Chapter One of Mexico Book "Mexico: An Itinerant History" (January 2002)

Mexico: An itinerant history

2002, January

Re-edited multiple times, last 4/ 2005

Beginning the Journey

When does someone start traveling to a place? Does it happen before one arrives? Does it happen through mass media, including books and periodicals, through stories one learns as a child? Or does it happen the first time one physically sets foot in that place?

Let’s assume I had mentally visited Mexico before actually going there. What did my brain know prior to March of 1982? What was my mental Mexico? Was it more Clint Eastwood’s western vistas of wide sombrero wearing, gun-slinging, mustachioed, dark-skinned horse riding “banditos”? Was it Speedy Gonzalez and his lazy mouse friends, stuck in the desert heat as he irrepressibly flitted about with his colorful verbal cries of “arriba, arriba, andale”? Was it an impression of Mexico given to me by a third grade private Spanish teacher, from Spain but sharing the culture of the greater Spanish speaking world, introducing fascinating words like rojo and azul, and even amarillo? Was it a misunderstanding of my childhood favorite film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, of two cool criminals ending up wandering about a strange Hispanic land called Bolivia but indistinguishable in a child’s mind from anything Mexican? Or was it a few words and images shared on Sesame Street, perhaps more Puerto Rican in pure culture but introducing a Chicano flavor nonetheless?

What was my Mexico? Did I read something about it in my textbook readers? Did I ever read a short story taking place there? Did I read in the Latter-day Saint children’s magazine The Friend, that Mexican children receive Christmas presents magically in their shoes left outside the front door? Or was that something that my 10 year-old Church primary teacher taught me upon returning from far-off Mexico, in order to adopt a little brown Mexican baby? Was it a map I saw, or were there photos I saw in the National Geographic that we subscribed to throughout my childhood? Was it the entries in the World Book Encyclopedia that showed pictures of distant places like Mexico and displayed wonderful colored illustrations of foreign dress from across the world? Did I see any of Mexico in picture or storybooks before actually going there? Had I heard stories? Had I gleaned any of the knowledge of it through history at home or school? Or perhaps a movie, or the national news with Walter Cronkite seared some unconscious images into my brain and thought patterns? Was it the spirit of a wooden deer that Sister Stevenson brought back from their sojourn for the baby, a thoughtful souvenir from a southern clime where people hand carve these smooth yet sharp reflections of indigenous culture?

I cannot be sure how much of this brought me to Mexico in anticipation of 1982. Perhaps it was the visits to a few fast food restaurants like Taco John’s and Taco Bell? Or maybe it was the “Mexican food night” our family would traditionally enjoy week in and week out. Each of my family members would use the various ingredients to our individual liking: dried taco shells, Doritos, spicy ground hamburger (always the most scarce commodity), chopped lettuce bits, chopped tomato bits, grated American cheese, maybe some chopped onion bits and the ever popular canned-corn kernels. My father would mix these all together and eat them with a fork, a la “taco salad’. I would scoop up the tasty mix with the parts of my broken taco shells. The toasted shells were hard like the Doritos but would not stain my fingers as annoyingly. Licking your fingers of Dorito dust is OK sometimes, but when you have a feast of mixed burger, cheese, corn, etc., it is nice to be able to scoop up the feast unimpeded.

Spring of 1982

I had visited outside of the United States on numerous occasions growing up, but it was normally limited to the northern provinces of Canada: Ontario a number of times, and once in Quebec, the Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and Alberta. Despite my fond memories of the otherness of these locales, Mexico loomed ahead as a new adventure, especially since the language spoken there was to coincide with my third grade cultural experience of learning enero, febrero, marzo, etc. This was spring break, a time customarily of either traveling the ten hours to Washington D.C. or perhaps a short trip to the caves of Kentucky. To travel on such a major southward trek was a new and wonderful adventure, much like the experience of Bilbo Baggins of whom I was reading in Tolkien’s The Hobbit at that age.

This trip was an idea from my father to be sure. During his U.S Air Force duty, he was stationed near Corpus Christi and he felt it would serve as a nice warm spot to spend a week away from the northern climes of Indiana. After all, there had been many a March blizzard that had provided for tortuous prolonged winters in our hometown of Bloomington during spring break. The Texas Gulf Coast would be mild and sunny, and close to the real south (Mexico). Did I know then we would take a day trip across the border? Probably yes. Had my Dad done this during his stay in Texas years before? I can’t recall, but his specialty was West African Krio, not Spanish. This language was my specialty: I could even count to a hundred in Spanish! Mexico seemed like a natural place to look forward to, especially with my interest linguistically and romantically for really “foreign” places.

It might have been Ruby Bumzahem who inspired my early desire to learn this Romantic tongue. She was from Panama originally and would still utter phrases in Spanish (or Italian) as an elderly naturalized citizen. She became my adopted grandma and years later after living for two years in South America I don’t think I had fully returned home until I visited her in her toasty warm apartment full of pictures and Latino relics and most of all her graceful Latino demeanor.

The trip down to Corpus Christi was a memorable one. Sometimes the better you know your own country the more you can observe elsewhere.

We embarked as a family of five with a young man named Phil Isom. He had returned home to Bloomington shortly for the death of his father while serving his mission in Fort Worth, Texas. This was on our way so it wasn’t hard to drop him off at a Fort Worth stake center somewhere in the suburbs of the city.

Prior to Texas we drove through Oklahoma, a significant state for me because my main crush of my elementary school years had a grandmother there and she would spend vacations there riding horses in the country and bragging about it. I paid close attention when she would inform us about Oklahoma, not only because I liked her so much but also Marnie was part Cherokee due to her more full-blooded Oklahoma grandma, and I thought American Indians were the coolest. Our station wagon made one stop of recollection in the whole state, at a diner somewhere near Oklahoma City. This was the first time in my recollection that I had had southern grits, and the funny thing was I didn’t even order them!

Memories continued: What has been Mexico? (June 26, 2002)

When thinking of Oklahoma, one thinks of the heartland of the United States of America in the year 2002. Back in 1982, I had no reason to think otherwise. Judging from a map in 1847, however, Oklahoma was known as unorganized Indian Territory¹. This huge swath of the plains loosely deemed as US property from the time of the Jefferson purchase, made possible by Napoleon at the turn of the 19^th century, carried up to the present day borders of Canada to the north. To the south, it reached to the present day border of Texas until the eastern side of the panhandle. The much larger than the present 1847 Texas territory extended up from its panhandle to the north, a good measure beyond the present Oklahoma panhandle creating a skinny strip that would reach all the way up through Colorado and Wyoming to today’s Yellowstone park on the border with today’s Idaho.

Little did I know back then that I would spend five years living in the present day state of Utah as an adult, which was a part of Mexico when first colonized by the Saints in the summer of ‘47. I was also unaware of eventually following my parents’ stay in southern California and end up living here for at least four years (up until at least spring 2003, projected). The entire state of California, as well as Nevada, Arizona, Utah, most of New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado were all possessed by Mexico in 1847. The Mexican-American War under Polk changed most of that in favor of the United States. But this does not erase the historical or cultural foundations of much of these places, based on Spanish missions, hacienda ranches, and ethnically diverse Latinos and natives settling across the vast northern Mexican frontier.

In 2002, there are literally millions of Mexicans inhabiting the western states, including Washington and Oregon and of course Texas not to mention many urban and rural parts of the Midwest and eastern seaboard. Simply due to a conflict of sovereignty 150 years ago, the heritage of much of the United States cannot be forgotten simply due to Anglo-Saxon/African American (and now add Asian) newcomers creating their own brand of American constitutional manifest destiny. The US forefathers, highlighted by Monroe, claimed the entire new world under its influence, because the 13 original colonies formed an alliance and union that united power as seldom accomplished in the history of the world. A power built to upsize. This newly formed republic did eventually map out its space, from the Spanish in Florida and Puerto Rico, to the French in the great white north and the east, to the Russians in the northeast, and the varieties of Europeans and natives across the lands and seas. By 1950 it had consumed enough space to sate its appetite. Fifty nifty sounds better than forty-eight all first rate.

So the US inevitably ends up defining much of Mexico, the last act being the Gadsden Purchase of 1854. Largely forgotten by us northerners are the border states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. I leave Baja Norte from the forgotten list because enough southern Californians and other Americans recognize it as a real “place” (mostly due to Tijuana) that it is popular on a conscious level. But of the other five Mexican Border States, two of them are not recognized by the Autocratic Republic of Microsoft, lead so imperiously yet surreptitiously by Lord Emperor Gates himself!

I should also mention that Mexico had to fight for its independence from the formidable European powers of France and Spain, not to mention the inevitable infighting among the numerous native peoples over its violent history.

So enough of what I didn’t know, and enough of these history lessons that I’ve learned more of since. What did I know? Certain myths of Mexico and some images and stories I had previously absorbed. Some maps, movies, cartoons, and maybe a few artifacts. 1982 gave me a taste of the real thing, and it was in a border town called Matamoros.

Trip number one: in Tamaulipas without prior knowledge

I could make a short list of impressions I still carry (at the relatively distant age of 31) from that first visit, twenty years later.

1. The walk across the Rio Grande. The little amount of water (for a major international border river that loomed large on any world map) that was flowing seemed to be a putrid green. I recall looking upstream while crossing on the edge walkway and envisioning people walking or wading across it to the northern banks. The sun was high and bright, warm. El Rio Bravo, as known in Mexico, was shallow enough to walk across its multiple sand bars, not swimmable. I have always paid attention to things like that in nature. (A tree: climbable? A hill: sleddable?) We crossed the bridge by foot and had parked our station wagon back in Brownsville, USA. My dad spoke for all of us, I think.

I seem to remember the Mexican border guard and its relatively small booth was on the bridge itself. It was a new sensation to be eyed over by uniformed non-Americans, not like the “American looking Canadians” from our family vehicle in past trips up north, occasionally peering into our trunk for contraband. No, this was an international pedestrian foot inspection, just like in the numerous war pictures I had seen. These guards were people who didn’t speak native English, like those kids at the camper ground in Quebec, only professionally trained to speak our native tongue.

2. The streets of Matamoros. (Again called into official question as far as spelling, and for that matter, its very existence, by Bill Gates in our Windows ’98 or Millennium word processor.) For a while I thought that by just being a border town, this would discount some of the “trashiness” that existed in Matamoros or Tijuana, compared to other Mexican cities located farther in the interior. After my excursions up until this year, I have decided otherwise. Mexico does not provide the same street services as most American public places. Sidewalks are typically uneven or non-existent, streets likewise, trash and refuse are rampant generally, and there is not the same use of wide space, as done in most North American cities. More hand labored signs, paintings, and homemade light fixtures are present, one can tell there is a greater lack of economic prosperity in any given Mexican town compared to the US.

At this point I will provide a brief listing of my visits to Mexico, helping the reader (but more importantly myself) to see the times and places I have visited in and through Mexico.

1982 Matamoros Day trip across border, March (1)¹

1983 Yucatan Day trip to Tulum and Xelha, December (2)

1993 Tijuana Day trip across the border, April (3)

1995 Mexicali Day trip across the border, November (4) (Not accepted by Gates, either)

1999 Mexicali Over night stay in with trip to mountains near Tecate with Gustavo Cuevas, December (5)

2000 Cabo and Los Barriles Ten day honeymoon and visit to La Paz, June, July (6)

2000-1 Guerrero and D.F. Two week visit to Zihuatenejo, Acapulco, Mexico City and Teotihuacan, December, January (7)

2002 La Bufadora and Ensenada Two-day trip down the Baja, January (8)

2003 Ojos Negros and San Felipe Two day trip down to the Mar of Cortez, January 2-3 (9)²

My first four trips were only for the day, typically a long afternoon. I finally spent the night in Mexico upon moving to California three years ago. Since marriage I have spent the majority of my time visiting in Mexico, and the last trip we planned three months ago to San Felipe (March, 2002) was cancelled (hopefully only indefinitely postponed) due to the RSV illness of our baby daughter. All told: eight trips, 27 nights, 31 days, seven states, in this order: Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo, Baja Norte, Baja Sur, Guerrerro, Morelos, Distrito Federal.³

What will add to my Mexican experiences are undoubtedly contact with Mexicans and their culture in between these sporadic visits, as well as classes and journeys to other lands, further expanding my horizons as to defining any particular people. The logic goes; one can discover others by knowing what they are not. The more you know of the world, the more you can interpret specific entities.

3. The food. I guess we hadn’t been there too long before we went for a meal at a local restaurant. We hadn’t packed lunches for our drive from Corpus Christi. The eatery was humble, nothing fancy at all. I remember there were deep blue (but somewhat pastel) concrete walls, with poor wiring throughout the establishment, noted out loud by my meticulous-for-code electrician father. The tables and chairs were more like a patio style, and I suppose the waiter (or waitress?) spoke good enough English for us to order without many problems. In truth I don’t remember that many details from that first meal except for two minor things that impressed my young mind: one, they only had Coke as a carbonated drink (and our family generally eschewed caffeinated drinks) and they served the drinks in their original bottles (we hoped) with straws already placed in them (caps removed, therefore we didn’t know for sure if these were the originals). I don’t think the top paper of the straw casing was left, like straws I would see at other restaurants later in life. This made us all a little uneasy, but it was a better prospect than drinking the water, as advertised humorously in beer commercials back then.

The other notable development at this meal was the soft tacos. I had never seen or heard of them, and this made sense in retrospect that Mexico, the virtual birthplace and kingdom of the taco, would have varieties and versions that were foreign to me. These tacos were smaller than the size I was accustomed to, and they were soft like a burrito. I’m not sure if I or anyone else in my family were too familiar with burritos back then, although maybe the Taco John on Walnut Street or a Taco Bell back home provided some of us with this Latino soft-shelled delicacy. So now I knew: tacos possessed no particular rigid identity.

4. The purchases. A primary reason for voyaging to a place as in effect, lackluster as a Matamoros, was to go shopping. My family did this very thing in Louisville, Kentucky, one Thanksgiving weekend around the same year, purely intent on that very thing: to consume. I don’t remember how much we spent or everything we bought, but a few things stand out. The only real thing I remember my parents buying for the entire family was a large bottle of vanilla extract. I recall passing by the cupboard by our kitchen for the months and probably years afterward and occasionally smelling the top plastic stopper of the vanilla because of its unique and rich aroma.

I’m sure my sisters and mom bought their share of jewelry and trinkets, my dad may have got a few things, but the main things I remember buying were the puppet and the jacket/vest. The puppet was a fun little Mexican marionette man with a guitar attached to his hand and maybe a bottle in the other (there was not that much political correctness back in 1982, especially not in Matamoros), and I believe he was dressed as what I understand now as a mariachi band member. My stint at learning Spanish before school in the third grade paid off in naming him. He was dubbed “Juan Paco Poco Loco Wacko”! This was a combination of a few words that I had picked up from the third grade lessons with the word play added from the newfound quirky sounding town where we spent the night in Texas. (Much later I discovered it is pronounced Waco like “wake”+oh” but that didn’t matter at the time).

Another gift that was interesting and possibly slightly expensive was a leather vest with copper clasps on the front, some kind of imitation velvet inside lining and a cool looking Mexican eagle symbol burnt or etched in the back. I liked this vest enough that I would wear it while playing Indian in the forest with no undershirt. I was disappointed years later when it no longer fit and I distinctly felt I didn’t take advantage of it enough.

These were some of the fond memories of knick-knacks and mementos from Mexico that first trip back in 1982. I’m sure back then I would have had more distinct impressions and opinions about what I observed, particular people I saw, shops or buildings or things in the street that left a unique and more detailed view of my few hours there. It was nice to now say I had been there, and had visited the land where my colorful flag map had come in a small white envelope two years before from my blonde haired Spanish teacher. Back then I’m sure I knew more about the gifts of my other family members while in Mexico.

Perhaps I was struck by the darkness of the Mexicans I saw, perhaps not. I do remember that most of my middle school and high school years I saw the darker skin as more attractive, thus soaking up tans whenever I could. Did I think they looked cooler for this reason? Did I think they looked neat because some had a Native American look, another of my predilections as a child? Whatever my precise sentiments about the people and the foreignness of the place, I probably could safely summarize that I thought Mexico was cool.

Trip number two: the Yucatan by way of Cuba

December of 1983 was when I was next able to visit the land of Mexico, this time much further to the south. Presently, a good twenty years later, it seems like the time span between March of 1982 and the Christmas time of 1983 was a short one, but for me much had happened in between and I don’t think until writing this document had I ever realized how close these visits were in relation to each other.

In reviewing these first two visits to Mexico as an eleven and thirteen year-old, the period of the end of my fifth grade year in elementary school and midway through my seventh grade year were large contrasts. In the fifth grade, I was attending school with one main teacher, Mrs. Daniels; my parents were still in what I thought was a normal lasting marriage. I could walk to school. My classmates were close friends from my limited college neighborhood whom I had known since kindergarten.

By the seventh grade, I was attending school with six different teachers daily, was introduced to many kids from various parts of the county from various schools, and my parents had been separated for some time. Also, my brilliant social studies teacher Mr. Courtney had introduced a whole new exciting plane of world affairs and geography to me. My worldview had somewhat changed.

The geographic difference of Mexico wasn’t the main difference this time; I think it had to be me. Nevertheless, this trip to Mexico was significantly different than Matamoros in Tamaulipas.

Again, I was largely unaware until the last few years that this border town of the first visit was in a state called Tamaulipas. In addition to Bill Gates and his ultra-modern (or postmodern) hyper-Anglo world of spell checks, my own family probably has had little knowledge or little interest in knowing the particular state of Mexico where we had alighted that day in 1983. Perhaps as a Chinese citizen may not care if Las Vegas is specifically located within Nevada but simply the United States, that’s how the majority of us Americans are in other countries. Maybe only a Masters student in Latin American Studies with an emphasis in geography (as well as place related sciences as political science and economics) would lend to one such as I to care at all which Mexican states we have visited over the years⁴.

Quintana Roo has been a state more embedded in my consciousness ever since going there. Perhaps it is flashier in nomenclature; perhaps the intellectual influence from a geographer like Bill Courtney from 1982-84 was what made it more of an issue. Perhaps it was my increased maturity and growing curiosity of the globe, or simply a combination of all of the above. Having been to the relatively exotic locales of Nassau, Bahamas, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the American Virgin Islands the previous year, I had an idea of the Caribbean and tropical environs. This part of Mexico offered a completely new contrast to the previous mental images of Speedy Gonzalez in his desert settings, or Clint Eastwood riding across the rocky dryness with parched lips, or my real life impression of the rather subdued Rio Grande with its withered green and rather puny appearance.

I don’t remember seeing any rivers, famous or otherwise, in that trip to the Yucatan peninsula. We came in by a rather small boat, especially considering that the waves of the sea off Cozumel Island were enough to make my friend Patrick Lumbley quite nauseous. Our ship let us disembark in this fashion, possibly to let those who didn’t qualify (we were a minority on the cruise that went to Tulum-Xelha) an easier route while the rest of the passengers were on their way to Cozumel or Cancun, I’m not sure which.

My dad had done his best so that we could see the Mayan ruins: he had made good with the head steward by offering him a “nice” bottle of wine gift wrapped and left at his cabin for our family’s best consideration to be among the chosen lucky ones allowed to go on the excursion. So we found ourselves traveling by this rather small 30-50 foot long ferry to the shores of the Yucatan. I believe we could see the island of Cozumel as we went. Possibly it was the day before, when we could see the island of Cuba in the distance to the south and east, its large mountains apparently snowcapped. The snow part I may be making up from my dreams or some other visage, but this is how I remember seeing Cuba for the first and only time since.

These were the days of the Reagan Cold War eighties and my awareness of Communism was largely heightened. Later that day I took particular note of the East German/Soviet cruise ship docked in the port at Cozumel-or perhaps it was Cancun? I distinctly remember seeing some of these East German passengers stroll through the Mexican streets and wonder what they thought of us, their American capitalist counterparts.

Mr. Courtney from Binford Middle High School was an excellent source of knowledge when it came to Communism and the Soviet Union, predictions of the future by George Orwell, the state of the world as it was back then plus the history that had led up to it. His emphasis and dedication to current affairs around the world led me to grapple with much of the world’s situation when it came to politics and international struggle.

So there we were in the streets of this southern Mexican state on the Caribbean with these otherworlders, not knowing if they wished to defect and hide from their would be captors or rather felt animosity towards us as their natural enemies. The Hammer and Sickle, painted upon the main smoke stack of their ship, perhaps in retrospect was more of a brand of oppression upon them then a signal of a true ideal. To me Communism approached a real concept of humanity but was forever very far from it, as far as Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula was from the Russian steppes or the Siberian gulags.

A Slice in time---Spring Quarter 2003

As I write this, I become self aware of my tastes in reading, writing, and perspectives from the mass media. At this point, I will make a short list of what is going on with my brain and studies. I am finishing my Masters in Latin American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, living in a first story apartment, two bedrooms, two baths, across a parking lot from the University Village Day Care Facility right next to the 405 freeway, south of the 10 Interstate Interchange. We are, in effect, between Santa Monica and Culver City, West Los Angeles: just south of Westwood and the LDS temple.

I have been reading the Los Angeles Times daily newspaper since January or so. My two-year subscription of the Economist ran out some time in February of this year. I did a fairly good job of keeping up with that and enjoyed the challenge and the pleasure of that commitment, started as a high school teacher (fall of 2000) and finished my penultimate quarter of this current degree. I have also read the daily paper pretty well, especially during the Iraqi conflict. I am reading a few books at present, a series of lectures and interviews with Michel Foucault from 1977-84, a book call the White Nile, about the first European explorers of the origins of the Nile. I just (this week) purchased a 47-cent used copy of a book about Pakistan. I have enjoyed the first three chapters so far. There is no particular readings assigned to my Geography 248 class by Allen Scott, but I bought his Regional Economies book for some $20.00, and have done some research for the paper on Hollywood and Latin America, the last paper I need in order to graduate in June (one month from now). I attend a 3^rd quarter Arabic class six hours a week, avoiding much of the homework but staying more or less abreast in class. I also attend an Urban Planning class with Steve Cummins every Monday, also avoiding most of the readings, but learning most of the gist as to how he deals with issues of “Youth”. I attend various lectures of many sorts week to week, and also catch a New Testament class at the Institute every Tuesday and hang out at Bruin Walk almost every Friday. I play basketball every Monday and Thursday at the Sawtelle building around the corner, and attend the UCLA Ward with my family while serving as Co-Chair of the Activities Committee.

I have enjoyed the NBA playoffs lately as I do every spring, rooting against the Lakers as always, and watch some baseball, too, especially highlights. I watch a good share of news as always, especially during the War (three weeks from March to mid April). I watch some comedy and film on television, but currently watch a steady diet of dramas as follows: Sundays-Alias at 9:00, Mondays-Everwood at 9:00 (with 7^th Heaven preceding if not conflicting with a game), Tuesdays-Judging Amy at 10:00, Thursdays- Friends at 8:00, and Fridays- Ed at 9:00 (although the new episodes have finished for the season, thus maybe I’ll wait for September for this one). I enjoy the acting, characterization, and dialogue of these shows, plus the normally consistent plot developments of the stories. I suppose I do watch a lot, but they seem to contain as much depth as many movies. I would like to hope so any way.

Giving you this much of a personal profile, it is an indication of my insights and lifestyle, my particular perspectives as for this spring and last official term as a “beginning” graduate student. Recently I have concluded that I will try the “labor” market for a year and if things are not satisfactory as such, I will attempt a Doctorate in Geography somewhere. I won’t discuss my job prospects fully as I see them here, because this does not fit into the question of me as a composite. Sufficient to say, perhaps abroad? Enough of the present and future for now. Back to Mexico, “By way of foot”.

The State of Quintana Roo

I don’t specifically remember the docking or disembarking on the soil or cement of Quintana Roo that December day of 1983. It had to have been relatively early in the week, Tuesday or Wednesday. I think we left Miami on a Sunday, no? I can’t remember how early it was that morning, but I do remember daylight as we lurched to and fro between the offshore swells. This motion did not cause myself or any of my immediate family any problem of seasickness, but it did to my friend Pat. Perhaps he didn’t have sea legs from any previous experiences. Fortunately for me, I had been on a whale-watching voyage around Cape Cod when I was younger and my intense bout of the nausea seemed to have toughened me up for later in life much as I was unaffected then. Pat wanted to cover his eyes with his white towel but my Dad recommended he look at the distant horizon across the vast water. We sat surrounded in benches with other seemingly neophyte tourists.

Poor Pat had a mixed day, but overall it was positive. We started by boarding a large and modern bus, a half hour or so from the Mayan ruins of Tulum. These are the same ruins featured in the movie Against All Odds starring, I believe, Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward. This film came out about the same time as our trip, I’m not sure if before or after. Phil Collins and Miami Vice were both hot back then. The Caribbean was an exotic locale. The site is very impressive and was my first visit to a semi-ancient site. Perhaps Pat had been to the ancient burial mounds in Evansville, Indiana, because he had relatives in nearby Booneville. I wanted to go last summer (2002) but we were unable.

Tulum is located very scenically on the beach, with certain pyramids overlooking the sand and the ocean to the east. There are many buildings and certain parts were being excavated or renovated while we toured around. Our native Mexican guide gave us a display of how the Mayans anciently would perform their human sacrifice ritual by having my 16 year-old sister Monique lie on the top altar of the highest pyramid while he pretended to bring a knife down on her heart. We climbed at least that main building overlooking the beach, plus a few lower walls in the middle of the city somewhere.

We saw a building also in the center that had a trio of gods, interesting to us of our faith. The stone etching of the central god at the top of the wall, high above us was the largest. I believe the figure was in the form of a snake with a large headdress and symbols of power. To its right was a smaller version of the same. To the left of the center god was a figure that seemed nebulous or cloud-like; that we might conjecture is a spirit. What kind of concept of a divine trinity did the natives have back in 300-700 A.D.? Years later, my mother and stepfather had a native LDS tour guide discuss with them how the Book of Mormon might be a connection to this city or the ancient Americas. For me as a youth, I think this place had a resonating effect on my personal faith and imagination for years to come. It certainly honed my interest towards ancient sites.

Soldiers and guns and “army/military stuff” always fascinated me. I noticed some Mexican soldiers with M-16 rifles at our first landing area on the Yucatan. I also remember seeing a few billboards of advertisements. I seem to confuse the mental and linguistic images of the signs I saw with some I had seen in the National Geographic Magazine. One was a Coke message saying “Disfruta Coca Cola (enjoy)”. Later inside Tulum, which thankfully was devoid of most signs of commercialism, I saw a whole camouflaged platoon of gun toting Mexican soldiers walking by. I seem to recall one of them had a radio backpack and antennae just as the platoons in the movies. Did they wield machetes?

I wandered by myself in Tulum exploring a less traveled part of the complex before leaving altogether; poking inside of various cement or stone built structures or passageways. I believe this was the north end of the city facing the encroaching tropical jungle, perhaps a few hundred meters from the beach. I peered through a long square tunnel that led from within the walls of the city to a fair distance outside to the plants and underbrush without. I let my imagination run wild; pondering a crawl out to the lush foliage I could view from my hands and knees. I thought better when realizing my lone state and the fact that a very non-imaginary jaguar could be waiting for an unsuspecting adventurer such as me on the other side. I hurriedly went back to find my group and in that slightly paranoid state observed the armed jungle platoon.

Yes, Mexico was cool!

From Tulum we took the bus down to the Xelha lagoon. Perhaps this was an hour or so south down the coast? The bus certainly went fast down the Yucatan highway, barely missing the traffic in the other lane. The driver must have been Mexican but I can recall no details of him. We looked at poor little Mexican children by the side of the roads, little huts or vending stands situated every so often. I remember not many tall trees close to the road, and I am not sure there were hills of any significance. The lagoon was a special tourist spot relatively far from Cancun, I think. Looking at a national map of Mexico now, Tulum is south of Cancun about 50 miles. Perhaps Xelha was up northward towards the city of Cancun, I am not sure⁵. I cannot recall for sure if we left on our cruise ship via Cancun’s port or Cozumel on the island across the mainland. Wherever we had left land from that day back to our ship, it was at a dusk of nostalgia and contemplation for the world around us, a cold war segue of international possibilities.

The lagoon provided near ideal conditions for snorkeling: it was fifty percent fresh water and fifty percent salt. Pat and I did a little bit of swimming together but we split up more of the time. I saw many fish, (possibly a few small sharks) and many manta rays. The visibility was amazing, and the underwater caverns seemed tempting yet foreboding. Pat’s mixed day of pleasure and pain continued when later he apparently left his new bathing suit at Xelha. He was distraught along the lines of, “My Dad is going to kill me for losing my new suit!” I think he would rather have faced more seasickness than to have lost that swimsuit and dread his father’s anticipated wrath. My senior year of high school (1988-9) I would learn how hard his father was as a chemistry teacher. Maybe Purdue basketball fans, like Pat’s dad as I believe was an alumnus, have to have a mean edge to survive.

After having seen Nassau, Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, and San Juan, Puerto Rico the year before, this part of Mexico introduced a new mystery to the vast Caribbean region. The Yucatan peninsula holds a rich part of native history that no other island of this sea can approach. Even South America as a continent doesn’t hold the spectacular sites like those of Mesoamerica, beyond the Incan lands of Peru and the Andes. I had officially begun a journey to the ancient peoples of the western hemisphere. This has been a constant source of fascination to me ever since.

One more note on the Mayans and Mexicans I saw on this trip. Grown men, working on site of the ruins or simply along the roadside, were incredibly small. I saw shirtless men who could not have been taller than five feet. They had large bellies of middle-aged men but measured no more in height than me in third, fourth, or fifth grade.

The world is mysterious and Mexico contains much of the enigma of the human species. I had read about Native Americans in North America for years: now part of the world, embodied in these small adults, had a visual connection in my own first person. Despite not actually walking there for a long period of time after 1983, I could now itinerantly travel there in my dreams, both sleeping and awake.

Past or future: Who Decides?

Dreams are always present whenever we make return trips or new voyages into the unknown worlds away from home. This much of Mexico had become a real part of my journeys prior to adulthood: the surreal visions of the third of my existence mostly at night had further become awakened, taking the long voyage to adulthood. Do people revert to a more youthful self in their sleep? Perhaps some become advanced in age as a fictitious soul within their own mind walks. Do we day dream into the future (and thus project ourselves older) more often while conscious and balance those dreams out by jumping back in age while unconscious? One thing is for certain, it is more possible to recreate past experiences in the brain than future ones. This only makes a lot of sense to those empirically gifted among us.

Is the future much murkier than the past, after all? Books, memories, photos, and stories (much like those of the Bible) are forever interpreting what has occurred. If dreams can be real, much as those with faith in the greater unknown choose to posit, then perhaps images of the future may not be much murkier than what has gone on and been recorded in years gone by. As prophecies go, maybe these future interpolations are not much further amiss than bold or even week interpretations of the past. Perhaps dreams are true after all, or survive at least as long as a rock if albeit ephemeral. Who knows?

Perhaps some part of Mexico, the Yucatan ruins, the Mayans or the machetes of the soldiers of Latin America etched themselves into the once and future me, or at least somewhere in my permanent subconscious.

1 According to the LDS triple combination published in 1985 from the BYU Geography Dept. p.298

1 Number of trips, nine in all.

2 As of April 2005, there have been two more trips added, including six new states.

3 We did end up going this year after New Year’s, so the trip total is nine as later reported (2003).

4 Recently at a Sunday school lesson at our UCLA Ward at Ohio Ave. in Westwood (around the end of April, 2003) I mentioned I was writing this book/memoir to Nathan Palmer, a finishing Doctoral Candidate in Physics. He served his mission back in the 1980s in Coahuila and northern Mexico. He was impressed that I was able to guess the states of his stay upon discussing his mission. I made the note to him then out loud that if for nothing else, this record would serve for my own posterity. I also will add that when I meet natives or former missionaries in Mexico, I usually discuss states and regional geography with them.

5 Further review of a better map in my daughter’s room confirms that Xel-ha is to the north of Tulum.