house. Juana had replied that she had no lamp to look for them, and suggested he come back in the morning. Leopoldo had kicked her with all his might in the side of the head where she lay on the dirt floor. He had told her that she had better decide to live with him again or he would deal her "un golpe que ni Dios Padre le quitará." (a blow that not even God the Father could remove) When she didn’t reply he had stalked out. For fear he might fulfill his threat, Juana had come the next morning to ask Irineo if she could stay in the small house which Angelita had vacated. Unlike her house across the arroyo which has no door at all, the small house has a door which can be locked from the inside, and she said she would feel safer there. Irineo granted her permission, and that same morning Juana and five of her children moved in. The remaining three children went to Tayoltita, a large mining village about 40 miles away, two of them to stay with relatives, and the oldest boy, 16, to try to get a job to help support the family.

So it is that Juana and her five children, Chicha, age 15; Pedro, age 14; Nuñe, age 10; Marina, age 4; and Teresa, age 2, are my closest neighbors.

My dispensary, the grain shed attached to the side of the main house, is separated from Juana's tiny dwelling by a narrow path, and I therefore hear almost everything that goes on there. Little Marina, a bright-eyed quizzical child, sings almost all day long, sometimes softly to herself, more frequently at the top of her lungs to the entire world. She has a large repertoire of rancheros and almost perfect pitch. She is the only one I ever hear singing in the house, and I find myself wondering where she learned all those songs. I imagine that Juana used to sing, but that now, with the constant fear of assault, she has stopped, like a cricket when a stick snaps. Although of tremendous fortitude, she is a big woman with a strong, Indian face. She is usually gentle -- although firm as a rock -- with her children, but sometimes, triggered by a relatively minor incident, she breaks down and strikes them cruelly. For example, late one afternoon little Marina was sitting on the pretíl in front of the grain shed, watching me type, when her mother called to her. Marina jumped to run toward her mother, but in her haste tripped and fell hard. She got to her feet and started to cry. Juana shouted at her to be still and come at once. Marina continued to bawl, whereupon Juana snatched up a leather strap, leaped over the pretíl, and began to beat the little girl. Each time the child screamed Juana hit her harder, until poor Marina and Juana were both nearly hysterical. Then Juana grabbed her wailing daughter by the arm and dragged her up over the pretíl and into the house, where she continued to beat her. Such incidents are rare, however, and for the most part Juana is very good with her children.

The more I see of Juana and her family, the more profound my respect for this woman grows. Each dawn she puts on a pair of patched trousers under her skirts, and she and her two sons, Pedro and Nuñe, climb up the steep mountainside, carrying a bule (gourd) full of water and a few tortillas wrapped in a cloth. From six in the morning until mid-afternoon when the clouds form and it begins to rain, she and her sons work in the hot sun on the steep corn-patch which they have cleared and planted, swinging their talcuaches and pulling up the weeds with their hands. Each afternoon, as the tropical rain pours down, they come trudging back to the little one room house where all day long 15 year-old Chicha has been embroidering and taking care of her younger sisters. Juana and her sons arrive tired and soaked to the skin, their hands grown heavy from the hard labor and stained black from the weeds they have pulled. But there is a glow of accomplishment on their faces. Each day they see the weeded section increase in area, and each day the shoots of new corn are an inch or two higher. The rain has been good, and this year promises a good harvest.

One day when Juana and her sons returned from their mountainside corn patch high above the houses, I asked her "¿Le gusta trabajar en la milpa?" (Do you enjoy working in the corn patch?)

"¡Sí!" she said, with an emphatic smile, "¡Me gusta!" She always returns to the house more relaxed and happy than when she leaves

No sooner do Juana and the boys arrive from the milpa, than they set about preparing for the evening meal. Pedro and Nuñe go in search of fire wood -- they have to go some distance -- and when they return, they take turns chopping with a big axe while the rain teems down upon them. The rain itself they don't mind for it is warm and refreshing. It is the period after the rain stops, if it stops before dark, that becomes an ordeal. For it is then that the jejenes -- no-see-ems, or sand flies -- come in droves to eat people alive. In El Rancho del Padre, all who can do so retreat inside their casas, where they set to smouldering a hunk of dried muñega de vaca (cow dung), stored since las secas for just the purpose of smoking out the jejenes during las aguas. On moonless nights the jejenes retire with the dark, but on moonlit nights they bite all night long, or at least until the air becomes too chilly for them. I know, for I am the only one who sleeps outside. This is the first time in my life that I have not looked forward eagerly to the coming of a full moon.

The present census of El Rancho del Padre, then, is 12 grown-ups -- 13 with myself --and 20 children (or, often as not, 23 children, for the youngsters of José Vidaca often come to spend a day or two, or three or four, with their grandparents, who enjoy having them). The members of the five households are not only all related, but on good terms with each other. Irineo's house is a common meeting place, as all three families on the far side of the arroyo have their hill-side corn patches on the slopes on this side of the arroyo. In the mornings the men folk stop by on their way up the mountainside, and at midday, the womenfolk, as they take the men their lunches, stop and chat. In the afternoon, when the rain has begun, the returning men and boys stop by for a more leisurely visit... unless the arroyo is rising rapidly, in which case they run to cross it while they can. Sometimes the arroyo rises too quickly and they are trapped on this side until it goes down again; other times they are forced to spend the night. There are times when the arroyo rises too high even for a mule to pass, carrying boulders and trees in its tumultuous wake. Then everyone, grown-ups and children alike, runs in the teeming rain to the water's edge, to watch the spectacle.

TONTOS Y INOCENTES

If the villagers of the Sierra Madre are at times unkind to animals, they compensate for it by their considerate treatment of the feeble-minded. I have never yet in these villages seen a simpleton scapegoated or made the public laughing-stock as I used to see in passing through villages of Turkey and Iran. Tontos and inocentes are treated, for the most part, with more forbearance than are other neighbors. Even children accept the simpleton as he is, and rarely harass or take advantage of him. In fact, of all the villages, only in Ajoya is there a facsimile of "the village idiot". This is Ignacio, half-brother of Ramon Chavarín, who is nicknamed, with reason, "Nacho Zorro" (Nacho the Fox). He is razzed and kidded a good bit, not because he is defenseless, but because he defends himself so well. Indeed, there is something so wily about him that I wonder if he is really as much a fool as he appears. In those chaotic days when I was giving out clothes which the Wallaces had brought, Nacho arrived, dressed in his usual tatters, and I gave him a change of clothes which he put on in the back room to see if they fit. They fit, and Nacho, greatly pleased, asked for another change, which I refused to give him. He went away, wearing his new clothes and muttering abuse. That same afternoon he reappeared, dressed again in his tatters, and asked for a new shirt, saying "¡No tengo más que eso!" (I have no other than this!) When I protested that just that same morning I had given him both shirt and pants he cried out, deeply offended, "¡A mi, no!"

"¡A usted, si! Nacho" I replied. '

Nacho grinned and said "¡Chingada! Ya sabe hasta mi nombre." (Damn! You have my number.) And then, drawing very close to me, he blurted, "¡Pero ya los perdí!" (But I lost them.)

"¡Cuénteme otro!" (Tell me another!) I replied... And he did:

"¡Me robaron!" (I was robbed!) he cried.

I shook my head. "¡No, Nacho, no!"

"¿Entonces no me das otra camisa?" (Won't you give me another shirt today?)

" No." I replied.

"¡Pero un pantalón, sí!" (But pants, yes!) he cried eagerly!

"Tampoco!" (Neither!)

He looked at me sharply and grinned again. "¡Entonces vuelvo mañana!" (Then I'll return tomorrow.) And he did.

One of the reasons that people are so accepting of the feebleminded is that there are so many of them. This is due probably to the high incidence of inbreeding and perhaps malnutrition during pregnancy. The incidence of epilepsy is correspondingly high, as is that of vitiligo (piebald skin). The greatest incidence of simple-mindedness seems to be among women. There is usually one inocente to every three or four families. In the Familia Chavarín it is La Julia. Among José Vidaca's children in Verano, it is Concha. Both girls are physically a little odd, hear and speak defectively, and can fulfill simple tasks. They are eager, friendly, and gentle, retaining the mentality of small girls, even when they grow up. The term inocente describes them well. It was Concha who took pity and nursed back to health the dog her cousin threw over the cliff. Julia I described in the first report. In other cases, however, simple-mindedness reaches the point of imbecility, with extreme functional lack and frequently total deafness. Cretinism is sometimes responsible.

Whatever the degree of simple-mindedness, the inocente or tontito is generally cared for tenderly throughout his or her life. If for one reason or another the family is unable to care for him, another family will take him in. One day I looked up from my typing
here in the portal to see Fernando, a "tontito" watching me in rapt wonder. As our eyes met, Fernando burst into a noiseless laugh, and with his enormous nose and oversized mouth was the mask of comedy itself. He was all happiness, without an apparent worry in his silent world. Now in his 60's, he has been an orphan from the time he was an infant, both of his parents having died in an epidemic of viruela
(smallpox). Irineo's father adopted him and brought him up. When he died and Bonifacio moved into the old Vidaca house, he discovered that Fernando came with it. His family generously took over the main tenance of the tontito. With ten children Bonifacio already has twelve mouths to feed and one more doesn't make that much difference.

The vast majority of simple-mindedness is congenital, but upon occasion it is acquired later in life due to other factors, and then it seems more tragic. This morning at dawn there made his appearance a tontito named Lino. Everyone was polite to him but it was difficult to communicate. Lino's physical control, hearing, vision, and speech are all failing and he no longer thinks clearly. Eustalia says, "When you talk to him in a low voice he doesn't hear and when you raise your voice he gets offended and shouts, '¡No soy tonto!"' As a boy Lino was completely normal, and even of above average intelligence. He attended school, learned to read and write, and from then on read everything he could get his hands on. (That wasn't much. Even two years ago before our Pacific group brought books, the school had a library of two books.) It is said that when he was 15 years-old, Lino got his hands on a book of black magic, which somehow affected his humor (vital fluids). In any case, from his fifteenth year on Lino has been subject to severe and frequent epileptic attacks, and little by little his mind has become weakened. The people ascribe it to mal de corazón.

DEARER BY THE DOZEN

One day near the end of July, Eustaquio, the father of Pipi, the little boy crippled by polio, came to Irineo's house to get more corn for planting. More than 50% of the corn he planted at the beginning of las aguas has failed to germinate, and the vast majority of that which has germinated has scarcely grown at all. While other mountainside plots already have corn waist high, most of Eustaquio's patch is only 4 or 5 inches high He has been resembrando (resowing) where the first corn did not sprout, and praying that the rains will hold out long enough for the late planted crop to produce. But he is discouraged.

A good yield is of critical importance to Eustaquio because less than half of the corn he plants and harvests will be his. He is working en medias for Irineo Vidaca. This is an arrangement whereby, when one person runs out of food, and has no money, another agrees to lend him corn, lard, and frijoles to tide him over till the next harvest. The loanee, in turn, agrees to plant and harvest a mountainside corn patch and give half the yield to the financer. This half-harvest is effectively the interest on the loan, for the accumulated debt must be paid off in corn from the loanee's half. Thus Eustaquio, when he harvests, must turn over not only half of his harvest, but a considerable part of the remainder. If his yield is poor he may have to turn his entire harvest over to Irineo.

"¿Y que van hacer entonces?" I asked him. (And what will you do then?)

"Pues, quien sabe?" Eustaquio replied with a slow smile. "Quizas nos vamos para la costa." (Perhaps go to the coast.)

All of his neighbors like Eustaquio. One can't help liking him. There isn't a streak of meanness in him. He has a slow, warm smile, and speaks with a kind of a drawl, yet he is a spell-binder. He would rather talk than work. When talking, he stands as if he were leaning against a wall or a tree, even if there isn't any. When working there is something about him that is still very relaxed. His gentle passivity has a tenderizing effect on other people. He is the sort of person who -- if a single – could just wander through life being nice. But Eustaquio has a family of twelve to support.

The day before yesterday, Irineo and I went up the mountainside to Los Pinos to see Esteban, who was ill. Gregorio Robles was there, and we got to talking about the sad condition of Eustaquio's corn patch, which we had passed on our way up. Goyo commented that there were entire rows where only half a dozen grains had sprouted. Esteban speculated as to whether this might be due to the prevalent güicos -- small lizards which are thought to dig up and eat freshly planted grains of corn, or to the sapos -- big toads -- which are said to dig up the kernels and plant them in other parts. It was finally agreed that the failure of Eustaquio's corn was more probably due to the infertility of the land. Not enough years have passed since the last time it was timbered and planted.

"But why," protested Gregorio, "didn't Eustaquio start reseeding before now? Here it is the 3rd of August. He'll be lucky if his plants don't dry up on him before he gets a crop."

"He just kept hoping that if he let it go another day it would all sprout." scoffed Irineo. "If I hadn't pushed him he'd still be waiting!"

"He's just like a little boy," commented Esteban. "This morning, for instance, his dogs take off up the mountainside, barking like crazy, and Eustaquio takes off after them. In these days! When every grain counts that he gets in ahead of the next rain! And does he even take a gun to shoot a deer or possum if that's what the barking's all about? Oh, no! Just drops his güica and dashes after his dogs. He's like a kid, I say."

Everyone laughed, shaking his head, and said, "Es cierto."

While we chatted, the sky was clouding over, and Irineo and I decided we'd better get started back. Returning down the mountainside, we stopped in at Eustaquio's hut. Pipi, who was sitting by the hut, greeted us with a huge smile. Just as we arrived, the first drops of rain began to fall. Eustaquio appeared from his field a few moments later, together with his wife and six children who had been working with him. The rain fell more heavily now, and Irineo was anxious to continue on. But Eustaquio and his family invited me to sit out the storm; I accepted their invitation. Irineo, on mule-back, went his wet way.

Eustaquio and his wife, with Pipi and the other nine children, live and sleep in a single room 18 feet long and 8 feet wide. The walls, as in many of the poorest houses, are of upright poles planted in the ground. The roof is part thatch and part baked-earth tile, with a few pieces of corrugated tin left over from some defunct mining operation. The pretíl with the cooking fire is at one end of the room. There are two collapsible burlap cots which are folded up during the day to allow some space. At night, to accommodate all twelve, every spare inch of the dirt floor is occupied, including the space under the cots. The baby's crib hangs from the mid-beam.

There is no table, and there are no chairs, save for two crude stools made from a split log with two forked sticks stuck in holes in the bottom. At meal time the members of the family sit on a bed, on a log, or on the ground, putting their plates on their laps or on the log stools. As with most campesino families, no more than two or three persons eat at one time, not due to a shortage of conviviality, but of utensils and space. When it rains, damageable articles are shifted from one side of the room to the others depending on which lady the wind is blowing.

When I learned that the family had only one blanket plus a comforter of old rags sewn together, I asked what all the children do on a cold night.*

"Pues, todos se meten en una bola, uno arriba del otro, y así duermen." (They all get together in a ball, one on top of the other.) laughed Eustaquio. And all the young ones laughed too.

I looked at the children's faces, one after the other. Their complexions were dark like their mother’s, yet somehow delicate, like their father’s. Their dark eyes were bright like sparrows. All the children except Pipi were extremely thin. Clearly, they were not getting enough good food. Yet I saw no sign of suffering in their faces. There was a radiance of joy in each face. Juana, their mother, showed a quiet and enduring strength. And it was apparent that their father, Eustaquio, if he could not always provide enough food, did not stint on love. They all looked hungry, but happy. And Pipi looked happiest of all, though I know there are times he must suffer.

"¿No quiere comer?" asked Juana, handing Eustaqu