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

MEX.FOUR Started December 2, 2003

Mexicali Again: After a Four-Year Break

(Or, A Redefinition of Self)

    As I’ve mentioned in the previous chapter, much can transpire in short periods of time like a year or two. Both individually and as a nation, events and experiences can occur so rapidly and profoundly as to alter the character and identity of the person or place into a new being, or an entity transformed. We can see this happen to friends, loved ones, brief acquaintances, famous persons, or on grander scales cities and societies or civilizations.

    As I had explained about my first four trips to Mexico in the first three chapters, there were relatively short periods of time in between them as became two separate pairs of excursions. From the first visit in March of 1982 to December of 1983, a mere 19 months passed on the calendar. But in my life, seeming light years had gone by with my family and me. My personal world and worldview had dramatically turned in various and subtle ways, and maybe one can credit this phenomenon to the simple process of aging. But in my case it was more than that. Once a parent has lived outside of the home away from the child, I think there is an altering in the psyche and the soul of the being. This is what happened to me in the early eighties. Combine that with new school experiences and my maturation as a young man and I was significantly different from my childhood as an eleven year-old my first time briefly across the border in Texas.

    Countries go through such changes, but I am as of yet not the one to do this as a chronicler or historian for Mexico, let alone the United States, or even a small community such as my hometown or anywhere else I have knowledge of. For now this needs to be a personal history. I can ruminate on the historical trends or certain events in places, but this story boils down to my interactions and reflections on a few things, particularly through this lens of Mexico.

    Between my border visits in April 1993 and November 1995 passed some 28 months. Again, due to rather significant events and experiences in my personal life, this mere two years and four months seemed like a longer period in actual terms. Added to it was the fact I was cognizant as an adult and student of Mexico and other sundry parts of the world, much more so due to things that were occurring to me, my interests, and the state of the planet, including things Latin American.

    I distinctly remember the beginnings of 1994 and how the Zapatistas were making headlines from Chiapas. I read from an interesting perspective while studying that semester in Chillán, 8^th Region, Chile, reading from Chilean papers in Spanish about the goings on there during the inception of NAFTA during the meat of the Clinton era. Observing a phenomenon occurring in southern Mexico from southern South America is a strange thing. In some ways one is closer to the events because of the brotherhood of Latino countries and the shared languages, and yet it is many thousands of miles further away than the rest of the United States and the entire NAFTA continent. Can one see better through a clearer cultural lens while still farther away? Is it more true to see spiritually than physically?

California Dreaming?

It wasn’t until I moved to California in 1999 that I finally made it back to Mexico, and it was the same city as in 1995: Mexicali. Four years brought personal changes to me but not like the other times. I was 25 the first time in Mexicali and 29 the second time. Four years brought some changes in my life and persona but not as dramatic. I was a still a single guy, and the interesting thing (or boring if you wish) was that I had earlier that same respective year received a Bachelors degree prior to going to Mexicali. Both of the degrees helped me to get closer to Mexico academically and linguistically, if not a little more “spiritually”.

At BYU I had a Mexican literature professor my last term on campus (Spring 1995), he was a short story writer, but I suggest that much of this academia and class time and reading was not as valuable as a few short hours in Mexico.

    An itinerant history must be walked as well as dreamed. History can be studied within the walls of a class or perused within the frames of a book or analytical paper or silver screen. Being in a place, talking with its inhabitants, bringing it the aroma of life, making it real by walking, perambulating across the sands and earths of otherliness leads to a truer understanding. I needed to walk in this land again.

Know Thyself, Young Man

Can one truly know oneself without knowing the outside, the non-self? Apart from the fact it is incredibly hard to know ourselves at all, how can we go about doing it? Interior and exterior realms are perhaps equal parts of self-mastery. To many, one finds oneself through external means: nature, science, outside knowledge, exercise and physical training, bodily movements and sensations, work and its accoutrements, money and power, which for some translate to vices and addictions. Whatever the means to achieve an external satisfaction of inner longings or desires, or whether it is a truly exterior necessity from the start, these drives, as coined by many such as Freud, lead us to various places.

I will not state here and now that Mexico is that exterior for me, but I will suggest that by understanding another place outside of my own familiarities, perhaps it is possible to come closer to who and what I am. As I continue to write about this itinerant journey of Mexico, it seems I really can only further come to know myself. Information I present about this subject as a foreign object or entity only reflects upon me as an individual, and possibly by analyzing myself in a foreign context this mystery we call the individual can be discovered.

This may appear as superfluous existential mumbo-jumbo, but I hope this will make more and more sense as a reason for writing and understanding this particular book. At least this will prove valuable to one person (myself).

I was in Mexico City a few years ago and purchased the well-renowned book by the heralded author Carlos Fuentes, Laberintos, that supposedly defined a new chapter, or a definitive summary perhaps, of what it meant to be Mexican, what is Mexico, or does the country have a literary or intellectual presence. After Fuentes and this book, apparently, yes, the literati deemed it so.

My Mexican Itinerant Journey will try in its own small way to be this for me. Do I have an identity as a person (of course I do, but on paper). Is there a literary or even intellectual me that exists? Do I have a part in the world of the written word, even as Mexico forms a part of the world’s identity?

This may seem rather presumptuous on my behalf; especially considering that Mexico’s part in the world is considerably more significant than anything I could add or impart to the world of books and literature. Through writing, if I could in some way approach a place in the world of written books, albeit small but real as a piece or statement about myself and some realities, then I will accomplish for myself what Fuentes did for his nation.

Problems abound with this comparison, including the presumption that Fuentes indeed accomplished this feat with Laberintos. I started this very book a couple of years ago and did not read too far into it.

    My Chilean professor was on an intimate or at least at a good professional level with Carlos. I can claim that he missed a bit of my class time once in 1994 because of a call from Mr. Fuentes in Mexico needing some items faxed to him for some important reason or another. It seemed to me and my small class to be a real happening: that a Nobel Prize Literature winner would be the cause of an interruption to our very literature study time with an eminent Latino poet, miles away in Chillán, southern Chile. This was the real world of the literati, and yet I was there but not too involved. In some ways it was not much different from observing art rather than contributing. And alas, this is who we are mostly, consumers and non-producers. Life is supposed to be production, no? Even Hardt and Negri¹ would concede that we need to do this, to produce through labor, even while poor and diffused as the working class we are.

    My unspoken frustration of not creating written works is the same unvoiced angst of the working masses, forever exploited and never able to claim its inherent right to the capital and power that abounds throughout the planet.

    So here we are: the poor working man, the forgotten world of Mexico, and me. We are a trio of wearied warriors who have suffered silence much of our existence. And now, through some weird inspiration or strange twist of fate it might be possible we team up to produce a new piece of evocative prose that can only be achieved by simply walking, typing, thinking, organizing, linking, uniting.

    After all, how does anyone go anywhere or do anything? When does one first go to a place? Does it have to be physical, or are surreal journeys in some way more true to life? Is fiction stronger than truth? Will this story fail for that reason? Who knows?

But the poor voiceless man (all those aforementioned) will prevail.

We will prevail as we did back in 1999: we are still walking forwards, breathing, searching in hopes of encountering a real match for our hopes and dreams, despite the myriad problems of delay, disappointment, frustrated development, and distress for things not going according to design based on earlier plans and more infantile fantasies invented.

Fall of that year (1999) found me teaching high school Spanish in the Inland Empire, as it is known. Moving to southern California in August of that year was an intercultural experience for me. I was happy to get away from Indiana for a number of reasons, but one great thing was a new world of more Hispanic and Spanish locations, due to proximity and demographics.

Other personal reasons to leave Indiana for me may in some ways mirror the common man and Mexico’s immigrants’ objectives: to find more opportunity.

Opportunities in California for me were:

1. Get away from my home state, where I felt stagnation. Again.
2. Establish residency in a place where I could attend graduate school, a different location then my newly acquired bachelor's back at IU in the home state. (The transcript there runs from 1988-1999).
3. Live in a place with social opportunities to meet a potential wife, especially LDS.
4. Make some money.
5. See more of the world.

Some of the things that were a relief in leaving my hometown were:

1.Certain pressures from people within my church congregation, typically guys (but also some women) who seemed to need friends and help, not necessarily in that order.

2. Getting out of my parents’ homes. Getting an out of state job from an employer that seemed to want me.

3.Getting a relatively new car

4. Getting a new “life” where you don’t have to hope to meet an attractive member of the Church who lives some three hours or more away.

Layers of Mexico- A New Life in California

    I suppose we can say that Mexico has many layers like any country. These layers are hard to quantify, but based on some arbitrary factors we can deduce a scale comparable to some other nations, that varies due to size or social structure. Perhaps I can suggest the number five for Mexico, especially considering those outside of the country as millions are found today.

    For those living outside of Mexico, we will use a scale of five. We’ll assign the number “One” for a simple tourist from the United States or Canada (or elsewhere), who visits Mexico and has no connection by blood, friendship, language, or professional interest. The normal goal of such a person is to alight on a tourist center and buy things, enjoying the weather or atmosphere more than back north. This was the case of my family back in 1982 and 1983. I was the only person who had a little Spanish training at that time, so maybe I could have been considered a “1.2”

A number “Two” person is someone who has somewhat more of a vested interest in the language, culture, or country of Mexico. By the time I went to Tijuana in 1993 and Mexicali in 1995, I was bilingual, thus bringing me to a “two”. After my education at BYU ended that summer of 1995, I was a college graduate of Spanish, thus enhancing my status perhaps to a “2.5”. Having a university degree in something like a language usually intensifies the amount of what a person has invested in a country. I had also had a Mexican roommate and friends (1993-5), including some Mexican colleagues at the Missionary Training Center (1993), plus the aforementioned professor of literature (1995). Some of the classes I took while in Chile in 1994 included studying writers and stories like Carlos Fuentes and the early history of Mexico.

I would not put myself at a “Three” level because my intent and goals were to work in film in Utah. I had toyed with the idea of doing film work in Latin America but this seemed to me a bit too risky, much like going to Hollywood, California. I did want to work in film, especially acting if possible, but the opportunities for my particular interests lay in an environment of more perceived safety. I wished to get a foothold where there was LDS Church film and TV production and more recognition of some kind of standards of morality, or so I thought. Even so, I did get an extra job in a rated R film with Kiefer Sutherland, as well as applying to another rated R Nicholas Cage picture. Luckily, perhaps, I did not get the part.

By chance or fate I did get a job working with a CBS television show in the summer and early fall of 1996, but after being prematurely laid off I was then perhaps irrevocably changed in attitude towards the industry. Having also attempted some classes with my talent agency, the one that had procured some work for me the previous year in different small jobs of film and TV, I decided to turn my back on my film hopes, finally realizing my heart was not really in it enough. For example, attending a paid acting session was uncomfortable knowing that swearing was expected, or acting in roles contrary to my personal comfort level as a person and religious follower. My attempts at modeling (with the same agency based on an agent’s recommendation) were also stunted by the fact that immodesty was a norm and I was too undisciplined to carry it off as far as physical training. (You know: developed abs, sinewy muscles, cut jaws, steely hawkish eyes). Those aren’t me, even when I got quite skinny the first few months of my mission in Chile, the thinnest I have ever been as an adult (1990).

Fast forward to 1999 and I was in a different state, in many ways. My film hopes had long since gone by the wayside. I had decided a more academic approach to some future in something like political science, and then later international relations. Teaching high school in California became a vehicle to advance these plans, and so far it has worked until this Christmas (2003). More on those plans later.

The California Precursor

The post Christmas holidays of 1998-1999 proved as an interesting preparation for moving to this side of the country, a little bit more Mexican style. I gave a talk in one of the Terre Haute wards of my stake, where a visitor from California was visiting her sisters’ parents-in-laws. Her name was Maria Aguila and her family had raised her in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spoke to me after the sacrament meeting around November of that fall of ’98 because she was curious as to why my Bible was in Spanish that I used during my talk. It was the only one I had, I can’t remember why, but from that brief conversation I received a phone call from her sister’s father-in-law who was living in Terre Haute. I talked to Maria by phone and we agreed it would be cool for me to check out the Bay Area, looking for potential jobs and schools for a period after Christmas.

I ended up hanging out with Maria and her Mexican-American family: both her parents, her brother Jorge and her sister, too, plus some with their other sibling and their grandparents, mostly in Rohnert Park, about an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge. We took a side trip to Orange County and stopped in places like San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and the Central Valley.

Spending time with the Aguila family was in some ways enlightening for me. I think I learned more about how Mexico and the US work together. I saw a closer-up look of a first and second generation Mexican-American family, and how they also interacted with their membership in the Church.

In order to more fully understand the situation of the Águilas, I can describe how it was I met Maria in Terre Haute, where she was visiting her sisters’ parents-in-law. This will open up this odd link, and yet perhaps a bit emblematic of social relations. Now the name is escaping me, but a young man from Robinson, Illinois, served an English-speaking mission in the Bay Area, maybe Santa Rosa. He met a young Mexican-American woman who eventually married him; he ended up living in California. His new sister-in-law, Maria, did a mission in Chicago, attended BYU-Hawaii, and was visiting her brother-in-law’s parents who then lived up the Wabash in Terre Haute. This occurred over Thanksgiving break, when I met her that Sunday. I was finishing my last semester of classes to be a high school teacher.

Her parents had lived in the US well over twenty years; they had assimilated into US society very well in a business or professional sense but linguistically and in some cultural ways they still remained Mexican. Their four children seemed to vary in levels of Americanness, all varying degrees from Mexico.

The oldest boy, coincidentally, remembered being in a beginning Spanish literature class with me at Brigham Young University back in 1993. I didn’t remember him. He had a short and disastrous marriage with a “white girl” at the “Y”, and was currently dating a non-member woman from Panama or Central America. He owned a boat in the harbor at Tiburon and slept there as a lone bachelor. I think he had achieved the highest degree of masonry, like forty or so. I didn’t know a lot of Church members who were so involved in this organization. I found this interesting.

The second oldest was the girl who married the missionary from Illinois. I became friends with her: she seemed quite conflicted. She was suffering from Lupus, which apparently was considered by those around her as a fatal condition. They had a cute young girl of about five which made the imminent threat more acute. She smoked outside their back patio, requested a Bocelli C.D., and recalled fondly working as a swimsuit model while in Cancun. Her pictures of her past self did not match her body or mood in that time. I felt bad her husband didn’t know Spanish. I hope them well some five years later.

Maria was the one I met, and one outstanding feature she had was her height of 4-foot something. She never admitted her true height, but onetime I spied her driver’s license and it said 4’7’’. This was a little discouraging towards seeing her as more than just a friend. Had she been five-foot, who knows? Yes, I was alone and often lonely, but I still possessed a strong sense of selectivity.

Jorge was my favorite; he was a fast talker and a gregarious charm talker. Highlights from his life included: asking a Scandinavian General Authority at the Stockholm Temple of our church on vacation and being recommended to a Finnish young woman who he eventually proposed to in front of me and the rest of his family, in front of the Christus at the Oakland LDS visitors center New Year’s Day 1999. Wanting to serve a mission in Mexico so much that he sent his papers to Salt Lake while actually in Mexico to help his chances. He re-introduced me to the rock band Rush and some of their deeper themes, enlightened me on some aspects of the world, like the diamond industry, Cal Poly SLO (a nice town), and a music salesman in a ritzy part of the Bay Area known as the “Hat”. A real Mexican-American original, Jorge, friend of the Hat.

The parents seemed to be very decent people but slightly conflicted with parts of American culture. They did a good job with their kids, which is about the best thing anyone can say about anyone. We had fun discussing Spanish sayings, Mexican music, and unfamiliar words in the Book of Mormon. This was nice. Sometimes I felt through language and therefore culture I was closer to them by default than they were to their very own son-in-law of so many years. The daughter, and only grandchild, tried not to use much Spanish, perhaps mostly due to her Dad.

This entire scenario of California and its latent Mexican identity opened up to me, including eating at an interesting Mexican-style shop near Santa Barbara, visiting some weller-to-do Mexican immigrants in Orange County, and observing all manner of people and places around the Bay Area.

History of California visits

I began visiting California in 1993, the time I visited San Diego and Tijuana with those college friends from BYU. I had returned on a yearly basis, each time seeing new things, experiencing new parts and new angles. That first visit back in 1993 we made it to Tijuana for the afternoon, and hung out with my host’s best friend who seemed to be Mexican-American. This was some contact with Mexico, which is I suppose typical of the state. The visit at Thanksgiving of Shahram Paksima and his family in La Jolla (San Diego) was multi-cultural, but not particularly the Hispanic part of California. This was still California, of course, as it is a big state for everyone.

The 1995 visit included the Mexicali excursion, as well as Brawley, which is all part of the frontier land which is an indelible part of our nation and pretty much always has been. To not understand that the border of Mexico has always been part of the uniqueness and strength of our country is to not recognize what really is the essence of our history: we have always been part Mexican.

I managed to make it to California twice in 1996. The first trip in July was a cheap and fun American trip. Three of us, an American girl from Missouri who had never seen the ocean, a Chinese college student who was in his first of four years in the United States, and good ole me: failed “marketing salesman”, failing actor/model, and loyal SOS temp worker living in Provo. Could I say I was an aspiring writer due to failures in other ventures? Things did not go as planned that year, and the LA visit was indicative of that.

The second time I made it to California that year of 1996 was that fall, winding my way down the 15 all by myself in order to meet up with a friend from 1994. We were long distance pen pals, trying to keep a brief romance that we shared from spring study abroad in Chile while I lived in Chillán. The romantic correspondence lasted a while, but not enough real contact. I stayed a little while in the Golden State while visiting Universal Studios, Manhattan Beach and around the airport. It was rainy, I got lost a lot, and in some ways this trip was forgettable. Rekindling an old flame kept alive by letters and then extinguished by disinterest for over a year was necessary but just that: unfruitful.

1997 was my first visit to the Bay Area, but also the upper Central Valley at Davis and Sacramento. We went as a group of five students from Brigham Young, me not a student at the time. This was a last summer living in Utah before returning to my home state that September, planning on taking the GRE and possibly a Doctoral program in Political Science somewhere. This visit was very “Anglo”: I did not come in much contact with any Latinos that I recall. We visited San Francisco and saw many people from all lands.

1997 was the last visit to this state prior to bringing me to the California “precursor”, which is contained on the next page after the “Mexican scale”. By August of 1999, of course, I moved here (California), which resulted indirectly to the foundation and trajectory of this book. What was the

Interruption Update: Today (January 3, 2004), our small family just returned from a vacation in Mexico. This will be another chapter of this itinerant history. After this chapter about Mexicali in 1995 and 1999, all my visits will include my wife and later our daughter since 2000 (Ch. 5), 2000-1 (Ch. 6), 2002 and 2003 (Ch.7), and now newly this year’s 2003-4 (Chapter 8).

My Mexican Scale

In the scale of 1 to 5 of the “close” scale to Mexico, by that fall of 1999 I became a “3”. My job included teaching Spanish to approximately 200 students; about a third to forty percent were Hispanic, who consisted of many varying degrees of Mexican identity. They ranged from “1’s” for having Mexican heritage and little else, and a few “5’s” for knowing more Spanish than English, and usually more fluent than me. Finally, the house I moved into was being managed by a second generation Hispanic named Dave Zavala, who I would rate as a “four”. We both attended a local LDS ward that was preparing to separate into a Spanish Branch in Highland, California. I became friends with some of the Spanish-speaking members, one of whom was Gustavo Cuevas. Gustavo had a brother who was an LDS bishop in Mexicali, thus my new Mexican connection. I don’t know if this would make me a “3.5” on my scale of Mexicanness, but my point is it would be hard for me to reach a “four”. Fours are for genetically linked Mexicans who possess all or many of the following characteristics (perhaps you could do it through marriage like someone I knew in Highland), and “fives” are Mexicans who are in the US physically but in their heart, emotionally or spiritually they remain in. Mexico.

Back to the last time I was a single man in Mexico, 1999. How much of my journey was itinerant? What is the real meaning of “itinerancy”? I consulted my mother-in-law’s large Webster’s dictionary (Copyright 1972/updated 1987) this first Sunday in 2004 to review its meaning. What I found in the dictionary is more than I had bargained for since beginning this book with its title that occurred to me: “Mexico: An Itinerant Journey” back in 2002. The definitions are worth pondering, perhaps especially in my case.

itinerancy n. the quality or state of being itinerant || a duty, ministry, etc. that involves traveling from place to place || a group of persons engaged in such a duty etc.

itinerant adj. traveling from place to place || (esp. of a judge or a Methodist minister) traveling on a circuit || involving travel from place to place

When I originally started this memory/travelogue about two years ago I chose the word “itinerant” with more of the intent for the connotation of traveling about by foot, walking. I felt that the time spent walking through this foreign place would be an interesting concept for a story of some kind, be it factual or entertaining. After starting the first page I realized that this was more about mental traveling and possibility within some realm imagined as Mexico than any other real definitive book about the country, besides becoming a personal record for me alone.

This is an itinerant journal, for “one man”, as once was said from the moon in 1969, but I wish it to be something even more universal than just for me. Maybe this record is not for all mankind like the American astronaut represented all mankind back then and maybe forever for our race but at least this book is targeted for a certain hemisphere of people perhaps yet unknown to me. I feel there is a message here for many people potentially

“Itinerancy”, then, could be described as wandering with a set purpose.

The Meaning of Me, This…

In the older sense of the word, itinerancy is a religious mission for a certain type of Christian minister (in particular, the Methodist faith, ironically the faith of my father for a time as a child and my step-mother’s life-long church). I have paid more attention to this specific church outside of my own for this reason as well. I have been able to participate in a few meetings as well.

    I don’t know if this book or journey about Mexico has a religious justification or rationale, but there are some religious underpinnings that are guiding me like an itinerant minister looking after some strange flock that is making his life, my life a spiritually quixotic adventure.

    Like a lot of the most key things in life, the large things that we take for granted are often ignored to the point where we really fail to understand the true nature of what they are and how they affect us; I think that Mexico and perhaps the rest of Latin America is this for the United States. Maybe we cannot understand ourselves until we figure out our “non-selves”.

Mexico is an integral part of the United States: it is a forever linked partner with our own destiny. If the US is “manifest” in its destiny as a nation, then what is Mexico to be considered? Sub-manifest? No.

    Some of these ponderings go back to the nature of sovereignty and nation-state, culture and language. How can one put a strict definition to it? We can’t. I can’t. But perhaps by diagnosing this close flock of near-Americans we can learn something more of ourselves. By classifying these things such as the Mexican scale, perhaps there are a few ways to find out more of who we are; a minister can help the penitent souls see further into their own depths. This book might help us understand more of the national identity of the United States, or some aspect of it.

Maybe. (March 11, 2004)

American Phenomena: Endemic Religion and Writings

As has recently come to my attention through an odd e-mail about the Book of Mormon being an African book of the Abyssinians of Eritrea from an alleged prophet named Embaye Melekin, I realize that the Book of Mormon has directed a lot of my own cares and thoughts about the state of the world and particularly how Latin America fits into the grand picture. Our church and its teachings has become a large part of my identity.

We all know that in 2004 there exists every type of belief-system and every opinion since the dawn of time. All of these beliefs are represented in one form or another across the world in every culture and economic class. Perhaps even more significant is that there are strong secular strains that are stronger than ever before. I happen to align myself to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as previously stated a number of times, but I consider myself a general humanist and pro-active religionist of all faiths. All positive ideas and notions that help the human condition are worthy of honor and respect.

    As this chapter deals with an identification of self through the “redefining” of me, I must allow and express how my religion has most likely defined me more than any other one constant in my life. (More than being male or American? Possibly.) As I have learned and am still learning to observe and analyze different nations, I tend to look at things through a spiritual lens as well as through myriad secular vantage points. Despite all my various perspectives, I return to my faith’s “inspired” interpretation of how things operate. There are obviously many things that can be explained through natural and non-gospel means, however; I have yet to find a better explanation for questions that perplex my mind the most. The Gospel of Jesus Christ as I understand it seems to encompass all I see. It fills my heart and mind with meaning for all known existence.

    Obviously there are times when I am enveloped in other personal or secular issues: sports tend to be a large release from the greater eschatological reaches of my religion and its necessities of time and service. Rooting for Brigham Young University, however, can cross the lines. I also am involved in following world conflicts and other geographic and cultural questions across the globe as well as some books of fiction and classic literature. Science within geography is also an interesting question, be it in Antarctica or Mars, plus mortality rates, growth rates (demography) and epidemiology. Despite all these curiosities, religion and faith are the underpinning driving forces of my dreams and waking moments.

    This is what causes my itinerant sojourn in life to fully develop: a God-driven reason for existence, justice, and progress. Through this very lens I see Mexico as a wonderful place of faith and hope, especially for a Book of Mormon church and member who posits faith in the American Promised Land blessings as I do. Mexico fully contains the promises of God in the books of Mormon to the blood of the Mexican peoples. I say peoples because among the regular population of Mexicans there are numerous tribes, all of which we believe are linked to the remnants of Nephi and Laman referred to in various parts of the Book of Mormon. The Gospel of Jesus Christ as we know it, as incredible as it seems, provides a way for all of these forgotten peoples to be redeemed someday and inherit an eternal birthright.

The inklings of a religious movement in largely Anglo-Saxon upper state New York back in the 1820s would seem to have little impact on Latin America as late as two centuries later: but they have. Just as we might guess that Latin America would have no powerful grasp on an Anglo-Saxon boy raised in Bloomington, Indiana, in the late 20^th century, so we might surmise that these types of relationships are paradoxical or at least odd. And yet, perhaps it is all emblematic of this monster we call globalization. English speakers learn Spanish and then learn Arabic with some French and eventually learn Portuguese, hoping to learn Chinese and potentially Hindi among others.

    Some wish to exclude religion from the shape of things but I cannot. My intellectual understanding of its practice and influence and my spiritual connection to its vibrancy and effectual reality encourage me to keep an abiding hope and nourished seed in its eventual supremacy. It would seem that if there is no Supreme God of Benevolence than the alternative is somewhat finite. I will not continue at length about all the many intricacies that my faith shares with the Western Hemisphere but I will boldly state that this is the most “American” and native Western Hemisphere faith. It also includes the Old World but this is only secondary to its “Americanness, its New Worldness”.

The Extent of Blessings to the Future Inheritors

There are many claims of LDS leaders and scholars on the extent of inter-related blessings upon the American continents based on modern and ancient prophesy and blessings. The peoples descended from the Book of Mormon will blossom “as the rose”. And what does this mean?

    The official church school Brigham Young qualifies as modern day Lamanite or Nephite remnant descendants as: Latino, American Indian, Filipino, or Polynesian. This means to many that these peoples will become members of the LDS faith and will produce good “fruits”: they will become the elect of God through the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in significant numbers.

    In many instances this is becoming true: these populations are joining the Church in ever increasing numbers. There are large ratios of members in the Polynesian islands such as Tonga (46%), Samoa (34%), American Samoa (19%), Tahiti (8%), and Hawaii (5%). Many believe that a reference to a settler of the South Pacific Sea Islands from the Book of Mormon called Hagoth spread his blessed genes across the southern hemisphere and possibly over to the Philippines. As of this year there are well over half a million Latter-day Saints in the Philippines while there are not that many in all of Europe combined (which is now divided into three Church areas that include much of Asia and Northern Africa). The growth rate and missions in this grand archipelago are very dynamic, soon to surpass in membership the fourth biggest church membership country in Chile.

Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America are the overall fastest growing areas for the LDS Church, and this could be due to the very same inheritance that the populations of those thirty-some countries share with the descendants of Lehi or perhaps Mulek from the Book of Mormon.

All of the Latin countries are experiencing substantial growth, but what does seem ironic is that the areas that are not Europeanized do not seem to be converting as strongly. This is not necessarily how some interpret the blessings of the Book of Mormon. Perhaps there is a combination of the Gentile blessing extended to the seed of Joseph and Manasseh that is coming into play here. Of course not all of faithfulness is found in blood inheritance but more importantly the very decisions that individuals and their families and collective societies make: Latin Americans tend to respond well to missionaries from the north; this is a general truth.

Another general truth about membership in Latin America is that many more people are baptized than remain active. These people warm up to the idea of joining but the trick is to keep them attending. This is true worldwide but particularly the Latinos (who primarily have the Book of Mormon blood in their veins, like the Polynesians, Filipinos, and other Native Americans.

There are many implications that the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ) has with Mexico and the rest of the American continents. Mexico has an inextricable link to Mexico, and therefore I do as well: I am as of yet irrevocably linked to the Church and in this sequence connected to Mexico also.

My fifth trip to Mexico, this December 1999 trip to Mexicali, was inextricably linked to my faith. I will explain how so in some of the following paragraphs.

A Faith Connected Trip

The reasons for going to Mexico on the first four trips were relatively secular in nature. The trip to Matamoros was with my family for spring break, the second trip in the Yucatan (Quintana Roo) was another tourist adventure with family, the third trip to Tijuana was with college friends, and the fourth again with other college friends, albeit from our religious school (BYU). This fifth trip was directly and indirectly motivated by Church ties.

Gustavo Cuevas, a native Mexican transplanted from the state of Sonora ( Ciudad Obregon), was living in the Highland 1^st ward in Highland, California, when I became his friend and fellow member in the elders quorum there in 1999. We met in August when I first moved into the ward. At the time the former Spanish branch of the LDS church was integrated into the Highland 1^st ward of which I was a part as of mid-August of that year.

I became acquainted with Gustavo and a good number of other Latinos, primarily Mexicans, that fall. By that December I was going with Brother Cuevas to his brother’s city of Mexicali. This would be the first time I would spend the night in Mexico, and it was on a pulled out mattress on the floor of a spare room. The house was decent; it had two stories and they owned a couple of cars in a narrow driveway, I seem to remember. The night’s sleep was uneventful but I do remember distinctly thinking this was my first night to sleep over in Mexico.

    Apart from staying the night and it being for Church reasons, this trip to Mexicali was uniquely interesting for the reason that because I had walked across the border there back in 1995 I had a preconceived notion of what it was like. I had built it up in my mind that it was cleaner and more peaceful than Tijuana. I hadn’t seen as much as Mexicali for one; I also noted that they are considerably different in tourism activity.

    Tijuana seems to have a certain griminess due to a constant busy traffic of tourists and party goers; Mexicali doesn’t seem so overrun and overused. This was my first impression comparing these border cities from my walk-across impressions from 1993 and 1995. Going to new parts and seeing more of Mexicali in 1999 gave me more information to go on in a more holistic fashion. (Later in 2003 I would drive north through Mexicali on the way to the border from San Felipe down the coast. It is maybe the only Mexican city I have visited in three different years. Tijuana I have driven by more but not really stopped there as much.)

I thought Mexicali was relatively clean and not so “border townish” but then I saw more in December of 1999. I felt and had always heard that border towns were the main garbage wracked cities of Mexico. I now (in 2004) think this is true in part and not true in part.

What I mean by this is that generally, Mexican towns have parts that are cleaner than others, no matter where they are in relation to the U.S. border. This is true of all cities worldwide, but one particularly notices trash and orderliness issues when first crossing across the border into Mexico. As I have now been to four border crossings, this is simply a universal fact. And as most people would guess, Mexico does not have as strict upkeep in its public spaces as most of the United States. This change also becomes apparent while moving above the northern border to Canada. Each country and culture has acceptable levels of waste that is visible or disposed of in an orderly fashion.

    Typical assertions of “third-worldness” are evident when conceptualizing a poorer nation or community. Some say tax-based revenue may determine trash collection and the elimination of public visual eyesores. More than this is involved in my opinion: a people have a will and conscience in allowing their streets and public lots to become polluted and contaminated. When tighter restrictions are made on communities and their respective societies about trash and refuse, regardless of public services and taxes, the people conform accordingly. Perhaps Mexico is missing this value as a public or in its higher government institutions, but individually the people are as meticulous and clean as anyone else. Then again maybe the polemic is strictly financial, or at least a combination of many factors such as mentioned.

Memories and Impressions from a Brief Stay

    Gustavo and I left around the second weekend of December of 1999, early on a Saturday morning in his white pick-up truck. After leaving my car at his house, a few blocks from my residence in Highland on Lynnwood Avenue I met him there. From his house we proceeded to a second floor apartment somewhere near Baseline to retrieve some clothing and a few baby seats to pack into Gustavo’s truck. The people living in the apartment were Mexican-American: the mother was a single sister of the church with an adult daughter, a teenage son and smaller children. Some of them seemed to be sleeping on the apartment floor when we arrived. The fact struck me that this small family without enough beds or even couches to sleep in for their own kids was donating items for the less fortunate down in Mexicali.

We stayed there longer than I wanted to but I got a forward glance into Mexico in San Bernardino that morning: Mexicans kids and their parents are used to less. That’s why we were going on this trip. Donate the Higland Stake’s wrapped Christmas presents and drop off some other things like old clothing and baby car seats.

    Gustavo and I went to the border with our request to pass this cargo to his brother the bishop in Mexicali. The border officials did not show favor in allowing us through, but Gustavo had had experience with this type of thing, so we waited in his truck parked under some in-between border awning in a parking lot. We watched the customs building expectantly and finally after more impatient and worrisome minutes on my part; a customs agent returned our stake presidency’s letter of intent and permitted us to continue on our way. We continued into Mexico and I remember seeing more of Mexicali in a few short minutes than I had just four years prior.

    I met the bishop’s wife and his family, Gustavo’s nieces and nephews. They were young, they were nice with me. I don’t remember a lot of details about them. I do remember struggling to understand what they were saying. I believe we ate some type of burrito before leaving for the mountains for cheese.

The Mountain Cheese

    I had learned from these Cuevas brothers that the cheese from up in the mountains towards Tecate was the best you could get. We squeezed into Gustavo’s white pick up truck and (with me squooshed in the middle among seat belts and radios at my knees) drove out of what I suppose was the west side of Mexicali. I remember seeing some large company plants, some nasty looking toxic puddles by the streets. Maybe it had rained recently. Mexicali had definitely lost its quaint 1995 allure for me. I saw the broken down streets, the trash and left over excesses of neglect; the urban sprawl of homes and people and businesses that seem to overflow into places that aren’t quite supposed to be. Sidewalks are rare; dirt and mud-- with assortments of trash-- are the norm.

    Getting up into the mountains left behind much of the blight of an unkempt city, one a few years earlier I had viewed as pristine, The road itself and the road signs were a constant reminder that we were no longer in the US. The sun was now setting and it perhaps was covered by clouds: I don’t particularly remember being blinded by its rays from the northwest, the American side.

I recall seeing the flat Imperial Valley of southern California spreading across the north. Lights beginning to speckle the far off horizon, a quiet scene of a nation so sought after. Perhaps millions had come through this passage alone seeking their new opportunity: Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and perhaps a few others as well. Maybe “millions” right now is an exaggeration but then again maybe not. Many come back through more than once.

    Here was a novelty for me: for the first time I had reached a high elevation in Mexico. These were new moments for me here for a few other reasons. My first time only with other Mexicans in their country (even though Gustavo was a legalized American citizen); my first time to spend the night, the first time attending church in Mexico…

Inner Insight

This was my entrance “for real” into Mexico; not as a tourist but as a person actually getting inside, seeing Mexico with a Mexican and with only Mexicans. This is what I had yearned to do as a gringo back in Mulchen and southern Chile. Maybe there was something going on that still affects me now…

    To understand a foreign concept, to understand an “outsider”, to get what is supposed to be almost unattainable. To see and feel and emotionally experience, yes, live out a non-American world. It is a constant search for meaning. As suggested before, perhaps we only really start to understand ourselves when we can analyze another thing that then reflects on us a defining meaning, a “raison d ‘etre”. To see ourselves from another perspective may hold the key, almost as a god…

    Only walking, only traveling through foreign vistas can I find it. These mysteries are necessary to unravel in a another world, distant from my own in a modern kitchen with broken taco shells and Doritos far from a land of Spanish colonization…

Itinerancy leads to truth somehow. Abraham, Moses, and millions since them had found their final destinations. In my unique religious tradition, so had Nephi and the Brother of Jared and a host of others including the present day. Here I was spending the night in the borderland frontier of a million itinerant refugees. Latinos walking towards the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey where I had grown to not have to labor if not really desired. (I mean manual labor, of which I had partaken of by twists of fate or circumstance for a few good parts of my life).

    I was somehow following the same pattern of life, searching for my own Promised Land, the same name of the CBS television show I had worked for and felt it was the answer to my prayers and efforts back in 1996. But this was the end of 1999, the virtual end of the century (although technically not until 2001), and I was not leading any tribes of freed slaves or any knowable future posterity to some future land of inheritance, at least not that I knew of. But I was walking across new and desert lands, thousands of years since our spiritual forefathers. And I, like Moses or Jacob, was wandering in search of a wife. Walking ever closer to the end of my itinerant journey without posterity, without true companionship of a helper as given to our first father. Did Jesus live so long a man alone without a wife? Which deserts did He look across in search of a His bride?²

Sunday in Mexico

Gustavo took me to my first sacrament meeting in Mexicali, and afterwards introduced me to a young lady he thought I might be interested in. I wasn’t too interested, but the gesture was magnanimous and genuine. Approaching the strange age of thirty the ominous year of 2000, I appreciated any effort to match me up and was open minded if not as open hearted. I was willing to find a beautiful excellent person anywhere to fix my marital status, and my heart was not closed to any nationality if the person was right.

Many things about the service and the people reminded me of Chile, of which I knew not only as a missionary but later as a student of Brigham Young abroad. Attending Church in Mexico rekindled feelings and memories of so many experiences south of the border or even that first Spanish meeting in Spain. These rekindlings would eventually lead to my present situation of 2003-04. (Later developments led me and my new wife back to Mexico.)

Historical blurb: October 3, 2004

In my on-going effort to write this book (since the beginning of 2002), I occasionally write these entries to fill you and myself up to date on the current me.

Today is the second day of General Conference, 2004. This is always a weekend of much watching and waiting. Friday we had a special “Workshop” for the Relief Society and I gave the spiritual thought, which my wife thought lasted 20 minutes. I later spent time with Journay and some other kids in the nursery until finished and we ate some and mingled.

Yesterday I watched both conference sessions, some football in between, priesthood at five followed by BYU beating Colorado St. at 7:00. It was a day of many broadcasts. It ended happily watching parodies of Bush and Kerry and some Hawaii football against Tulsa.

I am teaching 34 hours adult school and staying busy as Branch President of the Sixth Branch, San Bernardino. We are paying off our bills and looking forward to move elsewhere. We will spend the Christmas holidays in Indiana, Thanksgiving in Utah. We don’t know what will be next but there are some leads in Washington D.C. and northern Virginia.

We just started the Economist magazine again and I read the LA Times every day, plus many other things regarding news and sports on the Internet.

Things are happening in Samara, Iraq, and elsewhere within Iraq and in other parts of the world. And now back to the walking journey, always to the land lying south.

    We left Mexicali that Sunday not long after church, not really staying for classes. Gustavo was interested in returning to our Highland stake center where his Spanish branch was still meeting that early afternoon, I remember seeing his son at the church on Central Avenue with colorfully painted hair. Gustavo was nonplussed.

I was surprised how we stopped at the Burger King on the way home by the dinosaurs past Palm Springs. Being devout Latter-day Saints as we both were, I had kind of assumed that since we were a mere 3-4 hours from home at his brother the bishop’s house, we could have at least taken some food for the road. Oh, well; I had done much worse on many other Sundays.

    Did this have much to do with Mexico? I think so, and I will explain.

This was my first overnight sojourn into Mexico and I was not only with a Mexican, but I was entering into a special insider’s view of the Mexican people.

Living here in southern California, one can at times enter into a world of “others”, as most of us as an ethnic and linguistic majority in the rest of the country suppose are country is about. Sure, we are still (as of 2004) majority white Anglo-Saxon around the country as a whole, but now the biggest populated state became only 49% white as of 1999.

1 Authors of “Empire”, a hot neo-Marxist manifesto as of 2002.

2 Maybe the Bride of Jesus was only His church that He established, as many Christians assert. Perhaps He really was meant to marry a wife in His life here, I can’t say.