Real de Catorce El Quemado y Los Huicholes

     When we descended from the City of Ghosts, a little tired, we wandered a bit aimlessly in the center of town, with eyes that had had time to digest,, just gawking at Real de Catorce, this city of stones, trying to imagine the intense activity of a working mine,, the mechanical hissing tattoo of a giant steam engine, the smoke, the men calling, shovels, and carts with wheels of steel rolling on steel rails,, attempting to hear the roar amid its present silence. The effort placed in extraction of minerals is impressive in all its absurdity,, to a Huichol most likely a grand folly. This remote place in the desert, that became a mining town, in which the spanish founders needed to climb up and over where mountain arms embrace like a family to enter the tight high valley to extract metal that decorated virgins, women, spoons, and filled pockets with the dull jingle of silver was a little nuts,, yet they pieced together something of organized beauty here where once existed only the random artistry of nature. This microscopic cosmos was regulated and arranged in facades that suited human commerce, diversion, and habitation. The landscape was chiseled and adapted to forge coins and baubles,,, and I imagine all this without too much reflection. In the abscence of reflection humans become like ants,, purposeful, singleminded, spiritless organisms whose intelligence is derived by a 1,000,000 little brains acting in unision,,, or under perhaps coercion. With too much reflection humans are plagued by dilemmas and never seem to get anything done,, yet dilemmas are a good reality check, but not necessarily a good thing for a dreamer of riches,,, like Fred C. Dobbs who said in the movie Treasure Of The Sierra Madre when confronted with the idea of striking it rich, "This is the country where the nuggets of gold are just crying out for you to take them out of the ground and make 'em shine in coins on the fingers and necks of swell dames." I wonder how that sounds in spanish. "Este es el país en el que las pepitas de oro son simplemente pidiendo a gritos que los tome de la tierra y hacer que ellos brillen en monedas en los dedos de manos y cuellos de damas bien bonitas."  In the end, however it all the impressive effort goes the route of Ozymandius,, or the frozen slag of cold space. 
     I couldn't help but ask myself. Did the Mayans, Aztecs, Spanish, English, Cambodians leave a lasting impression because the population acted under orders to accomplish 100,000 heavy tasks? Little by little those populations erected something on a grand scale puts people. then and now,  in awe. Stand back workers, archaeologists, and tourists,, and admire the coup,,,, yet awe is not reflection. I stand in awe of all these bold achievements but reflection scratches the surface of awe to discover the motivation,,, which can rattle the foundations,,,, or at the same time eulogize the effort.
      We stopped in front of the Casa de Monedas (Mint)  which seems to be a museum devoted to the Huichols. In a a bit of a daze we climbed the steps and ambled through the museum looking at fotos from the 40's and 50's of huichol pilgrimages not really absorbing yet what they portrayed. A gentleman approached us, Antonio R. Ocaña, Jefe de Museo. He told us he was an anthropologist,,, for the love of it. He explained the large huichol creation story made of colored thread and made sense of our wonder. 

                              
                                          Huichol Mural in La Casa de Monedas



My first impression,,, and this is no lie, was that Huichols were nomadic bead stringers,, maybe distant relatives of the Seminoles in Florida. Prejudice always kicks in before understanding. They are so much more. The Huichols who have inhabited this area for who knows, more than 1000 years, are a peyote cult. They are people who enjoy walking and simple ceremony but they have lived their existence without the spark that impulsed the Teotihuanecos, for example, towards grandiose architectural expression. Every so often the Huichols return,, walking,, to the sea,,, where they believe they originated,, like migratory birds who go back to where they began. Peyote is their divine confirmation, and their gasoline. I compared them to the Aztecs, who built the "American Venice", and the Spanish  who drained it.  One cannot create a "monumental age" without dominating nature. The severe organization of certain cultures permitted them to leave monuments behind. The Huichols, on the other hand were more indulgent in the ebb and flow of nature. They melded into the pattern of its fabric. I am not sure if peyote, and how it leads one to blend spiritually with the natural world is responsible for huichol mentality. They have always been more interested in the spirit than posterity. Was this due to mescaline,,, or prior disposition,,, or perhaps "their time" was just not right? Good question.
    At about 5:00 PM we encountered Roberto, "El Canica" who found us a hotel two days before. He is a non-stop talker. Just minutes after seeing him we spotted a Huichol Lady with her son walking up and towards us. We asked if we could take some fotos. She responded, "If you pay me." This is not offensive to me.They have rent to pay and we want to take home a prize. My wife gave her some money and I began to snap away. Her colorful beaded neclace was stunning about her brown neck. The boy, who never spoke, held on to his mother's  skirt. She told us she was returning from "El Quemado" , a sacred mountain, to tend to her husband who was charged by the tribe to care for the huichol sanctuary there. He would be engaged in this watch for three years,, like a mayordomo in an ejido. Everyone in the tribe gets a turn. 

       
                                                                   Huichol Lady


               
                                               Huichol Lady and her son.

 My wife became animated. Let's go she said ready to walk again, 9 kilometers up and 9 down. I was still a bit tired from the five kilometers up to La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas,,,, but why not, I thought, push the envelope. We dug up Roberto, "El Canico" to be our guide and were off,,, down at first following a deep arroyo, then soon climbing on an old rugged rocky washed out road. It turned out to be the highlight of the trip. Up and up we climbed to a rolling plateau, called "El Llano" (the flat), a plain covered in pulverized red stone,, perhaps an ancient lava field. This was an entirely new vista,, at first a moonscape that gave way to green mountains and deep valleys. All the while El Quemado loomed above us like a clear channel. 

                           
                        Looking back at Real de Catorce from the route towards El Quemado

                        
                                           "El Canico" on the flat called El Llano

    As the path became steeper I became winded stopping often. El Quemado resembles a sleeping elephant with erratic Izotes its coarse hair and seemed out of reach for me with my lungs half filled with dust. All the while wether he was way ahead or close "El Canica" kept talking. I had dry mouth just listening to him. He talked of peyote, the desert, Real de Catorce, his forsaken Huichol love, and his time in Tennessee. His rant, however, kept me going. 

                            
                                     Some peyote Roberto had in his backpack

 
                                                        Towards El Quemado

     Eventually we met the base, or folded legs of the elephant,  and began a steeper climb. The day was waning, the wind was strong and the air cool. We passed a cylindrical building, the huichol welcome center nestled in a saddle. It was closed. This brief respite gave way to another sharp incline. After much effort on my part we reached a pocket near the top called the "Caracol", a stone spiral, which the Huichol believe is where the Sun was born. The view below into the desert and surrounding deeply folded mountains is breathtaking. We entered "The Caracol", perhaps 25 feet in diameter, following "El Canica" until we reached the center. Roberto told us to place our hands out palms up and move them up and down lifting the energy towards our faces. In the very center of the spiral there was a small bunch of herbs and a lens used to set fires,, like a site of offering but like everything Huichol small and subtle. Further up the path next to a heavily bearded Izote was the "Chapel". This is a small stone building in which are housed offerings that represent players in huichol culture. Pancho the husband of the Huichol Lady we met back in Real de Catorce was nowhere to be found. Roberto kept calling to him but without any response.The chapel door is like the bars of a cell. Inside we could see a collection of things. A ray of light illuminated antlers, candles, thread weavings, and baskets.



                                   
                The Caracol or place where the Sun was born. This is not a manipulated foto.

                               

Us in The Caracol

                                   
                                                      The Caracol from The Chapel


                                
                                               El Canica near El Caracol

                                           
                                              The "Chapel" looking up from The Caracol

                                                
                                                       Offerings inside The Chapel

                                  
                                                           Huichol rock painting. 

                                   
          Carved stone on the eaves of The Chapel. Corn, peyote, a trident (?), and a deer's head.

                      
                                       Up top looking down on the Potosinian Desert

     The wind was brisk sometimes the gusts played my ears like drums. The sun was low enough to place us in the shade now however a slice of mango colored light knifed through a side of our mountain illuminating part of the valley below. The slice of light emboldened the greens and yellows of the wild flowers, cactus and red earth. The very point of the slice touched the path on which we ascended to this place. The red dusty hummocks of earth rolled into shadows. We began to descend roughly. By the time we reached the last incline on the rough rocky road it was dark. "El Canico" told us to grab some stones for the dogs, but there were only some horses and burros like ghosts in the night.