Real de Catorce III Ciudad de Las Fantasmas

     This morning we woke somewhat early and met Gerino, our guide in fron of the hotel.
Gerino was the the Roy Rogers look alike who was to take us to La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas. He was pleasant enough but soon it was evident that he didn't know a massive amount about the place,, just enough to fake it in front of two ingenues. At any rate he knew the way to the Ciudad de Las Fantasmas. We started climbing on Calle Constitucion slowly at first enjoying the views as if it were a promenade but soon the road got steep.The road is walled  for part of the way and occaisionally there were old doors that allowed the miners access to homes or to the mines themselves. 
This was one of the most memorable walks I have taken in Mexico. Something about the crispness of the edges of every image and the loftiness of it all. 



                        
                           Giant Joshua Tree towards City of the Ghosts


                       
                                  Towards The Ciudad de Las Fantasmas



                       
                                    Towards the City of Ghosts  


                                      
          One of the doors along the route to La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas that allowed miners to pass

     

 

                                     
                                       Company Store or Pay House (Casa de Raya

 

 

Roy Rogers on the old road posing. The view is towards Real de Catorce

                                                     Can you pick out the sheep?

 

Gerino in the maw of a mine in La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas

 

Building in La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas that housed a large steam plant.

 

La Ciudad que era.

 

Ciudad de Las Fantasmas

 

Ciudad de Las Fantasmas 

 

Nice Arch or what is left of it, looking towards Real de Catorce. 

 

Dynamite Shed

 

Remnants

 

More Remnants

 

Nopales are reclaiming the terrain

 

This is a ventilation shaft that is almost 1000 feet deep. Gerino stood over it on some rusty angle iron and dropped a stone. It was maybe 6 seconds before it hit bottom. I was half on the edge and more than half on the apron. This hole gave me the jibbies.

 

A couple of horse's asses enjoying the view.

 

This is a short mine shaft paralell to the ground. Light from the exit is visible.

 

The return.

Real de Catorce II About Town

     The afternoon of our arrival we took a tour about the town with Roy Rogers as our guide. It seems  Europeans come to Real de Catorce much more than North Americans. Germans, Swiss, French, Italian, and English are frequent visitors. They come for the spirit of the place,, and the "Willys Tours" into the desert. There are excursions down from the azure sky into the bajia way below in 70's era Willys Jeeps,, to partake of peyote.  
                                 

                                                                           Willys

  

Peyote or Peyotl

     How old is the Peyote cult? In Raramuri country in Chihuahua carvings in lava rock have been found indicating ceremonial use of peyote. Contextual discoveries, that is among other artifacts, in caves in Texas of actual specimens of peyote indicate that its use is at least 3000 years old. Spanish friars who first entered this region noted peyote use among the Chichimecas. The Huichols, the indigenous people who presently inhabit the region, that is San Luis Potosi to Nayarit, still use the drug liberally as a sacrament. Peyote fortifies them in their prolonged rituals. Peyote gives them the spritual and physical strength to withstand their pilgrimages to the pacific coast. However these days it is more common to make the pilgrimmage by bus. 

      I must speak of Wirikuta, a sacred Huichol site in San Luis Potosi because a part of Real de Catorce lies within Wirikuta. It is one of the most important sites of the indigenous people, The Wixarika or (Huichol). These native americans have preserved their spiritual identity practicing their cultural and religious tradition for thousands of years.They believe that in Wirikuta, their sacred land, creation originated and it is within this territory of more than 320,000 acres that the different huichol communities make pilgrimages. The Huichols recreate the journey made by their spiritual ancestors in their own version of The Garden Of Eden. In this vast consecrated desert called Wirikuta, Jicuri, or peyote provides a sacred window,, a hallowed "seeing".
         A modern Huichol shaman expressed it as follows: "One day all will be as you have seen it there, in Wirikuta. The First People will come back. The fields will be pure and crystalline, all this is not clear to me, but in five more years I will know it, through more revelations. The world will end, and the unity will be here again. But only for pure Huichol."

      Peyote images show up everywhere here, even, to my surprise, on the church gate. One sees images of the cactus in huichol masks, crosses, artwork. It seems inseparable from the local culture.

                                    
                                              Church gate adorned with peyote.

 

This fantastic huichol mural, made of colored threads by a local shaman, exalts peyote. The border is of peyote and the center of the eagles is peyote. See if you can pick out others. It describes a huichol creation myth.

      There are two directions in Real de Catorce,, up or down. With Gerino we went up first and then moved towards the pantheon and the site of the Capilla de Guadalupe dating from 1668 or so which overlooks the tombs in the graveyard and the Potosinian Desert or bajia 2000 meters below. It is a place of tranquility and perfect light.                          

   

  

Capilla de Guadalupe

                                     

From the Chapel of Guadalupe towards the desert.

 

 View to the desert below El Palenque in Real de Catorce. The desert plain far below is part of Wirikuta.

   

 La Caja de Caridad

       In La Capilla de Guadalupe we met the sextant and his wife. Nice couple, simple and close to the end of all of it all. They invited us into a room beside the altar to see La Caja de Caridad (Charity Box). This is a coffin for the poor. The deceased was placed in this coffin for the short trip from the church to the gravesite. The body was emptied into the grave and the Caja de Caridad saved for another muerto.

     The mountains about us were bald except for some low lying clumps of plants. Gerino told us that when the land was in the hands of the Huichol,, before the spanish conquest and the silver gush, the landscape was forested. The miners supposedly took it all for the kilns that smelted ore. It's difficult to imagine now that this was once woods. There is hardly any soil now just bare rock that looks silvery from a distance. Deserts are so fragile,,, really so are most places in Mexico with a monsoon climate. It takes longer in this type of climate with scarcity and abundance for a forest to achieve status. There are drastic consequences when old growth is abruptly removed. The trees which served as the "big brothers" for the the next generation leave the new growth open to severe conditions,, so much so that the babies die with the loss of humidity once held beneath the crowns of the larger older trees. In order to replace a forest in the desert it must take more than one lifetime. Santo Desierto, a lovely national forest  in Tenancingo is populated by large oaks and ocotes among many other species. There are prohibitions against cutting therefore the forest floor is humid most of the year so the next generation of trees lie in comfortable wait until a larger tree is struck by lightning or old age and falls leaving the sun to cajole them into vertical movement.  
     We passed La Plaza Del Toros, a large ring of stone used for bullfights, and the recently restored Palenque used for cockfights, which was unfortunately closed. We stopped at a bar to get out of the sun and try a local mezcal schmoozeing with the owner. Once Real was all about silver,, now it's all about tourism,,, which after all is cleaner,,, like an after-burner.           One can see immediately by looking at the stones that this place had a different geologic past,,, a proterozoic history molten and stirred by the massive ladle of Hephaestus. There are lajas of alazarin cimson, vitreous dark limestone, and stone that resembles wood with wavy grains. We visited a few sleepy tiendas to view the local wares. There were pyrites, crystals, crosses made of old Real de Catorce beams, and a few wood stoves,  then we continued on to our hotel. We promised to meet  Germino early the next morning out front of the hotel to climb on the old road to the Ciudad de Las Fantasmas.  After we left him we walked a bit to the nearby Parroquia de La Purisima Concepcion. 

 

Parroquia de la Purisima Concepcion

Exvoto up close.

 

Wall of exvotos, that are petitions or thanks to the Virgin for performing a miracle. They are painted on metal plaques by folkartists.

 

A bloody Jesus.

 

Jesus in a glass box with reflections.

                      

 

Well preserved tienda near the hotel

  

         Couple of kids near La Parroquia.  

 

                              Kids and stone.                                  

 

 Restaurant in our hotel El Meson de Abundancia

                                                             

"Real de Minas de la Limpia Concepción de los Álamos de Catorce" First Installment

     Real de Catorce is a former mining town west of Matehuala high above the Potosino Desert,,, and is reached by traveling 24 kilometers of a teeth chattering road paved with rounded river stones. Real de Catorce is 2700 meters above sea level,, so it snows in the winter. In spring and summer it is cooler than the vast sweltering Potisinian Desert or bajia below. 
      Mining towns usually have great architecture,,, what all those extra "Reales" are capable of purchasing for the mine owners. These towns also flaunt unusual rocks and of course mountainsides whose hard skin have more punctures than a salt shaker. I am just fascinated with holes although I am not a spelunker. 
     Native Americans called "Negritos" were the first to inhabit the region. They were members of a greater tribe called the Guachichiles who lived a nomadic life in what is now San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, and Jalisco. The following is an account by Friar Juan Bautista de Mollinedo when arrived in the region and met the Negritos.

"In the mountains opposite the Xaumave inhabit the Indians called Chichimecas negrillos, ferocious individuals living totally naked and eat each other, and this lack of food and that the food provided by nature are insufficient."

I wonder about the reliability of this account. There are great hardships living in the desert, this is true, but prejudice tends to skew the truth. At any rate the the Guachichil language is only a faint memory,, and the Negrito tribe is extinct possibly eliminated by disease brought by the good friar. The indigenous people who inhabit the zone today are called Huicholes. They consider the mountains around Real de Catorce sacred, especially one called El Quemado, where they believe the Sun was born. I will get to them later as they are a key factor in understanding the area today. 

 Guachichil Warrior from Wiki, Naked and ready to eat anyone who gets in his way.

     Why the name Real de Catorce? It is essentially a mystery. Reales were coins,, but Catorce (14)? There are rumors perpetuated by the locals about 14 bandits who robbed the silver from time to time yet the real reason for Real de 14 is cloaked in mystery.  However, once the Spanish found out there was silver in these hills three quarters of the way through the 18th century the place grew as fast as my fingernails. Mines with names like La Bolsa de Dios (The Purse of God), Purísima, Valenciana, La Concepción, Santa Eduwigis, Altagracia, Ánimas,  El Refugio, Señor de los Milagros,San Francisco de Pipí, San José de los Villanos, Mina de los Pobres. This is just a fraction of the mines in the region. In fact the now bare mountains gleam argent as if the entire range was made of silver. The silver veins ran thick in the mostly blackish limestone rock. Silver was so rich that miners were able to extract 900 kilos of silver for a ton of ore in some of the mines. Usually it's the other way around. It was so rich that soon the town had its own mint turning out "reales" like tortillas. As fast and furious that the town grew it was subject over the years to the vagaries of fluctuating silver prices and a revolution. Now most buildings are occupied by decendents and some foreigners, but some still stand sentinel, their roofs long since fallen in but with a stone work I would kill for.
      The town is tucked into some folds between a convergence of mountains called Sierra del Astillero. For more than 100 years it was only accessible by a limestone paved road that climbed to the west over the Astillero. One is still able to walk this very scenic road or hire a guide and a horse. It served as the only entrance until the 2300 meter long Ogarrio Tunel was bored in 1901. In the late 19th century mining machines were brought from Pennsylvania by The Maza Family to help process the ore from La Concepcion Mine atop the mountain that once served as the exit from Real de Catorce. The ruins of this operation, called La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas, now stand silent yet screaming. 

     
                             
                                                     Old Road Towards Ciudad de las Fantasmas  


                                
                                      Ogarrio Tunel seen from Real De Catorce

 

Ciudad de Las Fantasmas towards Real de Catorce

 

Ciudad de Las Fantasmas, bones of the mining operation

 

Real de Catorce seen from the old road

     At its height from the late 19th century until the uncertain times just before the Mexican Revolution began Real de Catorce was hopping, like most mining towns,, a combination of wild abandon, sweat,  and impending doom. Real sported a theatre, various newspapers, cockfights, and bullfights. The stores sold imported european goods. When mining towns are booming they invite a full range of characters. However small, they resemble large modern cities,,, at least for a while, but are subject to wild economic swings and Real de Catorce was no different. It was abandoned just before the Mexican Revolution until its re-emergence in the 1970's when its scenery, architecture, indigenous and mining history, peyote and spirituality gave it a second chance.                             


                         
                                                       Casa de Monedas or Mint now a museum  

 

Real de Catorce from La Ciudad de las Fantasmas  

 

Street in Real de Catorce

                           Beginning of La Ciudad de Las Fantasmas from the old road, looking at
                                     what I believe was the Pay House or Company Store.

     
    We waited on the "outside" side of the tunnel for our turn. It's only one lane. This building below was only a propped up facade but with a wonderful ofrenda on the inside.

 

Outside the tunnel on the "outside side"

     After we traversed the tunnel there was a large parking lot where as usual there were people selling things. We asked this fellow Roberto, the fastest of the group to leap some parking barriers and get to our truck, where there was a good hotel. He was exceptionally friendly. Roberto rattled off a list of hotels and their appointments but the hotel that stood out in his pitch was called Meson de la Abundancia. I highly recommend this place.It was a former pay house or company store during the heyday of Real. It exalts thick stone walls, a second floor, a subterranian level, an excellent restaurant,, and good service. 
      After we "freshened",,, the nice way of saying,, we visited the head, we exited the hotel into the sun drenched street and immediately met Gerino, a guide, who was hanging out like an expectant spider. He resembled la young Roy Rogers but without the chinese eyes, wore a red shirt with two of those smile pockets bordered in white and ending in little arrows,a texan hat, and straight leg jeans. We hired him as our guide.
             

   
     There are guides that collect in bunches on many corners during the week when there are less tourists.

  

Since it was close to noon we made arrangements to meet with Gerino in bit to see the town.