Leaving the colonial city of Morelia, we head east toward Mexico City. The landscape first captures my attention. The sheer scale of Mexico's landscapes is awe-some—Big Sky, Big Hills, Big Valleys that twist and bend around the 'hills'. I remind myself that at 6,000 feet above sea level, these 'hills' are little mountaintops.
No photo truly captures the 'bigness' of the Mexican countryside in all its 360-degree grandeur. It reminds me of the geography of the Far Western United States—Utah, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana—where the Rocky Mountains rise up to meet the sky to the West and the Great Plains unfold to the East as far as the eye can see.
Walkers catch my eye. Mexicans are inveterate, seemingly tireless walkers. Well-worn footpaths wind across the land. I watch a mother holding the hand of a child about four years old. Walking steadily on a road across open land, it's my guess they are headed toward their pueblo and home. But I also see schoolchildren in school uniforms walking home from school on well-paved roads with little or no vehicular traffic.
My mind jumps to the teenager I saw from the bus two years ago on our way to Oaxaca across vast, open desert-like spaces. His clothes were international 'teen—baggy shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes, hatless at midday in the scorching sun—casually striding along. What struck me at the time was that we were in the middle of what seemed to me to be absolutely nowhere—cactus of every kind, but not a tree in sight, endless hills rolling one after another.
But clearly this joven (teenager) was 'somewhere'—most likely, his pueblo was reasonably close by. On the flight from Oaxaca back to Mexico City, I was fascinated to see dirt roads crisscrossing these desolate ridges, connecting isolated pueblos. Many of these footpaths are remnants of Mesoamerican paths that predate the arrival of the Spanish by thousands of years.
Meanwhile, today I see numerous folks of all ages on bicycles riding in pueblos and fields perhaps an hour outside Mexico City. I don't mean fancy sports bikes. I'm talking about well-used bikes with balloon tires and baskets mounted front and back. I'm describing a basic mode of transportation commonly used on well-paved roads with minimal vehicular traffic. It reminds me yet again: Mexico is a different world.
I become aware of the variety of houses that we pass along the way—houses in all stages of completion. These uncompleted houses baffled me until I learned that mortgages are not available to most Mexicans, which makes house construction a pay-as-you-go affair.
Families save money. When they have saved enough, they buy land. Then they save again until funds are available to begin construction. They build what they can pay cash for. Construction stops while the family accumulates funds to begin again. It takes years to build a house.
But here’s the good news: Once built, the house belongs to the family, not to the bank. When hard times hit, families focus on essentials like food, gas and electricity without having to worry about mortgage payments.
Many families provide much of the labor as well. It seems every Mexican we know is remarkably multi-skilled. The range of skills, certainly those needed to build a house, is even broader when the skill set of the entire extended family is drawn upon, as it usually is. It's today's version of the 'barn-raisings' that helped farm families settle the Western United States.
At a certain point in the ongoing construction process, families move in. A Pátzcuaro friend told us how her family moved into their home when it was only partially completed. It took her father several years to complete the house, which he did himself. Today the house is a comfortable middle class home to the entire family of eight children.
My mind keeps returning to the importance of the Mexican 'family home'. It is changing somewhat now, but traditionally Mexicans are very attached to the place (pueblo) of their birth and tend to stay put. The Mexican-Spanish word order ir y venir—go and come—likely reflects this attachment. We are intrigued by the word order because in English, of course, it is reversed; we say, come and go, rather than go and come.
Reed's 'take' seems just right: For Mexicans, the center of reference is here—home or pueblo. So Mexicans van y vienen—they go and come, returning always to their center of reference. In contrast, the English form 'come and go' seems to imply that as a people our 'center of reference' is somewhere else.
The importance of 'place' is also reflected in the Spanish language. English has the single verb form to be. But Spanish has two verb forms: ser ('to be' as essential condition; for example, Soy una mujer - I am a woman); and estar ('to be' in the sense of place; for example, Estoy aquí en Pátzcuaro - I am here in Pátzcuaro).
Reed has traced the etymology of the Spanish verb estar (to be) back to the Indo-European word "sta," which means to stand. Some derivatives mean "place or thing standing"; for example, state, stage, stay, statue, station. As we move around Pátzcuaro, Reed and I sense a profound linkage between this sense of 'place' and, despite the severe poverty, a serene self confidence among indigenous Purhépecha people.
Our young American friend tells of buying a breakfast gordita (tortilla sandwich) from an indigenous woman in Oaxaca. The woman asked our friend where she is from. Upon hearing the reply, the woman drew herself up and proudly responded, "Ya estás en mi tierra" (Now you are in my land).
An illuminating question to ask a new Mexican acquaintance is, "Were you born here?" Many people straighten with pride before confirming, yes, or having to say no, they quickly and proudly volunteer where they were born—obviously providing a key component of their personal identity.
We are extranjeros (strangers) in this Mexican land that—viewed through the windows of a long-distance bus—passes by so quickly. But as we go from Pátzcuaro to travel through the Mexican countryside, we carry with us a sense of our increasing rootedness in the pueblo where we will, indeed, come once again when our travels are done.
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