the high desert of San Luis Potosí. We would march rapidly in single file, carrying nothing but bows, sacred tobacco, holy water and ritual implements, sustained on the journey by the virtue engendered by our own austerities.
Huichols regard peyote as deer that have transformed themselves by magic into the sacred cactus, so the peyote would not be simply collected, but ‘hunted’ with bows and arrows, and it would be prayed and sung to before being eaten. Afterwards, renewed by the visions we had imbibed, our faces painted with symbols of victory, we would set out again on the long march back to the Sierra Madre, in the knowledge that whatever our state of weakness and emaciation when we arrived, we would surely be rewarded by a long and good life.
It was an adventure of great attraction to both of us, and Ramon agreed that if we found it impossible to make our arrangements at this short notice, the invitation could be renewed next year.
In the meantime there were aspects of the day’s happenings that remained obscure, and as tactfully as I could, I asked Ramon if he could explain more clearly how, and at what point, he had decided that a dead body was hidden in the village, and, also, whether the travesía he had discovered on the trail from Santa Clara that morning had been in some way connected with this tragedy?
But here the blunt linguistic instrument of Castilian failed us both. The Huichols speak a version of Aztec, rich in nuance and undercurrents of allusion, that are untranslatable into the basic Spanish of a foreigner, and my categorical questions called for muted and conditional answers that could not be given. On one thing, however, he was definite. I had been unable to accept the story of a body being hidden by casual murderers in a village house. Did he really believe that the Huichol in San Andres had been killed by bandits?
‘No,’ he said. ‘The man was killed because he wanted to be a shaman.’
We went on, thankful to arrive within sight of Santa Clara and its guardian dogs. The first owls were flying, a coyote snapped over the horizon, and a blue, mountain dusk had already fallen over the mission buildings when we arrived. The children had built their camp fires on the slopes, and when they saw us they came out to meet us, full of laughter and carrying their guitars.
1970
MEXICAN MOSAIC
‘W HERE DO YOU CARRY your money?’ asked the small middle-aged man at the back of the rapido bus from Mexicali, on the U.S. frontier, to Mazatlán.
He went on to suggest that I should keep a reasonable float of a few hundred pesos wherever I usually did and put the rest in my sock. His qualifications to advise on such precautionary measures were solidly based, for he was a long-distance bus driver by profession, travelling home as a passenger after a journey up to the border two days before, when his bus had been held up by bandits.
‘But aren’t they going to look in your shoes?’
‘They’re in too much of a hurry,’ the bus driver said, ‘and their nerves are shot to pieces. They grab whatever they can and they get out.’
Like so many law-abiding people dazzled by the charisma of violence, he seemed grateful for the experience and happy to find saving grace in the highwaymen who had carried rocks on to the lonely road and pointed a submachine-gun at his windscreen.
‘They’re not too bad,’ he said. ‘Say buenos dias to them, and they say buenos dias to you.’ One of the passengers had mentioned that he was out of work and they’d given his money back, as well as being politeness itself to the women passengers.
There was always an adventure waiting round the corner on the long-distance buses, the driver said. It was a point of honour to get into a station on time and this sometimes meant pushing the cruising speed up to eighty miles an hour. On the last trip southwards he had hit a cow at full throttle and splashed it all over the bus, which had to be taken out of service and hosed
Huichols regard peyote as deer that have transformed themselves by magic into the sacred cactus, so the peyote would not be simply collected, but ‘hunted’ with bows and arrows, and it would be prayed and sung to before being eaten. Afterwards, renewed by the visions we had imbibed, our faces painted with symbols of victory, we would set out again on the long march back to the Sierra Madre, in the knowledge that whatever our state of weakness and emaciation when we arrived, we would surely be rewarded by a long and good life.
It was an adventure of great attraction to both of us, and Ramon agreed that if we found it impossible to make our arrangements at this short notice, the invitation could be renewed next year.
In the meantime there were aspects of the day’s happenings that remained obscure, and as tactfully as I could, I asked Ramon if he could explain more clearly how, and at what point, he had decided that a dead body was hidden in the village, and, also, whether the travesía he had discovered on the trail from Santa Clara that morning had been in some way connected with this tragedy?
But here the blunt linguistic instrument of Castilian failed us both. The Huichols speak a version of Aztec, rich in nuance and undercurrents of allusion, that are untranslatable into the basic Spanish of a foreigner, and my categorical questions called for muted and conditional answers that could not be given. On one thing, however, he was definite. I had been unable to accept the story of a body being hidden by casual murderers in a village house. Did he really believe that the Huichol in San Andres had been killed by bandits?
‘No,’ he said. ‘The man was killed because he wanted to be a shaman.’
We went on, thankful to arrive within sight of Santa Clara and its guardian dogs. The first owls were flying, a coyote snapped over the horizon, and a blue, mountain dusk had already fallen over the mission buildings when we arrived. The children had built their camp fires on the slopes, and when they saw us they came out to meet us, full of laughter and carrying their guitars.
1970
MEXICAN MOSAIC
‘W HERE DO YOU CARRY your money?’ asked the small middle-aged man at the back of the rapido bus from Mexicali, on the U.S. frontier, to Mazatlán.
He went on to suggest that I should keep a reasonable float of a few hundred pesos wherever I usually did and put the rest in my sock. His qualifications to advise on such precautionary measures were solidly based, for he was a long-distance bus driver by profession, travelling home as a passenger after a journey up to the border two days before, when his bus had been held up by bandits.
‘But aren’t they going to look in your shoes?’
‘They’re in too much of a hurry,’ the bus driver said, ‘and their nerves are shot to pieces. They grab whatever they can and they get out.’
Like so many law-abiding people dazzled by the charisma of violence, he seemed grateful for the experience and happy to find saving grace in the highwaymen who had carried rocks on to the lonely road and pointed a submachine-gun at his windscreen.
‘They’re not too bad,’ he said. ‘Say buenos dias to them, and they say buenos dias to you.’ One of the passengers had mentioned that he was out of work and they’d given his money back, as well as being politeness itself to the women passengers.
There was always an adventure waiting round the corner on the long-distance buses, the driver said. It was a point of honour to get into a station on time and this sometimes meant pushing the cruising speed up to eighty miles an hour. On the last trip southwards he had hit a cow at full throttle and splashed it all over the bus, which had to be taken out of service and hosed
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