Indiana Hoosiers Make Us Hope in 20 Minutes...and then Second Half Exposes the Possible NIT in March

Alas, it was too good to be true. Indiana was having its way on the court in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Two banked tri-vectas dropped. In a row! We were up 32-16, despite a last minute conventional 3 injecting a little hope in the Huskers, IU had them where we wanted them. Down 13 points. Good lead, right? 32-19. Not enough.

Similar to the Hoosier euphoria of a few Tuesdays ago, when upsetting then undefeated and #3 ranked Wisconsin, whom IU had not beaten in years, the young Hoosiers followed up by getting shut down by the Northwestern Wildcats a few days later. At home!

Now Northwestern has proven to be formidable, as is Nebraska at their home, but IU should play better. Then I was questioning too little play of recruited talents Hollowell and Davis. Now it seems to be an overall problem even with them.

But this team can play! For good and bad. But they can play very well.

They have shown it. And then taken it away. Like last night.

Evan Gordon had some egregious turnovers that cannot happen. I was upset with an offensive foul charged on Noah Vonleh when he made a layup during Nebraska's second half charge, the first 5 minutes of the ill fated second.

But IU did enough on its own without the referees poor judgment to give this back to the Huskers.

It hurts.

Upsetting the Big Ten undefeated Wolverines Sunday will make up for some of the unimpressive 13-8 (3-5) record at present, but Indiana should be at least 15-6 (5-3). No excuses, Indiana has under-performed. Wildcats and Huskers in close games will not get March Madness in shape as we had hoped.

The National Invitational Tournament is looking more like a reality now.

Too bad. A few personnel moves and a few plays would make all the current pains not so daunting.

IU still has a few chances, but last night may have proved another wedge keeping this year's team from getting in the Dance again and possibly making some noise.

Which they are capable of.

First half when Stanford Robinson was scoring, the defense was keeping Nebraska in the teens, and causing TOs rather than returning them like complete newbies, IU looked hard to beat.

And alas, they are easy to beat, as proven now a few times. A close loss in East Lansing after getting outclassed by the Spartans in Bloomington is one thing, but close losses to these bottom tier Big Ten teams will not cut it.

I still hold out hope, if we can beat Michigan and win against who we should.

But Crean? We do need more of Jeremy Hollowell and Devin Davis. Despite the rough edges.

There is still six weeks to go. Should prove interesting, if not continually heartbreaking. But perhaps exhilarating... There is much still at stake, even portending for the Bigger Dance.

Play on.

Blog it.

EMC

Chapter Seven of Mexico Book: "Mexico: An Itinerant History"---Final Chapter For Now, 2014

0 MexAcuna/TEN

Still Fresh in my mind, it was only two days ago…

            It is Friday night; we got back from our trip through the West, the southwest. We intended to spend between 24 and 48 hours in Mexico, either only Chihuahua, or also said state and Coahuila, and possibly Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas if extended further. But alas, we were limited in our travels to such an extent but at least managed to visit two states, albeit itinerantly. And now as I sit here in this sunny California room around 9:00 after a night’s rest back “home”, I realize that perhaps I fulfilled the spirit of this book a bit more by doing so as a last resort. This is an “Itinerant Journey”, after all, although usually taken more metaphorically than physically.

       I will begin with the trip to Ciudad Acuna first, which happened the day after Ciudad Juarez, but was shorter and closer to me still in my mind. It happened so quickly and sweetly that I wanted to write it down right away, or at least now as it is still fresh.

    Jen and I and the girls ended up only arriving at the Texas border town of Del Rio around five o’clock, after driving out of Big Bend National Park that afternoon, and earlier that morning learning that the Boqillas border crossing of the Rio Grande was closed off but had been shut down since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Bummer. We were chagrined but not completely thwarted. Plan C: avoid border insurance all together and simply walk across the border as we did the day before in Ciudad Juarez.

    We decided it would be better for only me to go into Mexico (the state of Coahuila) while she waited in the camper with the girls. After a while of driving that day (having traversed the entire length of Big Bend and more), they were ready for some time to hang out on the border whilst I hoofed it to Ciudad Acuna.

Getting Out and Going -- 5:45 (pm)

    By the time I got out of the camper, loading my pockets with my wallet, cell phone, and a couple other things, it was 5: 45 p.m. The sun was still relatively high and I had newly placed suntan lotion on my head and arms, since they were still pink and burnt from our walk in Ciudad Juarez the day before. I wore a white Nike T-shirt and my shorts were khaki white and a little brownish hopefully to offset the mono-color threat of a funny looking tourist. I wore my tan BYU Cougar Club baseball cap, my brown tinted sunglasses Jen bought for me not too long ago, my white socks and brown shoes that I normally wear to work but look pretty sporty.

    I was on my way.

    I crossed a street perpendicular to the American border crossing down the road that blocked the way heading due south towards the border. I suppose you could call this a border frontage road. The parking lot was made of gravel and bordered a fence to some kind of private house or business. There were heaps (not obvious across the entire parking lot) of clothes and other amounts of trash along the fence, perhaps something many might expect in such a place. The fence was lined with green trees and bushes giving the lot and its surroundings a more snug and discreet place along the right side of the road. The sun was to my right, more or less directly to the west.

    Having crossed this frontage road in a minute after leaving the camper and the other cars parked in 24-hour free space, I proceeded to the U.S. walking path along the road to cross the bridge which connects the two countries. I passed through a walking turnstile after getting change from a dollar changer for the 75-cent fee in this one person-at-a-time pedestrian counter. In Chihuahua it was a 35-cent fee. No one spoke to me but I assumed someone saw me through the dark tinted windows of the building I passed. I was close enough for them to touch me if they wanted.

    I was beyond that gate and potential check, but as usual there is almost never anyone asking questions going into Mexico. Going back in time to my first border crossing (Matamoros 1982), there was possibly the only place we faced any questioning, and then again maybe it was in reality on the way back. Same for Tijuana (1993, 2002, 2003), Mexicali (1995), and Ciudad Juarez (2005). The only real opposition I ever faced was in 1999 with Gustavo Cuevas and his pickup full of donated Christmas toys and car seats and clothes.

    So for me now it was free sailing across the border, where I was now walking besides a large chain link fence to my right and gradually rising on the long bridge spanning the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo to Mexicans). This was Wednesday, April 6, 2005. I felt a pang of euphoria but a wave of foolish regret when I then realized that I didn’t bring a camera and this would have proved worthwhile for such a short excursion. Oh, well. I guess my memory and capability in descriptive prose would have to serve as the lasting “images” of this crossing.

    

    My wife had charged me with buying a necklace as proof of my successful crossing. I had my wallet and a few loose dollars in another pocket. It’s always good to have a physical objective in going anywhere.

At this point I decided to call my friend and first counselor in the San Bernardino 6^th Branch Enrique Benitez. I got an answering machine and promptly left a cheerful message, also regarding a query he had left on our phone a day before. I told him I was calling from Mexico! Alas, I was mistaken and discovered later that I missed his cell phone number by one and some stranger ended getting a funny message in Spanish talking about where the temple recommend could be found in the desk and other things they would have no idea of. C’est la vie! Tee hee hee! Ay yai yai. I later confirmed to him by phone that that had transpired but oh well. No biggie. I had attempted to call his home phone first but there was no answer there, hence the cellular attempt.

And on I went in my working/sporty shoes, the ones I occasionally have to retie the laces because they knot slips a bit easily. This same looseness of lace is a feature that makes them rather comfortable. But enough of that, eh? This is an itinerant history but I should not speak entirely of footwear and the form of walking, or belabor it too much now.

The Bridge of the Countries

Having made the call, I felt free to take in the surroundings with increased concentration. The road and bridge were long and many cars passed as I walked steadily along. Maybe one honked as it passed to see if I wanted a ride in. They didn’t slow down. I mostly looked to my west and down below as the bridge elevated above the riverside and the water itself. There were many trees below, along with an inlet of water from the main flowing part of the Rio Grande, that at first glance one could assume that was a weak iteration of the famous border river, but with a little more study was simply a side outlet of swamp-like littoral. I imagined illegal immigrants swimming, crouching, running and hiding in this no-man’s land of nature and greenery. There were large swamp trees (for lack of a better definition, I am not a botanist nor by no means a Henry David Thoreau, so these are my descriptions, and you’ll have to use your imagination a bit for my nature scenes.)

It was a pretty scene, and the river was green and not bad looking, as many might imagine it could be. Upstream to the west there was a straight bank spanning the width of the stream with water flowing over it in a small, almost unnoticeable cascade. A small fleet of ducks were moving below this unseen bank, heading towards me downstream. Others were individually swimming closer to the Mexican side. This was a pleasant and bucolic sight. Until I saw a large pile of assorted trash on the immediate bank under the bridge on the Mexican side, I had forgotten the signs and memories of dirtiness and poverty of past border crossings. For a few minutes I had almost been as transformed by the natural idyllic as if it were the new Walden Pond of that classic book. For me at this point in my life, Mexico (perhaps only for the sake of my first complete book, this one) this country and this extension of it represented an iteration of art like what Thoreau found in his famous outdoor hiatus. But again, I do not compare this work to his either in eloquence or influence, but no matter. This is my Walden Pond, albeit a much larger area in both territory and time reflected. It is with broader strokes and also a more biased general approach, as to my affiliations and commitments.

The Final Cross (over)

    I had passed the mid point and I passed a truck parked close to the curb. There were two lanes on both sides going both ways, and there were prominent signs that stated “NO PARKING ANYTIME”. I supposed there might have been something wrong with his vehicle or his papers and the driver looked at me as I passed and we did the mutual nod of respect. An hour later when I passed the same truck was still there and there were many more behind his. It occurred to me that perhaps this was a common happenstance; many trucks heading south probably faced some official rigmarole or hassles in order to pass the last hurdle in proper fashion. Or perhaps it was something else altogether?

    On I went to the Mexican side and no problem, I only needed to guide myself straight or turn crossing the street to the southeast or east. I got my bearings and continued on the same side of the street and continued due south. It seemed the street I was on had things to do and see, there were some banners dipping from the sides of buildings and a few things that caught my idea like a shopping district. The first store I came across had a man standing outside it, and he eagerly motioned me to come into his store and asked what I was looking for.

    I told him I was looking for a necklace and he beckoned me in. He was a friendly guy and explained that I needed a “comprobante” (proof) of being in the town, the state, and the country. That yes indeed, I had been there and carried certain evidence.

    He asked me if I was serious and why, and I explained it somewhat to him and we talked about a few things a couple minutes or so. He told me that he had lived in San Bernardino among other places in California, most of them in northern California like Redding and a few others. He had only lived in the city for some four months so he didn’t know the answers to many of my questions, including if the necklace that I contemplated buying were made of native stones or perhaps they were shells. He kept calling to someone in another room and asking him, occasionally peeking back there to confirm the seemingly unwilling responses. I never saw who he was and cannot recall a named associated to him.

I left this nice store and continued down the street, noticing a man not too far down on the other side in front of his store. Perhaps he noticed me go into the first shop and was anticipating my exit. I asked him in Spanish if he had “collares (necklaces) and he replied to the affirmative, inviting me in. There was another man there and there was a television on, I cannot remember if it was turned to a soccer match or movie in Spanish, or maybe a game show. He had a large array of necklaces and jewelry on display in a glass case, so a picked out a black one with many little colorful dolphins on it. I thought Journay would appreciate this, and Mom (Jennifer) could always wear it, too. It was about 5.00 bucks and I chatted a little bit, establishing where they were from and I was on my way.

    I continued down the street and noticed another shopkeeper outside his business on the other side, on the west side of this apparent popular thoroughfare. Only cars went by however and as I confirmed with the first shop owner not only was business not big on this late Wednesday afternoon, but asserted that it would be the same later that evening and only picked up on the weekends. How many millions of people sit around like this day after peaceful day? Is there a way for them to market and advertise by word of mouth? Can they take turns by doing a walk-around or call-arounds? Or would this “cost” too much to do the business? Sales are a wonderful pain, I find. (Most of my sales attempts were in 1995-1996, with a failed marketing scheme, with distant hopes of expanding it towards Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America).

    I then took a left going west on a tranquil side street, wishing to avoid the shopping zone and I was intending on finding a large church with some winged statue alighting above.

Past 6:00 O’clock and on to the Plaza

    I turned on this new street and I caught sight of the church or cathedral that I had temporarily lost track of on the tourist street. It was another two blocks to the south and another block east. As I came to the end of the block, a couple guys across the street called to me and I didn’t catch what exactly they said, but I was pretty sure they wanted some money. It may have been in English, I couldn’t tell. I asked them in Spanish of they were asking for money, and they acknowledged my question.

    

    I right away decided I could afford to give them some money, but doing it my way, which includes a verbal confirmation that they won’t use it for alcohol, that they know about what Church I attend and we don’t drink, and invite them to go to church. Now that I think of it, I should have committed them to going the following Sunday. The younger skinny one spoke a lot of English and explained how he had been incarcerated for four and half years in the United States and he had been recently deported, and he was working his way back to the southern part of Mexico.

    I asked him why he had been locked up and he said he had been caught in a car that “happened” to have four or so kilos of cocaine in it. I admitted that was a tough break and advised it would be smarter to know whose car one is driving, yes, that was agreed. So after my sermon I left with five dollars left but I felt I did my part.

    The last rather comic (to me) action of these fellows, was the heavier one who did not appear to speak English, and hadn’t served hard time in the US, promptly pitched the can of empty fruit juice on the ground by the curb where we spoke. After giving my lecture about change, church activity and temperance, this rather thoughtless act left me chagrined, but I had lectured enough. I went back down the street I had reached prior to returning to talk to the guys, and I saw the flags of the plaza as well as the winged statue.

The Central Plaza

    I really enjoyed the central plaza of Ciudad Acuna. I crossed the street on the north side and passed a van with some “gringos” hanging outside it and talking English. It looked like that they were a traveling van and were perhaps doing a volunteer church outing, like a youth service activity perhaps.

The plaza itself was one of the cooler I’ve seen: it was surrounded by plaques and busts on stands of famous and historical Mexican figures. The center of the plaza had a raised stand where people were sitting, with a roof. This was like a bandstand. There were many walkways leading into the center of the plaza past the hero busts. I read the first one and was interested to see who were on them. I didn’t know the first ones that well: there was Casales and a female that I couldn’t remember a half hour later. There were a total of eight busts around the whole square, and I made it a point of trying to dedicate their names to memory (for this book) and also read the quoted inscriptions below each one. I recognized most of them, and Christopher Columbus was the only non-Latino included. Benito Juarez was the biggest of them all, a full body statue featured in one secluded corner on the southeast side.

    After circling most of the square and reading and sizing up most of these figures, I returned to the center by the main stand. I stopped by an interesting looking guy who I had noticed in passing on the west side. He was seated on a bench facing the center band stand. He seemed like an alternative type of guy, he had punky-colored hair and an earring.

We talked for a few minutes and we talked about jobs and pay rates. It was obvious that the pay here was too little and that, I added, eventually China would take more jobs because of lower rates there. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he tended a bar. I said in Spanish, “ya gotta do what ya gotta do”. I think that is my way of tacitly disapproving but not being too tactless. After a few more pleasantries and my stated hopes for everything to go well with him and the rest of the border area of Mexico, I left my new favorite memorial to Mexican culture and history. Even though I quickly forgot the specific names of all those honored, I think it the thought that counts.

Into the Wednesday Night Mass

    The sun was still high and the temperature was warm as I headed back up north eying the church across the street. There was a notable winged statue/angel atop the cathedral which seemed to be in the process of finishing but I couldn’t be sure. I have mentioned before that many people in Mexico choose to be in a constant process of construction on various homes or businesses since they then qualify for tax breaks. I’m not sure if I learned that from my Professor Jim Wilkie or from someone else, possibly traveling near Ensenada in 2002. Or maybe it was a combination of the two.

    I crossed the sunny street into the slightly darkened entrance, up the steps from the sidewalk. From outside indications there was not much going on. Just the day before I had entered a much larger cathedral in Ciudad Juarez and there were a good numbers of beggars out front as well as a few other bystanders. This place seemed empty. But it wasn’t.

    There was an early evening mass going on with a good congregation doing their duties, the speaker was a woman saying liturgies amplified on a microphone. Once I had attended a Thursday evening mass, (maybe it had another name), in Santa Juana, Chile. I had also attended a Saturday evening mass in Concepcion, Chile, and a couple of midnight masses in my hometown with my wife.

    I didn’t get a great feel for everything, but I managed to take it all in, or at least as much as I could in two or three minutes. The light was pretty good inside, just not as direct as outside. Directly in behind the front pulpit was a very large mural painting of Jesus on the storm tossed sea. It seemed to be the basic message that He is strong and sure during any strife or turmoil. I liked it, especially when thinking of gruesome visages of the Savior on the cross, but at the same time, it seemed to be a bit ostentatious for my liking. And of course, I am of a faith that keeps no regular images of anything in the “sanctuary”. We think it is helping us avoid the pitfall of worshipping images in the Ten Commandments.

    But not taking away from the beauty of this particular church or any other, I thought this was a very nice small cathedral, and it seemed to have its share of the faithful and penitent. I noticed some people in the back side wings, away from the pews in little cubby-like ensconces, people on bended knee and heads deeply bowed in intense reverence. They were parallel to me in the back, and I felt some awe and respect for this visible faith on a late Wednesday afternoon. The people in the rows ahead seemed good in number, and this was decent showing of Christianity, tradition, and loyalty. This four days removed from the death of Pope John Paul II. (We heard of his death late the previous Saturday while driving across a highly LDS portion of Arizona.)

    I felt I had taken in enough and time was pressing, so I exited. What time was it now?

The Bell Rings, or Perhaps it Tolls…

    I walked out the front entrance where I entered and proceeded along the sidewalk to the east to make a circle of the block and the church. It was either 6:30 or 6:45 when I went itinerantly along the edge of the church because the bell was rung just as I passed. I said hello to an older man who promptly went to the string hanging from the church bell and rang it. I thought that was nice timing, and somehow was quaintly apropos. Perfect for a small foray into Mexico by foot! The bell of the faithful tolls for me! I continued north (naturally) as all in Mexico must do to reach the “blessed north” and to make it back to the camper with my wife and girls.

    I followed on my way a block or two due north, and then crossed over west to approach where I knew the bridge and the border crossing to be. I turned right and went north again, seeing a few obstructed structures, which I knew to be the buildings and infrastructure to go back across the border. As I got nearer and was gathering my bearings, I saw a young woman in a car and asked her how to go walking across. She said it was the way I was going. The road was more used by cars than itinerants like me, and there fore I had to watch my step and ensure myself from crossing cars whipping around the bend. I went ahead and saw more or less to get through. Unlike the American side, or the Mexican side from the day before, the walking turnstile to return to the bridge was facing west. In this fashion it was necessary to turn left and face the other side of the main entry road and its accompanying building.

    As I got closer I noticed there were two men talking close to where the cars talk to a teller for exiting, as well as a few others working on a façade and some plants and ivy-type issues between the street and a wall. Progress and beauty improvement! Progress in Mexico. Sebastian Edwards’ predictions shall come true.¹

    I noticed the two men observed me and seemed to be talking about me. I thought I might have had enough change to go through the turnstile, but I did not. Then the younger looking man dressed in black asked me in broken English if I needed change.

    “Yes,” I replied, and then I made it known I could communicate in Spanish. We started talking and I told him I like the town.

    He said it was “descuidado”, which means “not taken care of”. I said I thought it was nice and peaceful, and we discussed a bit more about Mexico, about where else I had visited and that I needed to visit Querétaro due to its wonderful colonial style and magnificent architecture and feel. We had a pleasant conversation and I tried to recall who were all the busts on the square but I couldn’t, and the guy was even less help.

    It was a nice conversation and I told him I was writing a book on my impressions and experiences with Mexico. He seemed to think this was a nice idea. He was the bridge or border manager for the Mexican side, and hailed from Mexico City. I thought he must have had the right contacts to have that position and to be so young.

    I offered him a state quarter that I had with Delaware, the “first state”, and he vigorously refused. I thanked him for his hospitality and for his getting the change for my return passage, and I was on my way.

7:00 and Back on the American Side

    I made the walk back across the long raised bridge over the Rio Bravo around 7:00. To my right, looking east, was a long field along the river that seemed to have a large assembly of kids practicing football, American style. They seemed to be on the Mexican side, but perhaps it was American used or simply a tradition in Coahuila this close to Texas? Or maybe it was soccer after all and my senses deceived me. Whatever it was, it was youth doing something in the tranquil distance as I headed back to my family; I had completed my mission, and I was content. I had accomplished the visit to another state of Mexico, albeit briefly and along the border.

    I was in a good mood on the way back, and as I had some free walking time like the long way to, I took advantage of using the cell phone to leave a message with my sister and family in Utah. It’s not every day that I walk out of a foreign country back to our border, and I wanted to announce my unique re-entry into the US via Texas. Just as my ill-fated attempt at calling Enrique Benitez on the way to Coahuila, I again was left with an answering machine. I left a hastily extemporaneous missive.

I enjoyed my walk back, noticing the same truck that had been purposefully parked or stalled on the way into Mexico still there, with the same driver walking about, as well as many other vehicles newly stopped behind him. Many of the other drivers also seemed to be wandering to and fro, doing what I honestly knew not.

    I continued contentedly on my way.

    I watched the water run east downstream to the end of its path, back to the place I had first crossed into Mexico some 23 years prior. 11 years old to 34 now, crossing a bridge to the same state from the same international border with a bridge, and I am somewhat still full of wonder, as I was then.

Hopefully I will be forever. Keep walking.

The Last Border Cross--American Style

I walked into the American border building and it was a glass enclosed structure with a turnstile and walkway on the left side close to the road re-entering Del Rio. I stopped for a seated border guard and another standing behind him. The man seated was a Hispanic in his forties or early fifties.

They asked me some standard questions and I had a fun time responding. They were surprised but amused by my answers. I told them about a few things, about my Mexican-American friend Tony, from East Chicago, Indiana, and his friend Ellen from Saint Louis who did their student teaching down in McCallen; I mentioned how she didn’t feel as welcomed. It was a nice visit and a fittingly pleasant way to finally get back to the camper.

I crossed the borderline again and re-entered the 24 hour parking lot. As I passed two guys were under the hood of their trunk facing west, I offered the use of my cell phone and they asked if I had a jumper cable. I told them we had an RV and I would check. I got back, checked with Jen, and apparently we didn’t. Walked back and informed them.

I got in the camper, gave the necklace to Journay and family, and we took a few minutes to clean up Cheerios and we took off for the lake fishing that we had seen back up the road. It was about 7:15 and the sun was low. I had done it.

Ciudad Juarez: A Large Expanse to the South, and East, and West

Jen and I had not been to Mexico together (or separately) since January of 2004, which will be my previous chapter which is as of yet unwritten. (Probably chapter 9)

I had bought a map of Mexico north of El Paso on Monday and figured out that the Mormon colonies that I figured were south of Ciudad Juarez, halfway between the border and the capital of Chihuahua, was in fact back further west along another route, some two hours going opposite of where we intended to go. Miles were already long for us, having prepaid 2,000 but figuring we would outdo that quantity and not wanting to overdo it too much, I made the decision that we would not bother going there this trip, adding in the fact that it would not fit into our time, either.

That night, we drove through the suburbs of El Paso and found a good place to sleep, behind a nice Presbyterian church. On the way there and resting, we had a good view of the other side of the border at night. Prior to that we had cruised downtown and had eaten parked at the central plaza square. Jen was scared at first; it was dusk and there seemed to be a few homeless there. We had driven a bit around the streets of El Paso.

We couldn’t see much of the Mexican side while in downtown El Paso, but we certainly did while driving up in the hills to the north and east. Ciudad Juarez seemed to reach on forever, at least as big as I remember seeing Mexico City, some four years before in January 2001.

Looking across the border from the hills and benches of Texas was impressive, and caused my mind to wander. I also finished listening to the end of North Carolina beating Illinois for the national championship.

We were surrounded by residential homes and apartments, but they were far enough away to not be a problem. To the north was a good incline that led to an apartment. Not long after arriving in the church lot, a light was turned on up there, which alarmed me, but we surmised it was probably caused by the wind, of which there was a lot. Speaking of wind, we had our share of it few nights previous, especially the second one.

The next morning we made our way to the border, first accidentally going towards a military base, and then getting back the right way via the freeway. We returned to the downtown area

The Border Economy: A Real Factor?

    Approaching the border close to downtown El Paso was easy enough, and as we got within a stone’s through of the walking bridge and the road that crossed it, there were a few men hawking their parking spots. Obviously on a macro scale, cross border trade and international flow of goods and services contribute greatly to economic growth bilaterally and stimulate further business and wealth for both countries, the United States and Mexico.

    But what kind of money exchanged hands here at the border (The micro-economy)? The first parking lot attendant waved me down as we stopped to talk, I asked how much and he said “$8.00”. Our size as a camper made us beyond the printed price of six dollars, and we took another right and another Spanish speaking hawker offered us a space for only five bucks. We took it. He helped us back in to a tight spot and we got ready to cross.

    It took us a little while, and we took Madyha in the stroller. This was her first time in the country of Mexico! We got on the bridge to cross the railroad that lay between the borders; there was no Rio Bravo here. Or was there? Already the memory falters. (I am writing this Memorial Day, 2005, a good month and a half after this visit.

    We paid our sums of .35 cents at the turnstile, after passing a man who looked at me and gave no indication of paying or talking until I walked by about 10 feet past. I looked at him for a signal but he didn’t react until it seemed I was passing by. We paid our sums and continued across. It was very windy and cool. I turned my baseball cap on backwards to help avoid it blowing off. We crossed the border for the first time as a foursome, Madhya’s first venture into Mexico, or any other foreign country. A small parade of white tigers was passing on a road underneath the walkway on the Mexican side, the voice of the affair announcing the upcoming circus loudly on a speaker. The last truck couldn’t fit under the bridge and they had to back up. This was Mexico.

    And we stopped and enjoyed it.

    We don’t see multiple trucks filled with white tigers everyday.

    

    We continued our way into the city, Ciudad Juarez, state of Chihuahua, for the very first time.

    

    We walked in and we were asked if we wanted taxi rides by guys along the street. We declined and continued along the uneven sidewalk with all its uneven breaks that

1 Last night I mentioned this prediction to a co-worker who thinks learning Spanish is pointless but he thinks that Latin America will never get ahead economically like say, China, or India.

Chapter Six of Mexico Book: "Mexico: An Itinerant History" ---Only partial---rest on another part...

MEXSEVEN

A Forced Return to Mexico…

    Because of our choice to be bumped at the end of our honeymoon, we had significant vouchers with Alaskan Airlines to cash in within a year. They were for one free flight apiece to anywhere they flew. I wanted to go as far south as possible, and that turned out to be Zihuatenejo, Guerrero. Guerrero is a few states down the Pacific coast of Mexico, past Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Colima.

Now we weren’t actually forced to do this, but I think the honeymoon trip of summer 2000 began or confirmed what turned into a sort of craving for me, similar to my quest to visit all the American states. I had managed to visit some of my last needed US states in the late 90s, (South Carolina and Arkansas in 1998, Delaware in 1999), and now I fancied it as a goal to get to all the Mexican states. After all, there are quite a few less states in Mexico than the US (about 18 less). This trip would take us to potentially four or five new ones. I had already been to Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo, and both Baja Californias. I would be able to double my state count in one trip!

    After looking at the possibilities along the “Mexican Riviera”, a goal since personally thinking of honeymoon plans since 1997, we decided on Guerrero over Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and perhaps one other port city, like Colima. The main idea was to get as far south in the dead of winter, and even though California winters are balmy in comparison to what I am used to from living most of my life in southern Indiana and central Utah. But we had a year to plan it, and the biggest break not in the sweltering summer would be during Christmas and New Year’s.

    I forget which month I finalized the tickets with Alaska Airlines, maybe it was right before Thanksgiving. I had to work with what was available, and I was comparing a couple different cities like Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. We had the idea that the Christmas holiday would best be spent with family so we went up to Doug and Denise’s house in Kelso, Washington, for the time before, and then returned a day after Christmas.

    We flew out the (30^th) because that was the most feasible day after X-Mas and before New Year’s, according to flights available that far in advance. We would fly early in the day and be able to take a bus to arrive in Acapulco that night. This was the plan. Plus, the return date couldn’t be until the 10^th of January, which meant I had to find a substitute teacher for three days. I thought this was no problem since I had 10 paid absences per school year, but later I learned they would not be paid since these days were starting consecutively after an extended holiday.

    But first was our big driving trip up north, counted down from Friday 29, Thursday 28, Wednesday 27, Tuesday 26, Monday 25, Sunday 24, Saturday 23 (Friday the 22^nd was the last day of school for me). We left a bit after school to go stay the night in Redwood City with Jenny and Evan in the Bay Area near Palo Alto. Jen and I struggled to remember this fact until after I wrote this part about visiting Doug and Denise, and this was the first stage of our northern trip. She seems to recall the food we ate that Friday night with them. Although, I am not sure, because we visited them a few times: the first was February 2000, after we knew each other a month, the next time was for Thanksgiving of 2000, and finally this time after Christmas prior to the new millennium. (I don’t exactly recall if we visited them in August, the same month that Linda and Jen came back with me to Indiana, Nauvoo, and Chicago).

We drove early that Saturday from there. It is approximately a 16 hour drive and we got there late that night. It was already dark as we drove through Oregon and it rained for a stretch in the mountains. We made it in one day, supping somewhere in northern Oregon before passing Portland and doing the last hour past the Columbia River.

    We left on the 27^th of December (Wednesday) in order to have a whole day of rest before our flight to Mexico on Saturday. On the way back we stopped for the night at a motel in Grant’s Pass, after taking a detour to the sea and checking out a few dunes that we went too fast on and Jen got sick/ queasy (she had overcome her morning sickness in the previous weeks and this was a brief relapse). We stayed the night off the 5 freeway and made it back to southern California the next day.

Our trip to Mexico was from the 30^th until the 10^th of January, 11 nights and twelve days.

Our itinerary of days was as follows:

Saturday 30 Arrive in Ixtapa and take the bus to Acapulco

Sunday 31 Spend day in Acapulco, New Year’s on the Bay

Monday 1 Get tickets, go to DF at night

__________________________________

Tuesday 2 DF

Wednesday 3 DF

Thursday 4 DF

Friday 5 DF

Saturday 6 DF

Sunday 7 Attend church in Mexico City

Monday 8 Went to campus after getting tickets, at night, very late, take bus back to Zihuantanejo_________________________________________________

Tuesday 9 Spend the day in Zi-town, last night

Wednesday 10 Fly back to Los Angeles, arrive late and dark

We were able to leave early that Saturday from LAX, and we left our car at long term parking in B or C lot. (This would prove to be a slight problem afterwards, and this will be explained later.)

We made it to Ixtapa, Guerrero, in good time, and the weather was tropical and humid, as it is in the tropics. It was sometime in the early afternoon. From there we managed to get to the bus stop and discover that all the day’s first class bust tickets to Acapulco were taken. That meant that we could buy tickets and ride second class, and welcome to the Third World! Oh man. The bus was way overcrowded because it was overbooked, and we found ourselves spending an inordinate amount of minutes jockeying, pushing, and floundering towards getting on the bus.

    Jen being four and a half months pregnant didn’t help the situation of little space. That was hard on her, and made me feel a bit distressed as well. So we stood among a cramped front of the bus for the first twenty minutes or so. I told Jen I would ask someone to give her a seat since she was pregnant but she demurred. After a half hour or so she got a seat when some people moved. I got a seat next to her about an hour later. This was a second class bus that not only made frequent stops for people to get off and occasionally get on, but there seemed to be an exaggerated amount of annoying speed bumps which were both slowing to our progress and uncomfortable in the actual process of crossing them

It got dark during our warm and tiresome voyage to Acapulco, passing towns with the names of______________, ____________________, ______________________, . For a long stretch we watched small homes and huts off the side of the road in an extraordinary darkness, but there was light (perhaps from the moon) to see many surroundings. It turned out a “planta de luz” was burning and therefore there was a considerable power outage for many miles. Is was a surreal sight to see this multilevel plant oozing flames and smoke in the dark of the night, more a bizarre nightmare than anything.

    We finally arrived in Acapulco late that night and walked around with our suitcases in the streets close to the bay. We walked by a few hotels and they were either full our too expensive to our tastes. We went further towards the beaches and the bay, turned a corner and came upon a cheap place with vacancy. We finally found one. We then found a nice restaurant that opened especially for us, it was officially closed. It was really filling for us weary travelers.

    We took up our own towels to and slept all right after getting the proper ventilation es

    (April 8, 2023- Editing this and found that it ended without a finish. Did I save this on an old thumb drive? Or did I never finish it? Both are possible.) 

    Hmmmm...

Chapter Five of Mexico Book: "Mexico: An Itinerant History" Unfinished...Ongoing

Chapter Six: My Itinerant Wanderings:

Let’s Talk About Friends…

    I think it’s safe to say that friendships and acquaintances compose a lot of our understanding and identification with any culture, be it a foreign one or a close culture to us, either a culture in a seemingly far away orbit or just within our own conceptual grasp.

    For example, I live within the general American culture, and within this massive country we live in there are multitudinous sub-cultures abounding. Take the American sub-culture of African-Americans: they make up an approximate 11% of our population and maybe 80% of them are living within majority “black” communities and maintaining a strong African-American identity and culture within the context of the overall American one. Latinos now make up more than the ratio of African-Americans in the US of the 21^st century, but with only 60 % being Mexican-American, this culture composes the second biggest sub-culture nationally (maybe 7 % nationally). Obviously this can further be broken down into various factions of regions and further sub-cultures, but it is helpful to lump them together in large chunks, just as it is helpful to conceive of the majority Anglo culture presiding as the national face for most of the current US. This does not mean that the large chunks are easily defined, rather the contrary is true. The brain can at least understand the bigger chunks first and then get more nuanced in its understanding from there.

    I have mentioned that examining and learning “another” can lead to better understanding of oneself. This can be done within the United States and also without. I wish to look at some of my lifelong interaction with Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and a few other Latinos, both within and without the confines of the USA.

    In the course of my years (1970-2004), I have known many sub-cultures and even been part of my own; the religious sub-culture of Latter-day Saint, which is currently at a national rate of about two percent of the overall population. The biggest religious faction is the Catholic at only 20-25 %. There is a Christian “hegemony” overall nationally as it were but it is highly factionalized. Thus, our nation has many sub-cultures, and Latinos fit into a few different groups ethnically but even more religiously and economically.

Historical Breakdown

1970-1980. In my first decade, my main interaction with the Latino community was through my adopted grandmother Ruby Bumzahem (from Panama), my third-grade Spanish teacher (from Spain), a couple of foster children raised in Indiana who stayed in my home for six weeks (maybe Mexican-American), one Hispanic girl at Elm Heights Elementary, Lisa Velasquez (Puerto Rican or Mexican-American?) and the assorted television shows from Sesame Street to Charles Bronson and Eastwood shooting across the Sierra on the TV screen. Bishop Martinez does not count because despite his Hispanic surname he was more Asian (Pilipino) than Latino.

    I saw most of non-American foreign culture through the eyes and narratives of my parents in West Africa (1964-1966). Usually this fascinated me.

    1980-85 was a little more eye opening towards other cultures such as the Latino one. Attending middle school exposed me to a few more Hispanics, but not that many. In attending Binford Middle School for two years and then Batchelor Junior High for one, I was exposed to more kids and cultures than I had seen theretofore, and I was intellectually stimulated more than ever, especially by Mr. Courtney of everlasting fame and credit. He shaped my worldview as few people ever could. (His specialty was Russia and Communism, but the more you learn about Latin America the more you understand the mutual relevance of those subjects.)

    I was able to go on three consecutive cruises to the Caribbean during the holidays 1982-4, and although I did not really establish any serious friendships with any Latinos while in Mexico and Puerto Rico during those brief visits, there were some seeds of outreaching established with a Bahamian, a Barbadian, and an Antiguan. Sowing these types of international friendly experiences lead to later positive friendships with others, like Latinos. Becoming acquainted with the unknown or foreign sometimes starts in small ways and then gradually can become bigger. This has an affect on or level of closeness with other cultures, as demarcated in Chapter ___, the level of proximity to Mexico.

My first two Mexican visits were in these years (as documented in Chapters 1 and 2), and although there was no memorable acquaintances from Tamaulipas or Quintana Roo, (or San Juan, PR, for that matter), a few foundations were laid within my visits to these Spanish speaking lands, at least whetting my appetite to do so.

    Another significant international experience in that time was hosting Bertrand, a French exchange student for three weeks, or Monique in her second year of French at Bloomington High School South. He taught me a couple French phrases, gave us some interesting gifts, and made me see through a foreigner’s eyes a bit. We also visited Chicago with him; this was my first stay there (Maybe one night? I remember it was 1984 because IU with freshman Alford upset Michael Jordan in his last year with number one UNC). It was opening my eyes to new views, including the Tin Tin books he gave me.

    1986-1990 finally was the linguistic break through with the Spanish language, and not especially a “Mexican” interaction of the language (Mexicans make up maybe 25 percent of the spoken language worldwide) but at least Hispanic. One incidental note was that in 1985 my mother dated an illegal Portuguese immigrant named Paul who went by the name of John. Perhaps this was my first encounter with an immigration case, much a part of the Mexican situation in the States now, and part and parcel of some of my relationships now (mostly with Mexican illegal aliens but not exclusively).

    I started my high school Spanish (1985-6) with Pedro Sainz, swim coach extraordinaire and first year teacher. By being a Hispanic teacher it was unusual and a new chance for me to see a bit into another world, especially as a freshman. That same year I also had Mr. Bellisis in Anthropology, who made it quite clear that he was a Greek-American from Gary, the industrial suburbs of Chicago by Lake Michigan. These two “ethnic” teachers were preparing me for more diversity, not so much within the classroom but more for other experiences while in high school. My sophomore year I volunteered for the exchange with Spain, which led to Ricardo Salvador Boso arriving at my home for three weeks a year later.

During my high school years I would spend a few holiday weeks down in Florida, mostly on the Gulf or Mexico side near Fort Myers. There wasn’t a great sign of Latinos around but I do remember at a youth church class in March of 1989 that there were a couple of youths who seemed to be of Latino origin. The acquaintances I made that day in North Fort Meyers were not noteworthy but they left somewhat of an impression as far as how our Church operates in other areas and that there was a Hispanic presence in it, something not so evident in Indiana.

I enjoyed going to the international dorms on 10^th street called Eigamenn; there I would play ping-pong competitively with many people of various ethnic groups, mostly Asian.

I had originally tried going to Spain after my junior year but then relented until after my senior year. I was relieved to have graduated (and avoided March because of missed class time) and was happy to practice my Spanish by necessity. I learned a lot about what I didn’t know and what I didn’t know how to do. I even picked up a few of the Spanish idioms. I also grew in appreciation of their culture and heritage.

Not long after being home from Spain, I took my final trip to see family out on the east coast. I read a Hemingway short stories book checked out from the library. (Hemingway gives you a picture of Spain and the Spanish Caribbean).

In between these “farewell trips” I was working with my father wiring homes with his assistant Jay “Steve” Compton.

Upon arriving home from the east coast trip (and stopping on the way in Montreal to see Tim Raines of the Expos) I had an important envelope in my stack of mail. My mom and stepfather waited to see if I had the envelope at the house, but I didn’t see it and ran back around the house that no.

But it was. I didn’t see it at first. But there it was!

I had been hoping most of my life to go abroad, and that next period of my life was nerve wracking until I decided to pray. Immediate peace came.

So then came the successive friendships of the MTC and the mission of Chile.

1989. The main friendships I developed in Spain were with a couple members of my Church and the parents of Ricardo. I had already become friends with Ricardo and his sister Daniela, and I didn’t spend too much time with them. I met a few sister missionaries and became friends with American Sister Thomas and a sixteen year-old named David, a native of Castellón. I had some good times with Ricardo’s parents, of good and affable Spanish stock.

They helped me in linguistic and cultural ways to be more ready for my mission. It was a great and helpful preparation for Chile and the world of a missionary.

Reporting to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, was the next big move towards advancing in the Spanish speaking world, thus preparing me for the world of Mexico past and present.

I suppose I will insert here that many Mexicans see their country as the final repository of their tongue, perhaps much as many claim that the United States is the ultimate arbiter of English due to its size and significant weight of influence worldwide. Hollywood is based in the US, as is other world capitals of New York City and Washington D.C. Mexico claims Mexico City as its urban capital. One out of four Mexicans claims the capital city as their home. By learning the Spanish language, we are by default entering further into the world and common tongue of the Mexican people and its kingdom.

MTC-Time of Preparation and Growth

My three roommates had an effect on me to some degree linguistically, based on their backgrounds and attitudes. Shane Neve was a nice guy from West Valley City, Salt Lake City. He had studied 2 years of high school Spanish and he was a quick study. We worked well together.

The other two companions were both from Mesa, Arizona; one had studied maybe one year of Spanish (Nate Burleson) and the other, his assigned MTC companion, perhaps two or three years ( Paul Standage). Elder Standage had an American father who had served in Chile years before and then married his mother who was from Chile, the city of Talca in our very mission of Concepción.

---Reality blurb--- December 15, 2004--- Tonight was a strong dosage of Mexico for me. We had our Monday/Wednesday Christmas party, and we had a dinner at 7:30 and a gift exchange a little after 8:00. The majority of the class is Mexican and decidedly there is a Mexican flavor. By 8:55 I was in Marcus’s class next door (he a Mexican-American) and was listening to one of my new students (una chava muy mexicana) named Maria belting a few romantic Mexican melodies while accompanied by a seated man accompanying her by guitar. Most of the onlookers were fellow Mexican immigrants and for a few brief moments that turned almost transcendent I was caught in the depth of Mexico. Merry Christmas! ----

MTC Continued

The rest of our district had its influence on my Spanish advancement; maybe a bit to do with my anticipation of Latin American living as well. I also can’t forget that all of the people in the MTC had a social and spiritual and intellectual influence on me: the teachers, the branch president (who was a Mexican-American named Valencia) and his counselors, the missionary leaders, the visiting speakers like Stephen Covey and members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 Apostles, plus other general authorities as members of the Seventy.

The other elders of my district included Patton from the Phoenix area (he perhaps struggled the most with Spanish); his companion from Washington State named Skiles (also struggled greatly with the language and thus did not help his comp much), Elder Trask from Maryland, who was a convert and was pretty intelligent and adept at learning; and his companion Houston who was from nearby Sunset, Utah, a northern suburb area of Salt Lake City (he struggled with Spanish but was very dedicated albeit frustrated often). We also had two sister missionaries: Dunn from southern California (her experience with academic Spanish, including college courses, was the biggest part to convince me to stay for two months rather than go through the MTC in an advanced program) and her companion Greene from northern Utah (she struggled with Spanish but her destination in Argentina kept her dedicated).

These fellow students helped my development, and at times I thought it was the opposite but now I think they helped my confidence and allowed me to shine more with internalizing the language. We learn as teachers sometimes more than students. Many of them forced me to teach, and I believe the overall experience was good.

These people and my own experiences in learning Spanish only galvanized my development more while at the Training Center for almost nine weeks (62 days, including arrival and departure dates).

MTC Teachers

The teachers themselves were the biggest influence on all of us. I begin with Elder Linn, who was an energetic night teacher who had served half his mission in Panama and the other half in Costa Rica. He spellbound us with his spiritual talks, teachings, and overall effervescent demeanor. He was huge on our morale during a sometimes moribund holiday season. (Thanksgiving and Christmas Days were “celebrated” by all-day scripture study in our cramped but cozy from the bleak-winter-cold class rooms). Elder Linn, as the male teachers were then called, had such a gift for enthusiastic teaching that he kept all of us inspired, even those of us who struggled more than others.

The morning teacher was Elder Turner who had served in Spain. He was more straightforward and serious and one time made me feel very guilty for asking a probing but most likely inappropriate question while walking around the MTC grounds¹. He was a good teacher, but nothing outstanding from my memory remains apart from the guilt trip.

    Elder Hale was a guy who seemed to be older and softer, a good teacher in the afternoons. He had served his mission in Argentina I believe. This was good for the sisters who were going to Bahia Blanca, but all of us elders were hungry for people involved with Chile. Some of us in our “Chiguayante District” had contacts down there who would feed us information from Santiago or Vina del Mar via cassette or letter.

The questions I asked our teachers were generally more advanced than the other elders and at times may have stumped them a bit. Memories are definitely hazy on all the lessons and questions. I distinctly remember questions being resolved that I had accumulated over the years. Formulating our own gospel questions in Spanish was a definite plus to go about establishing.

Because of the holiday season that we were sent for missionary training, it opened the opportunity for two South American substitute teachers to come during the holidays. We were excited to have real flesh and blood South American “Lamanites” to teach and share with us. Elder _Bocado? ______ was a diminutive man with big expressive eyes who had a powerful and comforting spirit about him. He had the size of a boy and a youngish face but seemed older. He had a sort of a Yoda-like spiritual giant quality to me. He was from Peru or Ecuador as was the other sub.

    

    Elder Espinel was from Peru as well, I want to say, and to us it made a big difference as to how close he originated from our destination both physically and culturally. e were constantly wondering what Chileans were like and how their Spanish differed from the other kinds.

South American companions up close: a 10 month string of Seven

    Arriving in Chile after the first week of January was a climate change of opposites (from the coldest and snowiest of a mountain climate to the dead of summer of a Mediterranean one in south central Chile). Many things would prove new and surprising as any person will find in a land with a new language, culture, dietary customs, and relative isolation from the home. Perhaps the biggest change for me was having a 24 hour a day companion, and in my case it happened to be native chileno, Elder Cabrera.

    Miguel Antonio Cabrera Rubilar was a young fiery LDS missionary. He was young in the mission and very enthusiastic, almost overzealous-- to some people too much so. For me he seemed an ideal trainer who taught me many lessons. I got to meet him first in the chapel by the bus stop at the Concepcion main terminal. From there we spoke for the three hours of bus trips to our assigned area of Mulchen, having an exchange in Los Angeles an hour before arriving. We talked about different words; we drew pictures and maps on paper as we descended down the main austral highway through the eighth region of Chile known as Bio-Bio. I would repeat phrases that I learned in Spain: Elder Cabrera would try to make sense of them and give me the Chilean equivalents. We hit it off right away and we were always learning new phrases and meanings.

    Miguel Cabrera

Other than being in close proximity with my adopted grandmother Ruby of Panama growing up in Bloomington, this was first time to live with a Latino. It was an enriching experience. Miguel was from a humble home in a Santiago suburb called Puente Alto; I don’t remember how many siblings he had but I believe his father wasn’t around, and he had done well to get this far. He would remark how he was only a 6- or 8-hour bus trip from home. He had begun the mission the same month as me only the previous November, spending some 11 days in the Santiago. He had begun the mission with an American trainer in November in the small town of Yungay not a far spell north of us in another stake. He had one companion there (Raymond, who taught him the English word “really” really well) and then transferred to be with Elder Gillette, whom I replaced one month later. I was his third “gringo” and definitely the least experienced, the other two being his senior companion and I being a “greenie”.

Perhaps now is not the forum for really going into all the ins and outs of his particular traits and how I interacted with Elder Cabrera and his influence on me, because this book is dedicated to Mexico and this guy was not Mexican of course, nor would this really help describe all the friendship that much but to show my understanding or interaction with a Latino. It was new and fun, and at times trying for different reasons. It established an ongoing Latino string of friendships which have endeared and enlightened me on the entire Latin American world and eventually, Mexico itself.

Manuel Vera

We spent a little over two months together (which at times seemed like a life time) and then came my next companion, Elder Manuel Vera. This transfer occurred in the middle of March 1990, the first month of the southern hemisphere’s fall. I was ready for Elder Cabrera to move on, the time we spent together was valuable but I was ready for the change. I learned to really enjoy change in my mission.

I only passed 4 weeks with Elder Vera which were very intense. We managed to teach a lot and baptize. He liked to sing and play the guitar, and he had a pleasant flair for both. Here with this new chileno in the small town of Mulchen that I had grown to know Vera seemed to be the romantic idea of what being Latino should be: a charismatic (and a bit rotund) guy who had musical talent. I learned some new church songs with him and we even were invited to speak on the radio together at Easter time. We seemed to reap from the worked sowed by Elder Cabrera and me starting from the previous December when he had arrived. He was a poor but smart guy from Quintero, Chile, and was only raised by his mother. I don’t know if he had siblings, I don’t think so.

    It turned out fortunate that I didn’t start the mission early in December 1989 because that whole month in Chile most missionaries were confined to their pensions and many went stir crazy due to national elections, the first in Chile since the Pinochet military coup in 1973. Later in my mission during 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War we had an early evening curfew and even that was a little maddening, albeit a few hours per night. With Vera, speaking of nutty romantic things, it was at our only zone conference together that he pointed out to me his fiancée, a sister missionary at our small conference of 16 missionaries some few chairs away! She was indeed engaged to him and perhaps this is why he would be quickly called out of our zone next transfer. (I later saw Manuel as a bishop in 1994 and he then had two children: both born of that missionary sister seen at the March zone conference.

Andres Miranda

From this rather intense friendship with Elder Vera and what I would say was a more mature understanding of things, based on his greater age compared to Cabrera and experience in the mission field as well, he was whisked away and I was paired with Andres Miguel Miranda in Mulchen still, what was to be my fourth and final month. He was a fair-skinned light-haired Chilean who hailed from nearby Rancagua. (As of 2005 when I write this, that city became the new base for the former Santiago South Mission sometime last year or the year before).

Elder Miranda was interesting. He had begun the mission not too long before me, or perhaps a few days after as I recall, but was serving in the field by December as the local natives would do their training so much faster. He would claim how I had been set apart before him by more than a week and therefore as a junior companion I practically had more seniority. We did not accomplish a lot of teaching and I suppose we shared a couple moments of frustration, including his perception that at times I didn’t understand enough Spanish. He had a wealthy father who worked for El Teniente, one of the biggest copper mines in the Chile, which as a nation is the biggest copper exporter in the world. I think

I looked more “moreno” than he did usually, my skin tone was darker as well as my hair. It was a good month nonetheless and we left as friends. After my first four months in the country town between the rivers Bureo and Mulchen, I guess I was ready for new companions and the big city.

Pablo Trincado

I was assigned as a senior companion in my fifth month and to do it in Concepción, the big city and more specifically, the suburb of the mission president, Pedro de Valdivia on the south side of our mission city. Elder Trincado had been there maybe for two months with the Albertan Canadian Elder Atwood. Atwood was quite a playful guy from what I gather and it’s funny what you learn from the Chileans after you replace someone. I had perhaps even a greater indulgence of this phenomenon four months earlier in January with El Elder Gillette from Tooele, Utah.

I believe Elder Trincado was a very relaxed type of guy, a new change for me compared to Cabrera (hyper and animated), Vera (intense and acerbic), and Miranda (sardonic and a bit cocksure). He and I got along pretty well and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. It was a new experience being the guy with the responsibility to call the shots, and I depended quite a bit on the knowledge and instincts of my companion to do things right. Of course I learned that this is an impossible feat and my first month without baptisms passed in May, half in the old area and half in the new one. This caused me a bit of stress, because I considered myself the type of missionary to be a “baptizer”² and to have a high yield as a teacher and proselyter. The low number of those baptized in my last month in Mulchen was what I thought to be an aberration: Miranda and I weren’t meant to baptize much together and it was time to move on.

Trincado, like Cabrera, hailed from Puente Alto: they knew each other somewhat but were not close friends. Trincado had put on some weight since coming on the mission; he was a skinny kid before.

Elder Trincado had a few people they were teaching and I was zealously hopeful, but alas, things never worked out that May in autumn and my faith was a bit discouraged; I chalked it up to the change mid-month and resolved to jump on the productive missionary horse again with resilient determination. Elder Trincado was quiet and friendly, and we laughed at a few inside jokes. I felt like we were doing our part to baptize many but in more than one case people kept slipping through the cracks. I learned a more introspective side to this Latino, and his complexion was light as well as his hair. Not as light as Miranda but certainly a lighter hair color than typical Chileans.

We tried knocking doors and teaching in Lonco, the rich neighborhood a half hour’s walk from our pension. We met one member family who had been tracted into a year or two before; they lived with their parents who were not baptized. We had a good relationship with a returned missionary sister and her barber husband and were set to baptize a family living in their basement: they eventually left us in the cold.

Speaking of cold, I got sick that first winter; that was with another companion.

Patricio Villagra

Elder Villagra only had a month in the field when he replaced Elder Trincado in the first part of July. He was from Santiago, the comuna of Maipu. He was skinny and unassuming, and of all the companions thus far he was he was the least good looking, or possessed possibly less charisma and charm than the others. This is not to say that he was not charming or pleasant; he was a very nice and gentle guy, and a word that comes to mind to describe him is chipper. Having had a month only as a proselytizing elder, Villagra had few things to learn but nothing compared to new “greenies” from the states or abroad (we had one of the first eight East German missionaries sent outside of the Communist state).

1 After hearing some other horror stories from the mission field and having my curiosity piqued, I asked Elder Turner “what was the worst story you heard during the mission”? He rejoined with another question incurring all possible guilt on my part, “Are you sure you want to know that, Elder?”

2 Many times with my trainer we would read a pamphlet published by the Church about Wilford Woodruff and other early missionaries in England baptizing thousands, and the theme of President Kimball years later was “Why not?” Combined with the Provo M.T.C.’s powerful preaching of the “field is white and ready to harvest”, I saw myself as a budding “baptizer”, thus fulfilling scriptural prophesy and the cry of faith of the modern day missionary in the last days.

Chapter Four of Mexico Book: "Mexico: An Itinerant History"

A New Chapter, a New Life: Chapter 5- Married in Mexico

New, New, New, and Old… (Begun Sunday, October 17, 2004)

    As the title of this chapter suggests and perhaps unfairly misleads, I was not married in Mexico but arrived there shortly after my marriage in Los Angeles at the Latter-day Saint Church of Jesus Christ temple on Santa Monica Boulevard. That said, my first days and nights as a married man were spent in the new Mexican state for me and my bride, southern Baja, or California Baja South.

And thus my Mexican observations and living experiences were amplified more than ever before.

Up until then I had spent one short day in Tamaulipas (1982), a long day in Quintana Roo (1983), two afternoons and a night stay in California Baja North (1993, 1995, 1999): a total of three states in almost as many days. But I was now to go a good stay in 2000, a practical marathon of 11 days. Added to this new experience was the novelty of being newly married; an event that happened not long after my December search of the previous year in Mexicali (1999).

    I was earnestly looking still, a week after New Year’s of 2000, and it finally happened on a Sunday evening in Highland, California. The chapel that I attended had a multi-stake fireside that night and that is precisely when I met my future wife, Jennifer Fisher of San Bernardino. By April she had met all of my family and I proposed by the end of that month. We were engaged for nine weeks and married June 24, 2000.

We had friends (Jen through her sister’s husband in Yucaipa, California) who had a house in Los Barriles, Mexico. They agreed to let us stay there the majority of the time allotted in Mexico for the honeymoon. This is a very small town on the Mar de Cortes a ways down the coast from the capital city, La Paz. It is rather out of the way from major tourism but it had definitely been touched by a number of us northerners, including those of whom we were staying with among others along the rural seaside and its occasional hotel resorts.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzrrrrrrre

Cabo San Lucas

    We arrived in the later afternoon at the airport a good bit inland from the tourist havens of San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas located at the end tip of the peninsula. It was Saturday. It took a while to figure out which was the best transportation to our hotel, called the Finisterra, a few leagues southwest of the bay on the coast of CSL (aka “Cabo”. This was a good little trip and we had to decide between a taxi or bus, or perhaps some nice passerby with nothing better to do. Not only did we start a quick comparison of transportation but we began regular being accosted by time share sellers, some of whom we entertained more than others, while walking the streets and walkways or simply moving from one major destination, such as the airport, to another.

    We took the bus, and took in the many giant hotel resorts and hotels of various colors and styles along the ocean. This ocean was pointing south towards the Pacific.

________________________________________________________

Time blurb—October 24, 2004—today I heard a very interesting piece of data: there are 4 million Americans living abroad with one fourth of them, one million American citizens living in Mexico. This puts some interesting considerations into perspective.

    This was a new state for both of us, and I should note that my wife had a few experiences in Mexico, thus adding to our collective experience and knowledge of this land of some one fourth of all American ex-patriots abroad.

    

    My wife had taken visits into the border areas of California with her family as a child and had done some camping there, as well as taken a flight with her mother to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta as a 14 year-old. Her experiences growing up with Latinos in San Bernardino and her mission in Spain acquainted her with many things Hispanic, and her natural affinity to cooking also led her to different Hispanic cuisines.

    I was 29 and she was 26. Our combined 55 years of living experience was now venturing to the Southern Baja state together in a new state of matrimony as well.

    A few months prior to this, a woman, the sister or mother of one of my students at Pacific High School mentioned a good hotel at Cabo named “Finisterra”. The Latin name implies it’s at the very end of the earth, so I assumed this would be a suitable place for the beginning of our married lives together…

The end of everything is the beginning of everything else.

Our beginning included time-share sales pitches, ocean vistas and multi-colored hotel resorts along sandy beaches beside our speed bump endowed highway. It was nice.

First 24 Hours

    This was a luxury hotel; our concierge was accommodating and I believe spoke English, as the clerks at the front desk did as any luxury hotel in Mexico would have their employees do.

Our first night together had more to do with universal things than anything Mexican or American, but the following morning’s events were dictated by our desire to observe the Sabbath as best we could. We left the hotel Finisterra with our luggage and took a hotel taxi back to the town to attend the local LDS Church that we asked about at the front desk.

    The church was a few blocks away from where we were let off after our cab driver, who claimed to know its location, finally found the right one after driving by another one, and we managed to attend the sacrament meeting, or perhaps another one, like priesthood and Relief Society. It was warm and I remember appreciating that some rooms of the building had air conditioning. I remember ceiling fans. Both my wife and I don’t recall a lot about the meeting there, because in times since we have attended other services in Acapulco, Mexico City and Hermosillo.

A few things I do remember at the church was talking to a few American missionaries, they were based in the Culiacan Mission, which is a ferry ride across the sea to the east. I can’t recall who else we talked to but it sort of seemed they were used to tourists from abroad. We left our bags somewhere secure and after leaving the Church in the heat of the day we found an affordable hotel a few blocks closer to the bay called the “Mar de Cortes”.

    It was small and cheap-- but it was nice enough-- and we stayed there Sunday and Monday nights before moving on in a rental car to the next stop up the coast.

That Sunday night found us walking about downtown and out to the end of the bay pier. We were approached by another time share salesman, and somehow from this and another commitment the following morning we managed a free blanket and a rental car which we would need to go to Los Barriles a good 100 kilometers away. The morning commitment also promised a free breakfast of bacon and eggs? What the hey?

    That night we went to a downtown supermarket and I bought a Sunday Los Angeles Times and Jen bought some bottled water and maybe some bread and a few eatables. Our second night as a married couple had no television and the bed was small but I had good reading and life was good; we were happy.

The scare

That night, I believe it was, if not the night after, a story we like to tell people occurred: a young boy jumped out in front of us on the night sidewalk and startled us loudly. He really upset my new wife and I yelled at him in Spanish to the affect of “why would he do such a thing?”

My adrenaline was flowing hard as well as my need for retribution as I signaled to be quiet and wait to Jennifer as I carefully watched what the boy would do after his fun little trick on two unsuspecting adults. I observed intently as he peered into a large bar/restaurant, transfixed and oblivious to anyone from mere seconds ago. His mistake.

    My still adrenaline surging fingers quickly dug into his sides as I simultaneously shouted straight into his ear. I smiled as he recoiled far worse than his previous stunt pulled on us. As I walked away I knowingly warned him to be careful of losing sight of his prey, in this case, an unsoliciting honeymoon couple whose husband was not to be bested by some little street punk.

Monday: Day Three

We went to the time share morning interview at a nice bay hotel with a young and exuberant guy that tried hard to make it work. We gave our reasons and went our ways after foiled arm bending and our repeated wriggling out of his tricky sales-talk holds and maneuvers.

Later we went to “Los Arcos” and had fun in the sand and some powerful waves along the most famous part of Cabo San Lucas, the most picturesque and photographed of the entire peninsula. I don’t know if this was the most exotic locale of our honeymoon but it was among the most fun and famous spots we traversed.

    By the time it was over, and we had walked the streets, dined at various restaurants and gone through the time share gauntlet as well as spent our first three nights in two different level hotels, Jen and I were ready to leave this busy tourist town of fame and renown. I would not say it is “over touristy”. Rather, this was still Mexico but with less pristine intactness for its multiple visitors and simply more money and movement and parties. It is a beautiful town with a bay and a nice hill to the west, and a very notable point on most world maps. This was a nice place to become acquainted with, but perhaps it hides the deeper parts of Mexico, just as some might say the entire Baja does not approach the “real” authentic Mexico as compared to the rest of the 29 states on the “mainland”. I am not sure, however. All of Mexico is the real Mexico, no matter how urban, rural, touristy, rich or poor. And this was another key part of the fantastically big whole of this immense nation.

    To contemplate the size and sheer mass of the Mexican people, one only has to look at the economic refugees and migrant labor force of those who live in the United States; constantly increasing in every state of the Union. And for every visitor here, there are millions of cohorts rising in the south. Granted, the demographic shift has kicked in and the birthrate is decreasing while the older age groups are increasing in percentage within Mexico. But the sheer numbers of Mexicans is a large part of our globalizing world. It can be felt from small towns in my home state of Indiana to the biggest cities of our nation, the biggest economy on earth. (Not to mention California, which is the 6^th biggest in the world). California as well as the other Border States are “Mexico-Lite”, a mere extension of the United States of Mexico (Estados Unidos Mexicanos).

Across the Baja Peninsula Desert

We took our rental VW Bug across the bottom of the Baja peninsula. It was my first time behind the wheel of a vehicle in Mexico. There were a lot of speed bumps, retracing our way east along the coast past the colorful resorts, idling by Jose del Cabo. We considered driving into that town and seeing the central plaza and its oceanfront, but thought better of it and continued going across the peninsula northward, deeper into the interior.

We soon passed the Tropic of Capricorn, and Jennifer marveled at the arid desert of which she had not expected. I don’t know if I had many preconceived notions of the topography; perhaps I had some notion of the Baja due to my trip to the mountains southwest of Mexicali, or perhaps from my childhood visions of Zorro in both black and white film and color-splashed cartoon animation. Jen had smartly packed some bottled water which was handy when we spotted a car pulled over to the side of the road and steaming with a small family huddled in the shade of a scrub bush nearby. It was approaching mid-day and it was hot. The family appreciated our water and perhaps it helped them in cooling down their engine or quenching their thirst, I don’t recall if we ever knew.

Not long from there we stopped at a small shop in the middle of this flat cactus and brush desert with no sight of the sea, and little else but distant mountains. A little time in the stifling sun was good enough to recognize that hanging out closer to the ocean was a better place to hang out by far. I guess I stayed in the car while my wife went in for more bottled water. Was that how it was¹? I can’t say for sure. How many little stores do we stop at in our lifetime while traveling our thousands of miles?

Getting to our final week’s destination: Los Barriles

    We approached the small town of Los Barriles by the sea, and to our left inland was a large hill with an accompanying monument that had a large Mexican flag. Not far past it was the edge of Los Barriles, sitting on the edge of the Sea of Cortez lying expansively to the east. It was around midday and we then had to follow directions on how to get to the homes owned by the friend of Miles Bogh. We had our VW rental to find our new temporary residence, and we were to return it to the edge of the town on the highway so that the rental company could pick up their property. We went through the whole town and across a wide dry arroyo and found the entrance of our new estate.

American Homeowners in Mexico: A Profile

Here I will dedicate a small bit of this chapter to Miles Bogh, a man I never have known very well but who has had an impact on me and my family for his generosity with his friend’s house and his connection to my wife’s family here in California. He recently had a brother pass away (Larry, October 2004). Also, one can see into American homeowners through this one example as a prototype of outsiders owning Mexican interests.

The Boghs are a successful family from Southern California. They worked in tower construction before switching to steel building here in San Bernardino, California. Jay Bogh, our brother-in-law, works for KCB Towers and his father’s business in metal structure building. They live in Yucaipa and Jen and I have visited them multiple times. One of Jay’s uncles is Miles, who is a bidder for his family’s company. He owned a house down in Los Barriles, Baja Sur. First they built what was called the guest house. (This same edifice was later washed out this past year). It was built close to a wide arroyo and then the larger house with two stories was constructed next to it. Apparently this was all done in the early nineties by a cement guy named Pete who worked with the Boghs.

Pete and Miles had a man called Sergio, a local Mexican and his wife, taking care of the homes as permanent caretakers while they were left unattended. Jay’s family had a plane to go down there; I don’t know about Pete’s transportation to and fro.

Jen had arranged with Kari, her oldest sibling who is married to Jay Bogh, the owners’ nephew, that we could use this house for our last week of our honeymoon, basically for free. Jen and I met in January of 2000, the same month I met the Boghs in Yucaipa. A short six months later we were using their connections to live it up affordably in the southern Baja, complete with access to a Suburban vehicle, a dune buggy, and a boat with the assistance of Sergio (the part time assistant or perhaps servant of the small estate).

Since this fun and fortuitous event some four years ago, we have learned of the demise of the guest house lying closer to the wide arroyo emptying into the Sea of Cortes. This arroyo is just slightly further down from the sandy road winding down the long east coast of Baja South.

I don’t know how often they actually stay at this little private post far from any major attractions. We saw Miles and his boys leaving the day we arrived and talked to them briefly. It was interesting to see this slice of America in full force hundreds of miles south of the border of the USA.

I suppose, in summary, that I can say that Americans living and investing in Mexico (as one million currently do and perhaps many more millions invest there from abroad) are a vital and intrinsic part of the economic makeup of this land. But I would assert that more importantly, the Mexican people have inextricably wound themselves into the United States and therefore this cross marriage of the countries is complete. I will talk more about another American enterprise south of the border in a later chapter, probably chapter number 7.

Los Barriles: A Town Passed by… Steinbeck?

This is a revisionist story about Mexico, and I might as well insert John Steinbeck. Steinbeck became a larger literary figure nationwide in 2003 because of Oprah Winfrey, and this hyperbole had its effect on me. I t didn’t lead to me reading his accounts of travels through his explorations and documentations of the Baja Peninsula and the Sea of Cortez, but it lead me to read about this magnificent author and his trips there. It gave me a revisionist appreciation for this jutting land that goes on and on and eventually reaches the tropics.

This was a small town where I suppose he may have passed. There are other places up and down the coast where people were inhabiting, but this was more or less a good sized concentration.

There were signs up for the presidential election.

The Environs of this Foreign Owned Home

The main house was two stories high: there was a garage downstairs and some bedrooms where we would sleep. The guest house (the one built first) was behind the house not far away to the south.

The accoutrements of the homes were nice comforts and luxuries. There were not a lot of television stations on the satellite service but just enough to stay entertained. There were many videos at the house, some of which I had seen (“Ghost”) but wanted to see again because Jen had not. We watched a few like that, and I suppose I saw a few new ones that I don’t recall too well. The main television broadcast that I remember rather clearly was the National Convention of the Libertarian Party. I found it a new experience and it helped me appreciate the world of ideas and my own country and its (our) democracy more. It’s funny how your home country can seem from a thousand miles away and a few days of distance.

The next door house was one only one floor and was a long rectangle divided into about three rooms. It was placed perpendicular to the two story home and was accessible from the driveway walking past the first house. There was a garage next to both houses, in the direction west closest to the road, which was a good 100 yards away. They owned quite a bit of land , and it was even longer to reach the beach along the Sea of Cortez

We slept on the bottom floor which had little other than a few hallways and the bathroom. The second floor had the TV room and the kitchen area. The kitchen overlooked the garage and the little side house.

The Town

I got used to going to the local store and searching for the paper and looking forward to the draft of 2000. Any news like that was exciting to me, and I’ve always been a fanatic of the NBA, especially since the 1985-86 season. Maybe it was because I knew some of the guys from college going in those years in my early teen years. I went quite a few days before the draft addition came out. It was a great arrival during our week.

We visited a resort place one night with its relaxed swimming pool and maybe tiki torches or some kind of night lights. Other evenings we frequented some other restaurants that were off the main strip.

There was a long strip of a street that served as the main thoroughfare through the town, parallel to the ocean, north and south. Jennifer’s first impression of the place was how odd it was to have a nursery playground between two major roadways. (Not that Los Barriles had major anything, but the idea of vehicles whizzing by at all seemed disconcerting, and the fact the children had to cross at least one to get there.

    The town had its share of regular homes and civil infrastructure, plus the resort that I mentioned. There were boats along the shore that weren’t too visible, and maybe a small airfield south of town. There was a congregation of shops at the entrance of the town off the road; it formed a three sided square with parking in the middle. We would leave our dune buggy there to go up to La Paz.

    We talked a few times with a couple different cash register workers and waitresses around, mostly small talk.

    Things to Do

    We broke up our days traveling a bit: taking the suburban one day, exploring up the arroyo and walking a ways up a narrow canyon erroneously thinking we would find water. Not in late June. We drove back through some back trail roads that dead ended and seemed to be little hidden ranches with goats among the trees.

    Another day we took the suburban down (or up the coast north) to Pinto Pescadero. The road was bumpy, curvy, and made of dirt with assorted rocks. Part of the road was on a steep incline and looked down on a beautiful vista of the sandy beaches and rocks and crashing waves below. It was a scary thought of making one false move because it would not have been a forgiving slip over the edge. This road was not made for much traffic; it was what you would imagine a rough, isolated road to look like.

Fishing Adventure

Jennifer wanted to go fishing one day so the house helper (Sergio) agreed to take us out on a boat to fish one morning. We went somewhat early with him down to the beachside on the other side of town. We took one boat to get into the fishing boat already docked in the water. He took us out due east and he figured to get the best Dorado, or sword fish, that we had to be far away from the shore. You could see the surrounding mountains both north and south along the coast of the peninsula. Eventually we got far enough away where the cloudy haze made the horizon disappear.

We tried unsuccessfully to fish anything out of the water. The waves were choppy and the weather was sunny and not too hot, but the catching was lousy. Jen was excited to catch something and I was hopeful, too, but there was no success. Maybe we tried for a half an hour of forty-five minutes, and then we decided to go back to shore. Jen was exhibiting bad signs of sea sickness by then, and proceeded to heave her guts out.

This is when the GPS and our trusty Mexican guide got us off track quite a ways. I knew where land was, and it laid to the west, from whence we had come. But Sergio chose to trust the GPS dial he had in the boat, and continued more or less due north. I talked to him more than once but he wouldn’t budge. Fine, his stubborn mistake, but it was my new wife who lay on the floor of the boat suffering, occasionally emptying her liquids violently into the sea off the side of the boat, which was not a great feeling as a newly married couple and me as the “protector”. This was not the high light of our honeymoon.

So we then headed due north for a while against my better judgment or wishes, and good ole Sergio was following the “GPS” (Global Positioning System). I don’t know if it was faulty as a device or he just had no clue how to read it, but we made it all the way up to the Bahia de los Muertos, and we were right by a long and mountainous, seemingly uninhabited island. Its names escapes me but the island is easily found on the map up the coast from Punto Pescadero going north of Los Barriles and the Cabos on the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California).

At this point I was resigned to be being incredibly off course and having to wait a while for our return trip to Los Barriles a good ways down the coast. Jen was mostly sleeping and she was dealing as best as she could with her sickness. I actually enjoyed seeing this large island with a daunting elevation towering above is to the west. What capped it off was seeing a large group of dolphins swimming and jumping through the isolated sunny waters off the shore. We had seen a few jumping dorado a while before but it is a whole other thing to see an organized team of intelligent mammals work their way through the water. I struggled with waking Jennifer up because she seemed to finally be at ease asleep.

By now Sergio knew for sure that we were, as I had unconvincingly suggested an hour earlier, way off course. We turned around and began the tedious return down the coast. Due to embarrassment, perhaps, he tried to move fast in our speed boat, but after many minutes of heavy pounding on the hull of the boat that sounded like it might crack it open I told him he could let off the speed. Gratefully, he did. I figured that it was better that we arrived 20 minutes later than split our boat open in the middle of the sea.

I had one more sandwich that Jen packed, but my mistake was that I remembered it and decided to finish it off as we were approaching the end of our errant swing in what turned out to be a very big triangle. Jennifer, who had puked enough soda pop, solids, and other innards to last till pregnancy, was already emptied by the time we stopped and I helped latch the fishing boat to another anchor in the small bay offshore, and became green and nauseous. I had to stay still a small while to gain my equilibrium. I was grateful that I we made hope with nothing more lost.

And now a small aside on cultural frustrations: sometimes a person like me from the United States has expectations or pre-conceived notions of how things should be which do not necessarily gel well with those in or from another culture. I learned a few of these lessons growing up, as an adult in Spain and certainly in Chile and elsewhere. So this was another case where these differences come up between people, and they are even more pronounced because of linguistic or cultural gulfs, sometimes that seem as wide as the Gulf of California. But we learn patience and we try to avoid such problems for the future, or at least we better prepare ourselves to handle such conflicts. It was a long and memorable day, anyway. We were happy to be back to our honeymoon abode and on dry land. Keep the nausea back at sea.

Hanging Around the Premises

We watched our share of movies and read a few things let around the house. We saw the funny shows broadcast from the States via satellite. Jen still had the yearning for catching a fish, and she would go down to the shore of the house and try there. I mostly stayed inside where it was much cooler. I think we had an air conditioner. Yes, we did, definitely. The other house had one but it wasn’t turned on until we tried it one time.

Sunday in La Paz

Sunday came and we planned to get a bus at the highway stop at the entrance to town. We sat for a long time and the bus never came. Jen seemed pretty flustered and times were getting short for church attendance as we desired. The temperature was getting hotter and there was not much shade on the cement bench. A guy drove by, and I can’t remember exactly, but I believe he stopped and offered us a ride. He seemed kind and he was alone in a small car. I rode in the front with him and Jen climbed in the back, and up north we went to the capital city of Baja California South.

Historic Day in Mexico

As I explained that this was my first long term stay in the country ever, this also turned out to be the first time I was in the country while something big and historic happened. This particular Sunday was the presidential election day, and the longest running elected party in the world was up for a vote. Vicente Fox represented the challenge, the first non PRI candidate to usurp the status quo in 70 plus years.

The PRI, the party of Pancho Villa, the “revolucionario”, was the longest standing party in executive power in the world to that time. This all changed because of the historic vote that Sunday. As we drove into this largest town of Baja California South, we saw people lined up waiting to vote at different spots, like the town park and other places. It was a sight to behold, especially thinking back onto the results of that day.

We knew where to go because our driver was familiar with our church. I can’t remember his name but he was very friendly and open minded, and he showed such genuine interest in me and my faith and the Book of Mormon that I left very energized and pleased by our hour or so conversation. He was one of the nicer guys I suppose I have ever met. I suppose that is an unexpected thing on any given Sunday.

More unexpected for us was that when our new friend finally managed to leave us off at the local LDS Church in La Paz was that we found out that the services that could have been available were not because of the funeral service of a small child. Discovering this, we were left in a quandary as to what to do with ourselves.

As fate would have it, another family from California was looking for Church services that day. We both realized that is would be impossible to partake of sacrament and we hastily decided to gather in prayer and a short dialogue about the Book of Mormon. That was enough, it seemed.

And then, the Chinese food lunch! We decided to all eat together. There was a nice authentic restaurant not far from the Bay, and we all shared a good meal together, heavy on the sea food. They were a successful young couple from the Bay Area with three very well behaved children, or maybe four. We ate like little kings, and I believe the brother paid for ours! We were really living our religion, I guess. Latter-day Saints break bread and share. I think we paid the tip and I offered to pay ice cream on the way home. We went back the way we came (the way of our generous stranger from Los Barriles coming up north), and stopped in a beautiful mountain canyon. They had no ice cream. I bought some candy bars for everyone, but it wasn’t quite the same.

We had some good religious conversations on the way home, about dialogues between the faiths. Now that I think of it, they were from San Jose, and believe she was Asian-American. We were a nice little spontaneous anomaly happily traversing the back roads of Baja peninsula.

The nice vacationing family dropped us off at the familiar entrance to Los Barriles and we wished each other well. This turned out to be an unplanned but pleasurable Sunday, and even though it included no formal Sunday services, it was a very nice way to attempt a religious undertaking, informal as it was.

Coming Home

    We finished our mostly restful week and honeymoon, and we prepared to fly back on the Fourth of July, 2000. We had been married Saturday, June 24^th, so our complete experience in Baja California South lasted 11 days and 11 nights. We had done and seen enough to go back to the real world at last. It was what I considered an ideal honeymoon: just enough to do but enough time to be together with few distractions as compared to a big monumental voyage. The generosity of friends made this trip very nice as well.

    Our decision that morning to be bumped led to what will be Chapter 7 (Way Down Mexico Way) of this book. It was Independence Day when Sergio drove us to the airport in the morning. At the terminal they asked for two people be “bumped” and take a later flight. We quickly asked until when, and they said likely later that afternoon. We jumped at the deal, a five hundred dollar voucher or so within a year with Alaskan Airlines. I had missed some bump opportunities in the past and had regretted it. We happily took it and promptly called Linda Fisher, Jennifer’s mother in San Bernardino who was about to go out the door to LAX 80 miles away when we called and told her of the delay. Jen and I found ourselves at Los Cabos air port a few more hours (I’m sure we read and shopped a bit, plus ate,) and then we did get our flight later that same afternoon.

The sun was close to setting as we took off and circled into the air towards the northwest. It must have been the most beautiful time of the day, (and maybe year), as there seemed to be orange and purple hues through our windows. We could look out and down and see the vast Sea of Cortez stretch to the east, the assorted islands off the coast of the peninsula, the little resorts sprinkling across the beaches to the east and south, and then islands of greater or smaller size across the Bay of La Paz. I saw the mountainous island where we had been lost and nauseated fisherman, biding our time in returning home. And in some real or newly perceived ways life had changed for a new turn. And maybe here was born a certain fascination rooted in a place first named for the Mexic ancients of yester year. We came form the land of Zorro; the periphery of the magnificent older empire at the center of so many dreams from before.

This day’s bump we chose would lead us to the very center, mere six months later.

Reflections

We were leaving this place different than we had arrived. We were 11 days older but also almost two weeks experienced as a newly married people, and the lives of two single people had become one. Our lives change like this over time. Personal histories evolve and progress as do grander histories, and at times the large ones influence us and occasionally we might slightly, ever so slightly, influence them. How do we interact with the greater world? Do our prayers have some grander effect than what happens around our smaller, intimate sphere, to the God we believe rules all? If so, how do these petitions play out?

LAX, and Tim and Sasha

We flew over the wide city of Los Angeles that Independence Day evening as the sun was setting, and we saw an array of sparkly bottle rockets and other fireworks lighting below us locally. They may have been high above the local community homes but seemed slightly above the earth to us. It was a pretty sight. Rather than picking us up at the International Airport in the morning as originally planned, Linda arranged for her third and youngest son to pick us up. He came with his wife Sasha, who was married to Tim for over a year (married at the same time as his and Jen’s older brother Chris).

Tim was a young married man of some 23 years, working for Sprint Communications as others in the family did, and living not far from Linda’s house in San Bernardino. Sasha was about the same age and became a nutritionist and worked and attended school in California. Her parents lived between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, she being raised in Farmington, Utah. They were both young and finished their first year of marriage; it was nice to spend a little time talking to another young couple after being newly married ourselves. It was funny, too, because they were considerably younger than us (29 and 26) but more experienced as a couple and as companions.

We enjoyed the different colorful firework displays on the way home. This was my second Fourth of July in the greater LA area, the first being in Summer of 1996, mostly in Long Beach or nearby. It was neat to have a new California family. This was new stuff for me. I don’t remember about coming home to our new apartment that night much, but our life together had begun, Jen working four hours every morning and me with the rest of the summer to get over my first year of teaching high school fulltime.

In-Laws

My wife’s family is composed of her father who she doesn’t see that much, her mother who we have lived with since July of 2003 (it is now March, 2005), and seven siblings. I just mentioned Tim, he is the last of three boys, and the sixth of eight siblings. The eight were born in a period of over twelve years from 1968 to 1981. Keri was born first; she married Jay Bogh from San Bernardino and they have three children near the mountains in Yucaipa. He served an LDS mission in southernmost Italy and works for his family steel business based in San Bernardino. Keri has never lived outside of California.

Next comes Doug, who is married with four children and lives in Kelso, Washington, about an hour north of Portland, Oregon. He joined the Coast Guard at a young age and married D.-------, and then lived in Guam with the military and Washington state ever since. He works in radio communications and maintenance and their youngest is a boy after three girls, the oldest of whom is now in high school.

Traci was born around the same time as me (1970), and she married Dale Stockton who was born a while before me (1959). They have three girls and have never lived outside of San Bernardino. Traci stays at home, as does Keri the oldest, and Dale commutes to Mount Baldy north of Upland at a private recreational park.

Then comes Jennifer, who was born in January, 1974. She was number four. We met a few weeks before her 26^th birthday. She is married to me and is also a stay at home mom like three of her four other sisters, since March of 2004. We currently live in the mother’s home in San Bernardino, the house she grew up in, and are most likely moving this summer. She served a mission in Morocco and Spain, and afterwards lived in Washington, D.C., and later Las Vegas, Nevada.

Next is Chris, a year younger than Jen. He grew up here in San Bernardino like all of the rest and then served a mission in southern Portugal and Cape Verde. After returning he spent a while with Doug up in Washington state and then returned. He has been here ever since and currently works at the US consulate organizing legal matters. (Fix this later)

Tim served a mission in Baguio, Philippines, and learned fluent Tagalog. He now lives in Utah with his wife and new baby. He works for a communications company and has an MBA from the University of Redlands here in the Inland Empire.

Amy is next and she is the seventh. She always lived here in San Bernardino and married Ethan Stubbs a few months after Jennifer and I, on September 22, 2000. I became friends with Ethan in the fall of 1999 when he had just come home off his mission in Santiago South. He was friends with David Zavala, from whom I was renting a room since that August. A week prior to my wedding in June to Jennifer, the four of us drove to Lake Havasu and spent a couple nights by the Colorado River in Jen’s dad’s camper. With him was his family of four: Lori, the second wife, and her two sons, S----- and Brecht.

Amy and Ethan have been living in Yucaipa for a few years and now have two children, a girl and a boy. Ethan has lived here in San Bernardino briefly with Amy and now they have two small daughters and works for Sprint Communications and he does well in sales. We enjoy talking to each other and watching football; we have gone on four road trips to see BYU play in Las Vegas, Provo, San Diego, and Palo Alto. We have good conversations.

Finally, there is Stephanie, the last of the eight. The actual order I first met the Fishers was first Stephanie in the fall of 1999, Amy later that fall after she was getting to know Ethan, and then in January of 2000 I finally met their older sister, my wife. The first night Jen and I met, Stephanie remembered me and recounted what she could to Jen to introduce her to me at the Highland Stake Center. It was a good reference and things worked out.

Stephanie graduated from her high school in two years and got her Bachelor’s at Cal State-San Bernardino at 19, then went on a mission to Spain (same mission as Jennifer, only switched headquarters from Malaga to Sevilla) and was here with us for a year and now lives in Provo, Utah with her friend Shelley. She became the fourth member of the family to speak Spanish, or fifth if you consider that Chris speaks Portuguese and also has picked up a lot of Spanish. Even Linda communicates in it somewhat She is the only single one left.

And that is a composite of the family I have married into; some people around here know me more as a “Fisher” than Clinch. It’s a very nice family and I have enjoyed having a part in it.

Family

The American LDS family has a few things in common with that of Mexico, and I suppose that the size is a commonality to start with. Both American-Anglo-Mormon families and Mexican families have historically had many children, and thus procreation and abundance of relatives typifies the lifestyle of both. I myself come from a first generation LDS member family and we are relatively small, although now I count three more step-siblings through remarriage (one of them nominally a member of the church only, the only son of my step-father). My wife’s family more fully typifies the numbers issue of a modern LDS family. Eight is enough! The T.V. show of the 1970s was supposed to be atypical in number for the US, and even the Brady bunch of six was abnormal in that decade. Today it has further shrunk to the unnatural average of 2.4 per family.

When I ask my mostly adult Mexican students how many siblings they have, I hear responses of 7, 8, 9, and at times up to 14 or 16! As the demographic shift (transition) model states: industrial, health and economic advances make it more likely that overall family size decreases. This is true in our country and has been in effect longer than Mexico, but we can see this demographic decrease occurring in greater numbers. This is definitely true of those Mexican-Americans who move here and integrate into our economy, but it is happening within Mexico too, perhaps not as dramatically as Latinos here, but it is a modern symptom of globalization.

The LDS Mexican families that I know have average size numbers of 3 to 5 children, nothing as big as the Anglo LDS I see here in California or elsewhere. Perhaps LDS Anglos have more children than LDS Latinos here in the United States for economic factors. Numbers are worth analyzing and perhaps there are some telling facts in some of these demographic trends among both the Church of Jesus Christ and within different Latino populations, LDS and non-member cohorts.

Then there is the parent respect/ obedience/ morality angle. When I went with Gustavo Cuevas in December of 1999 to Mexicali, he kept emphasizing that girls in Mexico were chaste as a norm, as opposed to the general looseness of American females (not to mention men). This is also to be said among active LDS girls (and boys) in the United States. Adolescents and young people in our church are generally chaste and abstain from sexual activity until marriage. In this sense, if Gustavo was indeed correct, then LDS Anglos have sexual mores and taboos more in common with Latinos than we may think. This is an interesting point to consider and would it be more true in greater numbers with all involved. One could accuse these trends of abstinence before marriage and sexual fidelity to be less modern or “behind the times” of the rest of the western world, but I find it necessarily prudent and refreshing.

Thirdly, there is a social element that is considered to be something typical in our church and perhaps also something shared among Latinos, and many Mexicans, which is a collective consciousness when it comes to sharing resources, helping out fellows in times of need, and generally spending time together with people we would not ordinarily spend time with. I suppose this is expected within many faiths and ethnic sub-groups, but I am suggesting that Mexicans and Latter-day Saints might demonstrate this quality even more than most other groups. Perhaps I am wrong in saying so or I am prejudiced in my views due to proximity, but I think there might be something to this idea.

Finally, there is the notion of a common thread of rising through the ranks and doing one’s duty humbly with determination and earning a reward from God. Both Latter-day Saints and Mexicans see work and toil and sacrifice as keys to exaltation, and although they may share different visions of so said “bliss” and recompense, I see many commonalities in the simple or grandiose aspirations.

Again, perhaps all of humanity can share in this forward looking ethic of overcoming and establishing its own future Zion or utopia, but I assert that Mormons and Mexicans are quite similar in believing in some type of ultimate victory as a people though patience and long suffering and simply expanding, and it would seem that in a few significant ways they are both accomplishing it. It must be said that as of 2004 the LDS population within Mexico reached its first million, and in this way we may perceive that both populations are achieving their respective manifest destinies with the help of one another, hand in hand inheriting their final birth rights.

And thus, one can blame a book like the Book of Mormon for uniting such two unwitting causes as a Church started legally as a “restoration of all things” in 1830, and a huge combination of peoples begun approximately in the 16^th century, a new race called Hispanic spanning many nations in two continents, but most amply represented in the land of the Aztecs and Mayas of Mesoamerica.

I find myself on the cusp of both, time wise and location wise, and I find this intriguing and to a certain degree, inspiring.

End of part five (re-touched a tad early April 2023. This book may never see much light, attention, but it is good for me to re-visit, anyway.)

1 Jen can put her recollections here.