The Fantastical Land of Oaxaca

Favio Martinez, my new favorite artist, and a taste of the fantastic!

In the beautiful state of Oaxaca in mainland Mexico lives an orator who tells tales of the magic and folklore in his native land. His name is Salvador but his friends call him Polo and we had the pleasure of being his guests for some days. With only one night in his company the distinction between reality and fantasy becomes blurred and you find yourself questioning why the world hasn’t ever looked so colorful until now. Why had you never believed in the ancient giants of both Biblical and Mayan traditions? The same ones Joshua and Caleb had never feared when investigating the promised lands; the same ones reported to the crown of Spain by one Bartolome de las Casas who had discovered their giant skull and bones in a Mayan pyramid; the same ones reported by Buffalo Bill when he discovered bones of a similar size in Wyoming and heard Native American accounts of an earlier human race, three time larger in size, who could run alongside herds of buffalo picking them up and ripping their bodies apart? The legends in Oaxaca support those heard and usually ignored from more familiar traditions, but here, there are also legends peculiar in themselves, of a nature different from all others in the world. Only I hesitate to call them legends, when Polo is there in front of me speaking of them as they took on a reality in his own life.

Polo’s childhood was spent in a small coastal town in Oaxaca among a people whose superstitions were better described as deep convictions based on real life-experiences. There were legends of a beautiful young woman, named Matlasihua, who lived in the forest and would lure men to come to her in the trees for a short while. When these men returned back to town, after what felt like only a half hour, life had actually moved forward twenty years without them. One elderly woman, a widow in town, told Polo about a time when her two sons answered the door and greeted a stranger who told them he was their father. They dismissed the man, who was their own age and wearing very old style clothes, as a lunatic. But he begged and pleaded to be allowed to see their mother. When this woman approached the door and saw the man in front of her, she immediately identified him as her husband, who she and everyone else had thought had been eaten by a Jaguar in the forest twenty years before. You could call it a native folklore supported by the elders in town as an effort to keep tradition alive in the newer generations, but that didn’t change the reality of Polo’s fear whenever he went exploring in the forest.

On one such excursion, hours deep into the forest, Polo and his father had discovered giant river-shrimps the size of lobsters. They became fisherman and sold the shrimps to all the nearby towns and made a small fortune off of them. But catching them was not a particularly easy phenomenon. Polo had to first learn to ride a bike that his dad had bought particularly for the purpose of getting to and from the river. Then he had to learn how to swim. Then he had to learn to hunt under water using a spear gun. When his son showed himself to be worthy by acquiring these new skills, his father bought him an army knife to accompany him on his work at the river. Polo was by himself one day, catching river shrimps. He had the spear gun in his hands, a mask on his face, and the army knife strapped to his thigh, and he waited patiently among the brush under the water. He had become an expert free diver and could hold his breath for five minutes at a time. Suddenly, light seemed to retreat and all he saw was a black darkness. Not the distant kind of darkness that seems to have no end, but one in the forefront, that seemed to have a texture and a physical form. The color of this form was darkness, and it moved across his limited field of vision. He waited without moving until suddenly he felt the pressure of something wrapping around his limbs. He had not known that this river was home to a giant black river-snake called Tincuatli in the Zapotec tongue, a rare Mexican species similar to a python. His only encounter with this snake before was in the stories told to him by the old people of his village.

Polo kicked and twisted and swam to the surface for air, only to be pulled down again. He couldn’t quite get at the knife on his thigh but wasn’t sure if would want to use it either. He couldn’t tell where this snake began and where it ended. What fangs did it have and would his end come more quickly if the snake suddenly felt compelled to use them. But he decided in a sudden realization that without air he would drown, that he wished to die in his own world and not the river where everything seemed so strange, where everything could move so much faster and efficient than himself. He moved and jerked and slowly made his hand find its way to his army knife and this patience was the only thing that saved him, bought him time until he could slash his way free from the tightening grasp of the snake around him limbs. He began frantically stabbing at the black flesh that wrapped around him while the snake began to uncoil, writhing in pain. He crawled himself out of the bloody water to shore. He had lost his spear gun and his knife in the struggle. He looked down the river and saw only blood and the black snake moving away from the danger that he had become. He road his bike home as fast as he could. His dad never doubted the story but bought him a gun instead. If it should ever occur again, his son would be better prepared to defend himself.

Listening to Polo as he shares these stories I am more entertained than I ever had been. I am alive in the story. I feel the power in words and memories and think nothing about movies or any other cheaper form of entertainment. I have no other desire sitting there than to dive deep into the fantasy of his world. But this is my world too. San Diego, California is not so far away from Oaxaca, Mexico. So what is it about this place that makes life so much more mysterious? I remembered that once California belonged to Mexico; once we had Native Americans who roamed the land and called it their own, and that they had legends of their own and were attuned to the mystery of the land. When was it that we became absolved from the mysterious? When was our attitude, so set against mystery, adopted and is there a way to go back? Or has the scientific method and the opinions of learned men so destroyed our ability to wonder that there is no going back?

The “legend” and “myth” taught in our humanities departments presume disbelief. If they were real beliefs at one time they are now “superstitions,” if they were fantastical they are assumed to be fiction and their purpose for our mere amusement. We study them and try and understand but with closed hearts, denying ourselves the power that they could have in life. But here in Oaxaca it seems that truth and falsehood are both apart of reality, inasmuch as they exist in our minds. I suggest that what we deem myth in our universities is actually more real than the dull facts of our textbooks. Even that which history says is real can have no reality for you if it holds no effect over your life. What is real, in any practical sense, is what makes us feel alive. [If this concept interests you, continue reading further for some deeper philosophical considerations. If not, skip to the final paragraph.]

Does fiction exist in any CONCRETE sense? I would like to show there are two ways that fiction can exist, one which appears as a disability and the other an enabling device. In other words, I would like to show that immaterial things can exist in both the negative and affirmative sense.

Imagine that your driving up a narrow, two-lane road up the side of a mountain when you suddenly turn a corner and find that a rockslide has blocked the entire road. There is a huge boulder and you know that it is real because you can no longer move forward. You feel its reality as it stands defiantly in your way. YOU have given IT a reality. Now imagine a fiction novel and the author has just flipped your ethics upon its head. Everything you thought was good and right has now been shown to be false and corrupt. Selfishness and egotism are now the only things that are true. Ideals have been replaced, traded, destroyed, and this new concept now stands in your way. If your mind can’t find a way around it, then it begins to take on a reality, preventing you from continuing in the direction you were going. Just like the physical boulder in the road, this new idea takes a form; not as physical existence, but as a psychological block. Fiction has been made real; the unseen is now visible. YOU have given IT a reality. In one example there is a physical entity and the other an immaterial ideal, but what is real in both cases is that which is felt as a disability.

Another form of reality is that which enables. Instead of concrete as a disability, preventing you from moving ahead, imagine there is a bridge enabling you to pass over a valley. While driving on a bridge you feel like your suspended in air over a treacherous cliff, or floating over a huge body of water. You have given it reality because it has enabled you. In the same way the fictional can enable you to move forward. In another work of fiction you read about a character who is truly independent, authentic and free, living according to his own ideals which are borrowed from no one else save that of his own being. Perhaps in that moment, this fictional character has enabled you to break free from the conventional beliefs of society and to search within yourself for your own answers to life. When before, you were unable to think outside of the box, now, you are able to explore new territory. The physical bridge and the immaterial character in the novel have both enabled you to move forward, and so hold a similar reality for you.

What I mean is that we should be more open to the kinds of myths and stories that Polo has shared. Legends and fictional characters can exist for us just like the boulder and the bridge do. They can disable our progress in life but they can also enable us to move on to places we never thought possible. The immaterial can shape our reality just like the physical. They can open a whole new world to us. The things we thought existed have now doubled. Our world has expanded. 

With two weeks left in my trip, I had been looking forward to what lies waiting for me at home. Family, friends, California and the land and culture that it entails -- the dry deserts, green valleys, high mountains, and the vast coast-lines and the surf that breaks upon them. But now I am ready to discover even more and to search for the mystery that lay hidden in the land; to open my heart to a growth of reality that had always existed, only that I did not exist to it; and to have others join me in the pursuit of the fantastic.

Working with Kids in Nicaragua

Early March Joy and I arrived in Jinotega, Nicaragua, to volunteer with a group of thirty orphan kids. After six months of near constant travel, I was pleased to be settling in somewhere for awhile, for us to stay put long enough for relationships to take root. 

Juan Carlos

During my first week I got to know another volunteer named John and had the great pleasure of working beside him on the garden. He was a mechanic from Wyoming and was able to repair the broken tiller hiding in the shed. All week we toiled over a garden patch until the soil was soft and deep and ready for seed. We helped John and his wife, Beth, in organizing crafts every night for the kids. Nothing brings as much joy as to see the creative display of a child's mind. 

We loved the kids as best we could, and we learned a depth to love that was entirely new to our experience. We saw how discipline was just as important as affection, we found it necessary to be stern even when hugs were so much easier. Though I had been studying Spanish for most of my trip at this point, I never practiced how to yell demands and orders over the screams of thirty kids playing in a phenomenally acoustical gymnasium. Kids can be monsters, but in this place, when every argument, fight, and bullying affair is magnified times ten with an echo effect, the kids themselves believe they are monsters, and they have a powerful roar to confirm it. When kids actually believe themselves to be monsters, there is no authority that could tame them. Let alone authority like Joy and I whose Spanish is already underdeveloped. It was a definite challenge from the beginning. 

Garden Patch

Most of our work meant being the primary caretaker for a group of about eight kids. We would wake them up in the morning, get them dressed, ration out their toothpaste, spoon feed the little ones breakfast, and finally drive a fifteen passenger van full of them to school. This was just the morning. While the older kids were in school we would have to entertain the toddlers, change poopy diapers, give them a shower, and at some point, if we were lucky, get them in bed for a short nap. While they slept, if they slept, was pretty much our only free time during the day. Yet, we couldn't get very far away because then little Juan Carlos would end up sneaking out of his room and running around the gymnasium in his underwear, which isn't an entirely unpleasant sight. After we pick up the kids from school we would return home for a few hours of play before dinner. After dinner more play. More screaming monsters. Then getting ready for bed, which usually took upwards of 1 and 1/2 hours. By the time they finally got to sleep, we were exhausted. Someone remind me that when I decide to have kids of my own, that I don't ever have eight of them. We would repeat this routine every day with little deviation. Even the meals were nearly always the same - rice and beans with corn tortillas. Rarely did we have time to break from the schedule, but when we did, the results were unforeseeable and often disastrous. 

One day I decided to  put on a game of baseball for the kids after school, a privilege only granted to them if there was a volunteer willing to unlock the equipment and oversee the utter chaos that followed. Remembering my glory days in little-league and feeling a deep nostalgia for them, I considered the challenge worth it. But I quickly found that these were games which followed none of the established rules of the sport, and they resembled none of my own childhood recollections. 

Milton during crafts.

Sure, there were bases (blocks of wood painted white), but they were soon split to splinters, destroyed by the end of a bat in the hands of one orphan kid whose destructive tendencies I never could seem to control. And there were bats, several of them, all swinging at the same time, not only towards wooden bases, but at dozens of baseballs all of which seemed to be headed directly towards my face. Gloves were the only piece of equipment in scarcity, but the kids didn't mind. Who needs to catch a ball and tag the runner out when you can just peg him with the ball and let the bruises and tears speak for themselves. I realized this was no game they were playing but a war whose fight consisted of gathering as many weapons possible and using them against the nearest victim you could find. 

There were alliances and enemies I discovered which had been formed much prior to my arrival at the orphanage. My only ally was the three year old Juan Carlos who seemed to think that no flying object could ever reach him while in the safety of my arms. I tried my best to live up to his expectations, but realizing my failure he would notice only in serious pain, I decided to end it all as soon as possible and call it a day. But how does one end a war already begun between dozens of kids who don't speak a diplomatic language? Thankfully, I was saved from finding an answer when the dinner bell rang - the kids immediately dropped all weapons and agreed on a temporary truce for the sake of their hungry stomachs. After that first day on the field, I knew I had to find a safer sport for these kids to use to express their complicated psychological tensions.

It is a general principle that kids everywhere look forward to the weekend as a refuge from school. I find that my most precious childhood memories lie within the few days that lie at the end of every week. There was always something to look forward to, and if it was nothing in particular, it was simply that the weekend was the host of possibilities. But I realized quickly that for kids here at the orphanage, they know ahead of time exactly what will take place during the weekend—nothing much at all. The weekend reserved them the feeling of being trapped on the orphanage grounds, completing choirs outside, and playing movies that had been seen a dozen times already. For our last weekend at the orphanage Joy and I decided we wanted to do something out of the ordinary for the kids. 

We knew about a cross on the top of the mountain that looks over the city of Jinotega, and has thousands of steps leading up to it. It would be only an hour hike, one that many of the kids had done before, but it would be clean air, a beautiful view of the city, and we hoped, a rejuvenating escape offering them strength to continue on with the challenging days ahead. Back at the orphanage there were small fights everyday ranging from verbal wars to flights of fists. It seems like each kid is left to himself to find entertainment wherever he can, and often at the expense of any other kids who find themselves in their line of teases and jokes. There was no sense of unity. It was easy to see that each kid suffered from the pain of neglect, from a lack of love and attention in their life. But since they all struggle with a similar issue, why wouldn’t they come together in support and love? I had had this on my heart the whole week and tried to create opportunities to push for unity in the group. But as the above account of our baseball wars detail, they were often unsuccessful. 

When the group of twenty plus kids and volunteers finally reached the top of the mountain, out of breath, dehydrated, our bodies temporarily broken, in that moment I found another opportunity that I knew would break through. “Your lives are like our climb today," I told them, as we looked down on the city from the sobering view of a mountain perspective, "for some life is more difficult and for others it can be easier. But there is no point in beating others to the top. In the end, you find yourself alone and with no one to share in your triumph. Life is not a race and so you should never feel defeated. Life is about walking alongside your brothers and sisters in Gods love, supporting one another in your trials, and sharing the beauty with others whenever your blessed with a view." 

Our time ended with the orphanage much sooner than we expected. Exciting news from home had come our way requiring us to continue our trek north and head to California much earlier. Life never fails to rebel against our plans and our expectations, we can only know when it is necessary to let go of our seeming control and free ourselves to a gentle flow of un-resistance. From Nicaragua we had several dozens of local busses to catch which would take us through Honduras to El Salvador, then to Guatemala, and finally to mainland Mexico. We would be home in seven weeks time, but there was so much more to look forward to along the way.