El Tiempero, 'The One Who Sees and Speaks Nicely with Popocatéptl'

This first-person profile of 'El Tiempero', the one who sees and speaks with the volcano Popocatéptl, is remarkable for the window it opens on Mexico's traditions, myths and legends. Reed has said, "Myths arise when man encounters the forces of nature."   

I have tried hard to preserve the flavor of the original Spanish which, at times, approaches the biblical. Popocatéptl has many nicknames, 'Popo'  is one, but he is most commonly referred to as Don 'Goyo' — the nickname for Gregorio. Click on the original Excelsior article for great photos and a videoclip.

Excelsior: SANTIAGO XALITZINTLA, Puebla, April 23 - The face of Antonio Analco betrays annoyance at the sight of outsiders wandering around his community, just because Don Goyo is "making a little noise."

A man with white hair under a hat he seldom removes and skin burned by the sun, he has spent more than six decades at the feet of the volcano Popocatépetl, listening to him purr, observing the winds and clouds. He says he doesn't understand why there is such alarm by exhalations and ashes, "if nothing is going to happen here."

Don Antonio Analco, El Tiempero, from the pueblo of Santiago Xalitzintla, a mere 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the volcano's crater. 

In the community he is known as El Tiempero, the one who can see and talk with Don Goyo, as did his father, Pedro Analco, his grandfather, Encarnación Analco, and his father and grandfather before him. His voice is the one that will announce to the people (those closest to the volcano) the moment when they will have to leave their lands, their fields and their work tools to take refuge in foreign territory.

"I am the only one who can speak with the volcano. Sometimes in dreams, and other times when he appears to me on the mountain. He has told me that I might be calm, not to alarm ourselves like the strangers who have come to our land. When 'The Creator' notifies him [Don Goyo] that the hour has come for him to get up [erupt], then the volcano will tell me in a dream. 

"He will tell me to go out with my people, to take my wife, children and animals and leave these lands. I already told those who came frightened from other pueblos that nothing is going to happen, that the bells did not ring, and that it will not be necessary to go out to the shelters," he says.

Don Toño chats with this reporter with the same calmness with which the women cross in front of his shop and greet him. Down the sidewalk skinny dogs roam with children trailing them. The music of a band, hired by the father of a teenage girl to celebrate her quinceañera (fifteenth birthday), makes it seem that Saturday might be a holiday.

Any little boy of Santiago Xalitzintla who might cross the path of a stranger knows where Don Antonio lives. Don Antonio Analco, the one who speaks with the volcano. Among little boys there is still curiosity about men with video cameras on their shoulders and institutional trucks prowling around City Hall. But in adults there is weariness and distrust. They do not understand how the National Center for Disaster Prevention — "with all its little machines" — can figure out if Don Goyo will stand up [erupt]. They know that it takes two: Antonio Analco and the volcano itself.

"In 1994 there were eruptions," recalls El Tiempero, "many police came and took many people by force. When I found out, I went to the officers and asked them very annoyed, 'Has Don Goyo appeared to you in dreams? Do you know what size it is? Would you say something? And then?' And they returned my people to me."

The man closes his little shop and accompanies this reporter on a walk. Twelve miles from the village, black smoke is observed leaving from the mouth of the volcano. The sound of the exhalation is similar to the sound an airplane makes if it passes close. It puts to work the camera crew that arrived last week from the Federal District. El Tiempero looks at them and smiles:

"Do they have more years than I? Do they know more about volcanoes?"

He also says that he was given his relationship with the volcano when he was in the womb.

"As a child I had dreams that I did not understand. Until one day I was bringing some cows to the mountain when an enormous man with snow-white hair appeared to me. He told me that his name was Gregory Chino Popocatépetl, that I was very small but that when I grew older I would have a wife and children, and that my destiny would be to communicate with him in order to serve as a messenger to my people."

He states that recently [the man] appeared. He asked if I was scared.

"I said 'no', and then he told me that I was to tell my people that they might be calm. I have told everyone, but those coming from Mexico City arrived with fear in the head."

And if the bells of the church ring? The question must be repeated several times in the ear of Juan Castro, of eighty and many yesterdays, holding a cane that he never puts down.

Sitting at the kiosk in Santiago Xalitzintla, Juan Castro mentions that he knew Pedro Analco, Antonio's father,

"a solid gold Tiempero. I knew him to speak nicely with Don Goyo. Like the time when a drought was wilting the corn, and we got together so Don Pedro might ask the volcano for favors. He asked us to come back with tequila, pulque, cigarettes and food, and we went up to Popocatépetl to make an offering. We hadn't yet made it down the mountain when a rain saved the crops. Or the other, when a cloud full of hail threatened our corn yet the ominous threat disappeared. Only those who speak with the volcano can do this."

Under the Ritual

Inhabitants of pueblos near Popocatépetl report that since ancient times, an old man who personifies the volcano and calls himself Gregory Chino Popocatépetl, usually appears in the area.

In a loving manner, he is called Don Goyo and, in agreement with residents of the area, it is he who appoints The Tiempero, who every year leads the birthday celebrations for Don Goyo, to whom are brought various gifts, such as food and drink, especially a gourd full of pulque.

This festival is held every March 12, which is the fiesta day of St. Gregory the Great. The ritual is also part of a ceremony in preparation for the formal request for rain, which is held on May 2.

Because of this year's volcanic activity, the gifts and offerings for Popocatepetl have been exceptionally bountiful.

On the Slopes

Santiago Xalitzintla is part of the municipality of San Nicolás de los Ranchos and is the town closest to the crater of Popocatépetl, twelve kilometers (a little over seven miles) away. Spanish original

Still Curious?

CNN Mexico ran a delightful article about the villagers' annual spring pilgrimage to a cave on the volcano's slopes in order to request the rains needed for good harvests and for protection against crop-destroying hailstorms. Given 'Popo's' increasing restiveness, this year the villagers' petitions carry special urgency: Maintaining tradition, villagers present offerings to calm Popocatéptl.

The interplay between human life and natural forces begins here: Geography: Ground of Mexico Culture and History. (All-time Reader Rank #2)

Cuicuilco is the site of perhaps the first ceremonial center in the Valley of Mexico; when the volcano Xitle erupted, Cuicuilco was buried:  Cuicuilco, Volcanoes and the Fragility of Life in Mesoamerica.

Poetry, science and mythology—this post is a Top-Ten All-time Reader Favorite: Mexico's Volcanoes and Mesoamerican Mythology.

We find the bond with nature right in our Coyoacán (Mexico City) neighborhood: Mesoamerican Culture: The Bond with Nature.

And: Mesoamerican Worldview: Nature and Spirit.

Still more....

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