Chantecler

School years

2011-04-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Loyola Graduate

In November 1951, Jorge, the tenth of the Murillos was born. He is currently in vogue because he looks like me but with blue eyes and that is suppose to make more handsome. In any case, my parents closed production with a golden brooch. I’m two years older than the second, Mercedes, and seventeen than Jorge.

I studied junior year in the group that edited the school paper and with the debaters and public oratorical contestants. I got the sixth place overall and finally, by my senior year; I was with the elite group. In this classroom you could not find an athlete, a politician or generally any activists. We were nerds, studious and unbearable. When I graduated, in June 1952, I finished in first place.

You will not believe it but this is the first time that this is told and almost no one has seen my high school transcript. That was always my father’s policy: to be discreet, not to provoke envies and keep a low profile. It is until now that I break his rules. In this select group we took physics with workshop, chemistry with lab, spatial geometry besides sociology, English and contemporary themes. The easiest groups had mechanical shop, singing, physical education and such.

I was examined twice to determine my I.Q. In the California test the range of IQ that is considered average is 100 more or less 10%. For those who have fewer than 90 there should be a certain difficult in learning and for those over 110 there should be a certain ease. There have been important scientists and very many successful businessmen with barely 100. During my first year of high school, with a year and a half in the States, I got an IQ of 101 and beginning senior year with four years if residency I came out with 119. Good marks no doubt but not out of the ordinary. The IQ average of my nerd class was 123 so that I was somewhat responsible for lowering it. Since grammar school even during my studies at college, I was lucky to have two or three exceptional students in my classroom. It is not humiliating…it just is so.

Coming back and forth from L. A. I had some memorable experiences. During a trip I saw the Tijuana zebras (donkeys with stripes painted) a major silliness if there are some. In several occasions I flew from Culiacan to Tijuana with a stopover in Guaymas. Unbelievable.

In a trip, when I was 17, I met a young man my age who invited me to Del Mar horse racetrack, in the U.S.A. near Tijuana. He lost his and part of my money very quickly and would not allow me to stop playing with entreaties and begging me that he had inside information on the next race. He moaned when I told him I had to stop playing. When I had practically only enough money to continue my trip to L.A. I decided to stop. I had to punch him in the chest in order to leave the racetrack. I regretted the big ox I had been. I was humiliated by the experience since I thought I was an experienced adult. How sad to see first hand the compulsion to gamble. We are exposing our people, precisely to that vice, in authorizing casinos in Mexico.

I miss President Cardenas who closed the Agua Caliente gambling facilities in Tijuana. It was also a brothel and a drug provider to San Diego and L.A. How sad to forget our history and the poverty and drug addiction problems we have already had with gambling saloons and more so when the owners have the effrontery to name them “Caliente”.

I was invited to spend, during the winter, weekends in the mountains near L.A. With families of fellow students I visited Lake Arrowhead, Little and Big Bear. In rustic wood log cabins, like the ones we had in Altata that were nothing like the palatial beach homes we have built lately. I learned to sleigh, skate and ski. Besides the novelty, for a Culiacan resident, to learn winter culture there was the attraction of participating in family dinners having dishes everyone shared. Fondue, greasy gravies with smashed potatoes, very fatty chunks of meat boiled or roasted or fat fish with its skin and jellies near their spine, boiled eggs and other culinary offenses that help to weather the cold.

A great experience was joining the debating team. Actual subject matter was studied and we traveled to have meets against other schools from Southern California. My English became better and in the last year in the States, five all together, I managed to join the second ranked debating team of my school. The first team was composed of two excellent speakers that competed successfully in regional and national oratorical contests. Battaglia who ascended in politics up to First Secretary of Governor Reagan, and O’Donnell who is now a prestigious gynecologist in L.A. O’Donnell was U.S. champion in a contest speaking of their independence heroes.

During those years, American soldiers engaged in the Korean War. In the summer of 1950, President Truman sent troops to Korea. MacArthur was its commander. In April 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from command and ordered him to return to the U.S. It became known that the general disagreed with Truman’s policy in conducting the war. Due to China’s intervention, MacArthur wanted to use all U.S. power to defeat the Chinese, including atom bombs. He didn’t understand the limited answer concept of new warfare. The American people received, both in San Francisco and in New York, MacArthur as a hero but his intention of becoming a presidential candidate was a failure. Korean War became a stalemate and ended with the Treaty of Panmunjom in 1953. Korea was the first war that the U.S. didn’t win, then came Vietnam that was the first it lost and they haven’t learned their lesson because they are about to lose the Iraqi and the Afghanistan wars.

When I graduated from Loyola I foretold that I would become a civil engineer. I entered the Technological Institute of Monterrey in Mexico, Tech, to make true my prediction.

School years

2011-04-05T08:24:00.001-07:00

Arrival at Loyola

I studied freshman and sophomore years of high school from September of 1948 to June of 1950. In 49, my sister Margarita was born. Intelligent, a good observer and curious, she was the joy of my parents and aunt Carmen with her reports of what was happening in our block.

When I arrived to my bedroom at Loyola, an assigned room with four beds, two boys were torturing, throwing his books to the ground, a smaller dark haired boy. As I walked in I ordered them to stop. The bullies, quite bigger than I, heeded my commands. They looked at me and didn’t understand why a boy as small as the one they were hurting was making dispositions. It must have been my body language or the wild smell I probably had from the orphanage, there must have been something but the fact is that they stopped.

From that day forward Walter Bell, such was the victim’s name, would be my friend. Having decided to learn about American literature Walter had a card from the L.A. Public Library. I still have the one he made me acquire. Walter withdrew three books a week which he read in that period. Eventually he suffered several nervous crisis and was expelled from Loyola when he tried to commit suicide. He would be readmitted and finally graduated with us. I had to protect Walter from the harassment he suffered from our fellow students.

Loyola had an educational system that would be impossible in these democratic times. From the entrance exam and from the grades you got during the first year you were assigned to a group of similar abilities thus giving, those who could, a heavier academic load. I was then assigned to the lighter load classroom for the first year. I became friends with the best sports players and school politicians that is those who asked you to vote for them to be student body officers.

When I started sophomore year, I was not placed in the select group but was assigned an intermediate classroom even though I had ranked twelft in freshmen year. This group had a few sports players and the actors of our theater. I obtained the eight rank and yet still was not assigned to the nerd’s class.

For patriotic reasons, not having the duty of saluting daily the American flag, I did not join ROTC. Consequently I did not learn to take apart the Colt 45 pistol, the Garand 30 or the B.A.R. I did not learn to read maps nor march in formation. I was not trained to shoot real bullets in our rifle range and did not then participate in regional and national marksman contests. I now consider my patriotism as exaggerated and ask myself: How exactly act Mexican students in military academies or at West Point?

The Jesuits managed to stop me from getting into fights. When I arrived for the second year I was roomed with the light weight boxing champion of the school. John Roth was a senior and a good athlete. Besides boxing he played halfback and ran the 400 and the 800 yard races. He was surely of Jewish ascendancy and probably on a scholarship. In any case, because of my room mate, older students would no longer menace me and the ones my age or size would not dare confront me because Roth was told to make me balance my time between my books and exercise. Since then I have done sit-ups, abs, shadow boxing and push ups besides running, now walking and haven’t got a defensive disposition but feel quite confident.

In 1948, in Culiacan, we had the first planting irrigating land with water from our new Sanalona dam. The building of the dam and the clearing of the shrubbery of the land and the first crops made our first prosperous young men with money to spare. Dreams of wealth begin and conversations turn to whiskey and cognac, to our local Tambora, serenades to girls, travels, women and spending. I heard them many times: The attitudes that we still hear and that come from that brief time. The same bragging, showing off and despise for those who don’t know what money is for. Many lost their way.

In 1949, the U.S.A. lost China. It had never being his but that’s the way they expressed themselves to indicate that Mao Tze Tung, and the communists, had triumphed over Chiang Kai Check, and the nationalists. Both sides claimed to be the successors of the republic founded by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen after the fall of the Manchu dynasty.

As China Hands are known the officials of the U.S.A. Foreign Service who had informed their government that the nationalists were incompetent and corrupt and that eventually the communists would win. They advised, furthermore, as a tactical and secure policy to begin negotiations with Mao and to be confident that the Chinese were not lackeys of Stalin or the Russians. Curiously the commander of the land forces in Asia during WWII, General Stillwell informed and advised the same. When he returned to the U.S.A. after the war he was ordered to keep silent about Chinese affairs. His documents are known because his widow, angry at the treatment her husband had received, made them public. It became common knowledge that Stillwell referred to Chiang as the “Peanut” and since he called himself the generalissimo, Stilwell nicknamed Chiang’s wife the “madamissima” that in American English has the connotation of meaning the brothel manager.

The diplomatic career of the China Hands was ruined and they were persecuted as communist sympathizers by McCarthyism. Some of these were the sons of missionaries, had been born in China, had gone to school there and were fellow pupils of many of the communist leaders. Their sin was to inform honestly what was happening in China. It is common that superiors become angry when they receive news they do not want to hear.

School years

2011-03-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

Eight grade. Grammar school in the USA.

In the summer of 1947, in Guadalajara, my beautiful sister Teresa is born. Tall and looking a bit like my mother we’ve become friends lately.

Since our mailed applications to enter high schools had failed, my father decides to travel to Los Angeles to visit schools personally. First we try St. Catherine’s, a small militarized catholic junior high school. They had recently had students from Culiacan and they did not want another one. We then visit St. John’s, another small militarized catholic junior high where a first cousin had been a student and consequently I’m refused.

To celebrate the opening of temples for worship, Culiacan had an Eucharistic Congress in 1943. American clergy had sent Father McGuken as its representative and he was now the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. My father had officially and politely attended him during his visit. He recommends St. John Bosco that depended from the dioceses. The school was practically a correctional so the Principal pitied me and refused to admit me. Thank God. I finally enter a nuns’ recently established grammar school where I would board. I was enrolled in eight grade of the American grammar school. I don‘t know if the school was an orphanage or a disciplinary school but luckily sixth, seven and eight grades received classes together. A great windfall for me since I did not speak English but had the advantage of having done first year of secondary schools in Mexico, that is I had already studied most of the general knowledge courses.

In less time that I’m taking to tell you about this school year, I’m fighting a blond guy that looked like Richard Windmark, the movie actor of that age. We are quickly separated. A short time later I‘m in a brawl with a boy much bigger than I. Several days later I’m alone in the gym surrounded by most of the tough guys of the school. The head of the pack, a tall and strong boy which we called or was named Tuna or Tona tells me: We don’t want any trouble here. Will you fight me?– No, I said. I have a bad temper but do not chew embers. Ok, will you fight Windmark?– Yes, I answered and we immediately engage in the scrap. My nose is bleeding and I have a black eye so Tuna stops the fight. We have order here– he declares– I run this show and my second in command is Windmark. You’ll be third and the rest obey.– I don’t know how much of these proceedings were known by the nuns but I sometimes think they had run a jail in Ireland before coming to the States.

Banshee, the spirit of woman in Gaelic, is the equivalent of Mexico’s Llorona. The little people, that are the leprechauns or gnomes, are the same size and have the same naughtiness, sometimes cruel, of Sinaloan “Fascicos” about to disappear from our folklore. Remember the jingle: “That Fascico that is in the cheese chest should put in his legs that are showing”. They also have the size and character of Aluxes who are also playful but sometimes helpers of Xtabay, the woman in white, related to the moon that enchants and devours solitary men in the woods of Yucatan. Or maybe the size of the Nibelungs that, in German mythology, are the dwarfs that treasure and guard the gold that lies in the Rhine River.

I receive all the charm of the Irish, a poor, enamoured, dreaming, pugnacious and indolent people. I mix it with Spanish, half breed Mexican and Indian traditions inherited from infancy. (To mention that Ireland is growing fast takes the romanticism out of the comment but gives hope that Mexico will wake up someday) Apparitions, charms, talismans, treasures buried by bandits and never found: the Nahual that is the devil as a black dog; demons and totemic animals like owls that strike the roofs of houses in full moon nights. In brief seven months: singing of the girl left behind, of longing for the green hills, of the beau that promised to return, of the town’s band, of the pub and regional beers and of the light morning mist; I learn English. The songs are very similar to Sinaloan songs. “At the strike of dawn the mist is light” says one of our favorites.

The sisters gather all the schools students to announce that even though recently arrived in the States, two of their students will apply to enter Loyola, the most academically prestigious high school of Southern California. A guy named Murphy and I have to stand and receive applause. We are told to represent our school worthily.

Days later the good sisters do not speak to Murphy and me. We had flunked the entrance exam. When we meet them at corridors they turn their head. What a disappointment, what a shame.

The sisters tell my father that I had come out 250 of the 500 that took the exam and that Loyola admitted only the first 200. My rank seems good enough for father since I took the test with scarce seven months in the States. We return to see bishop McGuken and father asks me:

– Isn’t so my son that you are not a dullard?

– Nope, pop.– I answer.

– As you can see, your Excellence, the boys tries. Isn’t true, my son, that you want to study?

– Yep, pop– I answer.

– As you can see, your Excellence, the boy has a will.

The bishop laughs at the charade and he then talks to me knowing that a year before I didn’t speak English. He then phones the nuns and after many entreaties from father he agrees to recommend me to Loyola. That is the way I entered it.

It wasn’t easy for McGuken to recommend me to a Jesuit school. Bishops administer and shepherd their dioceses and authorize the establishment of religious orders in them. But once in many orders have their own authorities and no longer depend from episcopal authority. McGuken was actually asking for a favor from the Jesuits and he didn’t know how they would collect that commitment. Don Arturo could be that persuasive.

I spent the summer in Guadalajara, as always, but since I studied away I’m beginning to miss my friends of Culiacan, Furthermore I’m an adolescent of full 14 years.

School years

2011-03-24T17:23:00.001-07:00

First grade. Secondary school.

I turned twelve in the summer of 1946. The family is in Guadalajara for the holidays and I am registered at the Institute of Sciences, a Jesuit secondary and preparatory school. I also entered the Kostka boarding home, an independent facility which the Institute recommended. No less than twenty students will live in an old and beautiful house of many bedrooms in the corner Vallarta and Marsella.

The change from grammar school at the Cervantes in Culiacan to secondary in the Institute at Guadalajara is not so big inasmuch as school duties but it is enormous for other reasons. You have lo leave the home and foods you are used to; you leave the warmth of a loving mother, you will be far away from friends and cease to be the older brother and begin to live with boys bigger and older than you; a fact to which you have to adapt since they can make life difficult or beat you if that is the case.

A short time after being a boarder, I watched, in October of 1946, the biggest and most impressive sky spectacle since the appearance of comet Halley in 1910.

The best known star rain or meteor shower is the crossing of the orbit of Earth with the remnants of the comet Temple that burst and kept in a large elliptical orbit around the Sun. The meteors are called Leonidas. The last shower was in November 1999. We saw it in Altata and it was fun but not spectacular. The shower of 1946 was a celestial accident and was not the Leonidas but the Dragonidas because the spatial debris seems to come out of Draco, the Dragon constellation. Earth crosses this spatial junk every seven years. In the Guadalajara of that year, we had clear skies, no moon and still no smog. The house was a bit away from downtown and we had very little reflection from the few lights of the city. We climbed to the roof of the house placed thick blankets and lied supine watching the firmament. The shower lasted for at least an hour maybe for two and it was a constant flashing of dozens of vanishing stars. My friend and double compadre Dr. Peraza saw the shower in Culiacan.

The comet Kohoutec, in 1974, was seen as a large Venus; the Star of Bethlehem, the conjunction of several planets is unique but not astonishing; Comet Halley, in 1986 was poorly seen in Culiacan and won’t return until 76 years have passed; And even though I had the opportunity of watching the comet Hale-Bopp, in March of 1997, to the northeast and the size of a full moon when at zenith and even though its tail was beautiful, this phenomenon appears fixed in the sky instead of crossing it fast as falling stars do. There has been nothing in my lifetime that has compared with the meteor shower of 1946.

In this year, transitional because I would go to the U.S. of A. as soon as admitted, I remember my taste for soccer games and for the popular snacks of Guadalajara.

I played soccer in the lowest ranked division, third, of the Institute with a team named Necaxa. I look funny in the photo of the team, kneeling with my socks fallen over my ankles in the tradition of the barrio. Too bad said barrio is in Buenos Aires.

Atlas was the team of that epoch. Someone decided that Mexican players did not have the size, the speed and the stamina to play speedily and with long shots to goal. Atlas brought an Argentine coach who taught us to faint, dribble, and keep the ball and not to lend it to the opposing team. It was the era in which we used to say: “We played as never before and lost as always”. It’s good that has changed for now our national selection fights any team, winning or losing but truly competing.

I can not let pass a comment of the Guadalajara snacks. Sherbets made from fresh fruits like strawberry or guanabana; the tostadas of pigs feet and drowned tortas at the Sanctuary; chinchayote, cured pulque, truly you could approach the pulque provider at the corner of Corona market and buy a large glass of pulque even though you were only twelve. I also remember the thick milk cream, the salty French bread, the tender corn ears, the juices from crushed sugar cane and the cactus pears of different colors. And of course Chapala’s candies: the Jamaica sugared hard candies and the burnt milk bonbons.

A common pastime was skating with roller skates in the divider of Lafayette Boulevard, now called Chapultepec. Tightening the claws of the skates against the winged soles of my shoes I would make pirouettes hoping to be seen by the young girl of my preference. Were she to smile or say hello I would of course turn red as a flaming tomato.

Mexicans exuded optimism. International credit flowed to build dams, roads, schools and to electrify the country. Aleman, the president, was a smiling, gallant, and true coastal and port man and a tireless promoter of modern economy. His enrichment and that of his rapacious helpers was tolerated because Mexico was entering the contemporary world leaving behind subsistence economy, the love of land and the scale of values of the farmer class. Richness would no longer come from savings but from promotion. The aspirations of politicians ceased to be to have good horse or a fine breeding bull in good lands, they now wished for a flat in Acapulco and a building in downtown Mexico City. Today it has gotten worse.

The school yearbook, Memories (Recuerdos), from 1946 to 1947, says that in first grade group B, Arturo Murillo and Juan Vergara, who no doubt must be someone, ran even in progress in the Spanish language.

School Years

2011-03-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Sixth grade. Grammar School.

The so called “Nuremberg Trials” were held from November 1945 to October 1946. The allies put on trial captured German political, economic and military leaders. There were sentences of from ten to twenty years of imprisonment and also many death sentences. The Asian Holocaust, applying that term to war crimes committed by the Japanese, shadows the Jewish Holocaust but the Tokyo trials are rarely mentioned. The Japanese were accused and sentenced for civilian massacres, as the one in Nanking, as well as experimenting with bacteriological warfare on occupied nations and using chemical weapons; submitting non combatants to forced labor and prostituting women to service its soldiers; of looting, torturing prisoners and other horrors that are difficult to conceive and forget.

Independently that the allies also committed unpardonable abuses and that the delivery of atomic bombs is still morally reprehensible, the horror of the crimes is such that, even though there was a war on, we must think them as crimes of the human gender in order to forget who the perpetrators were.

It is particularly difficult to judge the proceedings of the military governor of occupied Japan, General Douglas MacArthur. He protected Emperor Hirohito and his family and did not permit that they be tried. This contributed to reestablish dignity of the Japanese and helped to cure the trauma of defeat but on the other hand many of the royal family were guilty of war crimes. Something different occurred to the military officers that fought for Japan. The ones that had not directly fought MacArthur were made civil administrators of occupied Japan and named governors and mayors of the cities but the ones that did fight against him were sentenced as war criminals.

The Constitution and the establishment of present day Japan is principally the work of MacArthur. He gave women the vote, eliminated castes and watched that the Japan government worked well before ending U.S. intervention.

The sixth grade teacher was Professor Zazueta Russell. He had substituted teacher Guerra at midterm. Zazueta was an amiable man who taught through great empathy with his students. I finished grammar school having had the privilege of one good teacher after the other.

Our school festival was held at the city’s social club, that is the building that id now the Culture Casino. Finishing grammar school I wanted to receive the only award that we respected: the diploma of progress. The school gave out medals and ribbons for attendance to classes; for punctuality; hygiene, for arriving clean and bathed; honor for being respectful; and for anything else you can imagine even for paying tuition on time. When we were leaving the club, after the ceremony, a fellow student griped saying: “You received the progress diploma”– How can you still complain?– I said– if you are the most decorated student of our generation. What more do you want?– He became very quiet and said: “I would exchange all these tin chips and ribbons for that diploma you won”.

That's the way it was. Someone, whose name I don’t remember, was first place of our class. Another, whose name I forget, was second. I came out third and with the last claim to the diploma.

The country had prospered during the war. 1946 was an election year and Mexicans would vote for president of the republic. The Candidates were Padilla, who was Foreign Relations minister and Aleman, who was Secretary of State. Both candidates had negotiated the settlement of U.S. claims for the oil expropriation that President Cardenas had made. Nevertheless, Aleman, judging consequences for the coming election, allowed Padilla to take all the merit. This had distanced Padilla from the strong left wing of the official party that chose Aleman. Padilla entered as an independent and was well accepted but no enough to beat the official party. I tell you this because I went to the meeting where Padilla spoke during his candidacy. The country furthermore became more civilized. Padilla was not murdered and he was not required to leave the country.

During 1945, the only grandparents I met passed away. My maternal grandmother in March and my paternal grandfather in December. When you are young you do not think of death. It comes and goes and you do not understand it but with years it begins to poke you in the ribs to remind you that it's waiting.

During the summer I would become twelve and my parents were delivering on what to do with me. The pondering of what secondary school to send me begins. I’m not sure if because there weren’t any good secondary schools at home or because of my bad temperament I didn’t get along with my brothers and sisters and needed as much attention as everyone else together.

My father decides to send me to the U.S.A. and makes applications to several schools. They refuse me because grammar school in the States lasts for eight years and my father had written that I had finished six. I was sent to the Science Institute in Guadalajara, a prestigious preparatory school ran by Jesuits.

School years

2011-03-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Fifth grade. Grammar school.

During the school year that began in September of 1944 and ended in June of 1945, I went through the fifth year of grammar school. Several of my few readers have asked me why was I, at such an early age, knowledgeable about World War II. I believe the following paragraphs will answer this.

When the war began, September of 1939, I was only five years old and seven when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. I knew nothing about the War. When I was nine I joined the street gang that gathered every evening in the corner of Rosales and Morelos, a block around the corner of my home on Angel Flores Street. The older boys of this group were from two to five years older than I and were very conscious of the battles in Europe and the Pacific. We heard the radio and read newspapers that offered news, official news that is, but there were other ways of getting information. In my neighborhood “La Opinion” was printed. This paper published news given by Radio Berlin which had programs in Spanish. In short wave radios anyone could hear these programs. In those times, movie shows always presented newsreels that offered filmed information of the War. These were 15 day old news but no one was in so much of a hurry then. We also collected small chewing gum wrappers that depicted photos of war actions. With these effigies we filled an album that progressed with the War even to photographing the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the first atom bomb.

To begin with I was born in the hospital that was owned by the German doctor, as Dr. Wiereger was called. The hospital was located in the building that now houses the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Dr. Wiereger left Culiacan in 1936 to join his country’s army. More than that, on Rosales street, near my grandfather’s home, lived the Timmermanns that owned Atlas Tannery, neighbors in El Barrio, the small town east of Culiacan, of Murillo Tannery that was run by my father. Timmerman had two sons and a daughter in the German forces. On the same block lived Herr Max Hach whose family, years later, have been so close to the Murillo that we consider them a part of ours. Also, not far away lived the Schiller and the Haberman families that had sons about my age and that have been my friends since. Herren Radke and Gerzabeck were teachers of our University of Sinaloa now called UAS. On Colón Street lived Herr Pauwells father of Gilda, Leo and Inga, loved friends since then. We use to tell Leo and Gustavo Haberman that they were Nazis and instead of getting angry they rejoiced. My pediatrician was the elder Dr. Okamura, my dentist was Dr. Koyama, the pop bottler in Culiacan was Ninomiya, the best ice-cream was made by Monobe and the tin sheet works that the tannery needed were made by Arturo Shimizu. After the War, from Sonora would come to establish as merchants and industrials: misters Kuroda, Ohara and Inukai and the Satos were about to receive their professional degrees as doctors and engineers as was Gironobo Baba as an accountant. Men and women of good behavior, useful, hard working, respected and appreciated in Culiacan. Furthermore the only Americans that lived here had German surnames: Heisser and Grenfeld. During those years, still bursting with patriotism we recited with the poet Lopez Velarde: “Fatherland, your mutilated territory is still so large that trains go through you like fantasy toys”

In fifth grade the arithmetic rule of three got complicated, from directly to inversely proportional and combining several factors son that you had to handle the feared fractions. Our teacher, professor Marquez, was tall, thin, violent, mistreated his students and was impatient and desperate. He used to yell at us saying: “Pay attention, you hopeless piece of dung: How can you expect to learn? The piece of chalk and the blackboard eraser were frequent missiles hurled at us. All this, of course, impossible in these more permissive times in which Marquez would not have lasted a minute as a teacher. Even so, it’s hard for me to speak against the first teacher who taught me complex arithmetic concepts.

In Catholic schools and in the simulated lay ones, like the one I was in, we sang patriotic songs. The Song of our Regiment, the hymn to Joan of Arc, etc. whereas in public schools they sang the workers hymn or the communist anthem called the International.

Considering that the soldiers that fought at the war fronts, no matter what side, were workers or their sons and that no bourgeois were there: Communism was against the war. Nevertheless, in order to boost Russian pride Stalin abandons this principle and promotes the nationalist feeling of Russians. He declares that the war is the Great Patriotic War to save Mother Russia. Consequently in our public schools they abandoned internationalism and began to sing the Mexican bird sellers song.

Having thrown the Japanese from most of the Pacific islands, Americans had to displace them out of Japan’s Interior Sea islands. In January the Japanese are expelled from the Philippines and then out of Japanese islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. On the 7 and 8 of May, 1945, Germany surrenders. Its cities devastated, its people starving and twenty million lives lost. For what?

We were to travel by train from Culiacan to Guadalajara. I remember the nervousness previous to the trip. I hear my mother complaining that the expected child is restless. It’s not yet the expected date for the birth so father and our aunt Carmen decide that it’s the anxiety for the trip. Father stayed in Culiacan. At dusk the train departs and a few miles south, near La Cruz, on the Pullman wagon named Aristotle, on the 26 of July, my brother Fernando Heriberto is born. “Feri” since then because of his name and because he was born on a train. (Ferrocarril in Spanish) A midwife assists the birth that comes without hitches. The train continues south and mother gets down in Mazatlan while we keep going in the care of Aunt Carmen.

Summer holidays in Guadalajara gave us the opportunity of seeing professional soccer. Older cousins that lived there took cousin Enrique and me to the games. Very good soccer players, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, still played. I saw

Pepe Valtonrrá with team Atlante, Luís Regueiro with the Asturias and many others. Some were in the latter years of their careers but were still excellent. A separate mention merits having seen Isidro Langara play. Langara was three times champion scorer in the Spanish league. In America, he played four years with San Lorenzo de Almagro, in Argentina, and was champion scorer in 1942. Later on, in Mexico, playing for the España, he was twice champion scorer.

The United States decides to force the unconditional surrender of Japan. It drops the first atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the beginning of August 1945, in Guadalajara, before noon, the bells from all the churches began tolling announcing the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII. I had just turned eleven.

School years

2011-03-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Fourth grade. Grammar school

I was in fourth grade from September 1943 to June 1944. I don’t know why fourth is considered easy while third and fifth are thought of as difficult, but that is so. The rule of three becomes proportionally inverse and somewhat difficult; grammar becomes tedious, geography interesting and national history a delight.

The war continues and defeats of the Axis forces pile up nevertheless cruel battles ensue. Germans are retreating in the Russian front. The B17 American bombers, called flying fortresses, daily cross the skies destroying German cities. Americans land in Sicily, in 1943, and by January of 1944 they land close to Rome itself and at several beaches in the South of the Italian boot. The Japanese are folding back in the Pacific. War itself, if it ever had it, becomes senseless. The Axis is defeated but begins to put hope on developing miraculous weapons. Time becomes a technological race to see who will first invent weapons of mass destruction. The Germans bomb London with airplanes and with the V1 and V2 rockets and then they build the first turbine propelled planes, the jets. Speculation begins over who will first make an atom bomb. In June 1944, the Allies land in Normandy and advance on Germany while the Russians are leveling all resistance in their drive to Berlin.

Bombing blackouts and rehearsals became one more of our ridiculous pranks. Over the roof of what is now the Sinaloa Museum of Art a siren would wail at the first hours of darkness. What size was Culiacan in that year that everyone heard it and proceeded to turn off all home lights so that the planes that were to bomb us would not see us and continue on their way. Of course we knew that the blackouts were silly inasmuch that the range of the age’s airplanes was way short, so then: Why the civic rehearsals? Why then the blackouts and with block inspectors watching that you comply?

For the first time in my life I’m exposed to a shameful event. Our teacher is expelled accused of fondling students. The topic is evaded at homes even though we all knew what had happened. I played the drum in our military band, the company of older preadolescent boys instructed us with the disinformation you can imagine. That was the way it was. Parents didn’t touch the subject. Among us the affair was full of mysterious and sinister sins. We were from 9 to 10 years old.

It was about this time that I changed barrios. Not that we had moved but that my friends from Flores Street didn’t confront our rivals from the University plaza neighborhood who would invade our territory looking for fights. I had to face them with very bad results. When I changed barrio I began to meet with the guys in the corner of Rosales and Morelos. A block and a half away from my home. Amado Blancarte, Humberto Lizárraga, Oscar Armienta and Antonio Amezquita were older than I; Alvaro and my cousin Enrique were about the same age; and Eduardo Valenzuela and Jaime Díaz were a year younger. We were convinced fans of the Axis and ridiculed Allied propaganda and went to the movies to laugh at the impossible feats of America soldiers as they acted them out.

The other recurrent conversation was the violence in Sinaloa. On the 21 February 1944, during Carnival in Mazatlan, Cornel Loaiza, the governor is murdered. Rodolfo Valdez, alias the Gypsy, is arrested, tried and sentenced. Then different scenarios of the crime are proposed. That Valdez was outside talking with someone when the shots were heard, that another hit man was the one responsible, that Loaiza was shot due to the land conflicts in the south of the state, that conflicts between cardenistas, as Loaiza, and camachistas, the new president followers were responsible. Etc, etc.

At any chance, boxing gloves appear and we stopped throwing whirlwind punches but instead we learn to lead with your left and cross with your right, to dance on the toes looking for your enemy’s opening to then plant your feet to punch with force. Fights are no longer a question of anger and fury but of agility, technique and slyness.

The food everyone ate was simple. For dinner it wasn’t strange to have a small portion of fried beans with a slice of fresh cheese on them and a kitchen spoon serving of pigweed leaves. Next evening the dinner would be the same beans with a portion of squash or purslane. And next day beans again with fried dried beef or one tamale. I assure you that we ate comparatively well at home. If you don’t like to remember or contradict me it’s only because you have a lousy memory or many quirks in your head.

We played with wooden tops, cup and ball toys, yoyos and crystal marbles. The more common ones were oven cooked clay marbles. The most rustic and very cheap you can imagine. A frequent game was to make two ice pick holes in a flattened coke cap, to pass a string through one hole and then the other, to tie the string and to make the chip twirl pulling on the string. You can guess how much there was to do in the poor Culiacan that we had before the Sanalona dam guaranteed irrigation for the lands in the valley. Another game was to make a hook on the end of a wire and with it to push the inner ring of a bicycle wheel and run after it.

When walking the sidewalks, on any given Sunday, from all homes you could hear from radios the sinister music of a pipe organ and a cavernous voice saying: “No one knew and no one knows of the mysterious case of the poisoned lily”, the music would go louder and after a crazy laugh the clinch: “The crazy monk knows”.

School years

2011-03-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Third grade. Grammar school.

Even though Mexico had declared war on the Axis powers, many Mexicans continued to support that alliance, especially it sympathized with Germany. In the sidewalk across from our home the newspaper “La Opinion”, owned and published by Don Amado Zazueta Villa, was printed. He refused to believe Allied propaganda and while national newspapers and the radio repeated official news bulletins, La opinion offered news from Radio Berlin. The government scolds him for his attitude and he insists that it should respect freedom of speech and of the press. The government controls the ink and paper supplies and begins to deny them to Zazueta. He manages to smuggle supplies from friends in the business to continue appearing as an independent daily. The government threatens him, boycotts him, pressures businessmen not to advertise with him and finally the paper closes. My dear friends Maria Teresa, Amado and José Ernesto, as well as the rest of their family go through this prolonged process.

The government decides to arrest and intern in concentration camps foreigners of German, Italian and Japanese nationalities. You can imagine the bribes and corruption that was fostered. There are many local stories in this respect.

War begins to get tough for the Axis. In October Rommel is defeated in El Alamein and it signals the end of the Africa Corps and the departure of Germans from Africa. By December, in the Russian front, the siege on Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) continues but the city can not be taken; the advance on Moscow is stopped and the German army suffers a serious defeat in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). They are a long way from being vanquished and they still occupy France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece nevertheless the Allies sign a treaty in Casablanca committing them not to accept but an unconditional surrender of Germany. There would not be negotiations looking for peace.

School becomes difficult. Not only must we multiply and divide, as in second grade, but we must reason and apply the rule of three.

In the Pacific, the Japanese Zeroes continue to be as good as, no longer better, than American fighters, who keep improving until their Hellcat is tested and sent to battle. By 1943 the Hellcat is better than the meatballs, as the Japanese fighters were called because of the round red sun painted on their sides. The fighter planes named Corsairs would follow and the marvel of propeller planes, the Mustang, that wasn’t even sent to the Pacific but instead was destined to escort bombers over Germany. Without modern carriers, already sunk in Midway, with enemy factories producing thousands of planes and ships and tons of armaments, Japan was beaten but not yet knew it. They occupied very many islands in the Pacific, from Japan to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and they still had many ships of war, carriers, old but adapted, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. Nevertheless they began to be displaced from the islands further away from Japan. They had to leave the Marshalls, the Marianas, the Gilbert and the Carolinas.

The Japanese war machine and the determination of its troops still made Japan a true bellic power. It was sure that it would eventually lose but it had to be defeated. Japan continued to win some important battles. In August the Japanese sink 4 U.S. cruisers and a destroyer, in September a carrier, in October another carrier and in November another one. Isolated triumphs and they hurt the Americans even though they replaced equipment and personnel promptly while Japan suffered to build new weapons and when it lost experienced pilots it had to train the replacements in simulated wooden planes without fuel so that they came to battle without sufficient flying hours. By December they had to leave Guadalcanal and Japan’s empire begins to contract rapidly.

The sensational novelty in our neighborhood, Angel Flores between Morelos and Guerra, was that we were friends with the family of Pedro Infante, the pop singer and movie idol. Pedro had filmed as supporting actor two movies called: “The reason for his guilt” and “The Party of the Flowers” and as main actor in “Jesusita in Chihuahua” and “Mexicans to the call of War”. From these two last, I remember the painted canvases advertizing them. Dona Rosario Infante, wife of Don Guillermo Lopez Castro the photographer that lived in our block, would pompously announce: “Pedro my brother has done this or that and he will visit soon so my friends will meet him and have our picture taken.

Even though the films mentioned had played in Culiacan, the first one I saw was the “Machine gun” because Pedro’s nephew, Fausto, a little younger than I, told us that Pedro himself had recommended it and that we would have fun seeing it. Years later Pedro did come to visit flying his own plane, the promised picture taken accompanying the barrio’s ladies and he even gave Fausto’s friends a ride over Culiacan in his plane.

A virtue of Pedro is rarely mentioned even though the tons of ink used to tell his life. His charm, empathy, and generosity are always mentioned as well as that he never forsook his old friends. I’m better impressed that being the brightest star of Mexican filmdom, as told by his nephew Guillermo, Pedro always took diction and acting lessons. It says a lot of a person that has already triumphed to keep learning about music, theater and pronunciation. (Pedro had an incorrigible Sinaloa accent).

During that summer my sister Silvina was born. Petite, smiling and cheerful she keeps all her charms and is disarmingly optimistic.

School years

2011-03-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Second grade. Grammar school.

When we finished first grade the nuns prepared several boys for first communion. The group ceremony was held, in June 1941, at the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart, half a block away from my home. The party that followed which I shared with Carlos Hernandez, a first cousin, was in the newly roofed living room of our house. I remember, though it was summer, the hot cocoa, the sugared pastry and small butter cookies that Carlos’s mother, aunt Silvina, also my godmother, contributed.

The family spent the summer of 1941 in Guadalajara. Don Arturo and Dona Mercedes already had five children. Arturo, Mercedes, Miguel Angel, Elena and born that February: Ricardo. They would have five more.

After the holidays I entered second grade at the recently founded Cervantes School. Don Manuel Clouthier, the richest man in town, and my father, don Arturo, and a few others contributed to establish the first private nondenominational grammar school for boys. Don Miguel Salvador Perez, a teacher from Guadalajara, agreed to come to Culiacan to start the school which he would own.

The second grade teacher was Professor Mendoza. First man that I had as a teacher since before him I had had only misses. He was serious, respected and a very good teacher.

My fellow students were Manuel Clouthier, Maquío; Enrique Murillo, Quiqui; Jacobo Farjí, Ricardo Meza, that made a career working for the national mail; Angel Zuñiga, Rogelio Tamayo, our painter Alvaro Blancarte and the others that appear in the lovely class picture published several times in the local paper.

Manuel Avila Camacho is president of Mexico. His policy of reconciliation begins and religious persecution ends. Temples open for worship and confirmations begin in the cathedral. The harassment of private schools ends. Our governor, Loaiza, without changing his beliefs does change his attitude and displaying a hidden charm gives Sinaloa the peace it needs to begin working with confidence in the future.

The dominant conversation of boys was about World War II that was developing in Europe, Asia, the north of Africa and the Pacific. We also talked about the war in our streets between landowners, the Thirty of Mazatlan that pitted an armed group called the “del Monte” against agrarian reform followers; and the drug lords violence in “settling accounts” had already began. Leyzaola, chief of the State Police, kills Tirado, an aspiring opposition politician and then he is tortured and killed in the hills; the deaths of Army mayor Zaragoza in the bar of our local social club and of Torito Andrade, a well known gunman; also occupy our spare time.

WWII, for the time being, is a success for the Axis forces: Germany, Italy and Japan. The Germans surround Leningrad, advance towards Moscow, roll over the British army which is driven to Dunkirk from which they miraculously escape to England; they defeat the French going around their Maginot line of defense and Rommel takes Tobruk menacing the Suez Canal. The Japanese own Manchuria and have invaded and occupied the coast of China, Burma, Thailand and take the fortress of Singapore threatening India. They have the Philippines and several other archipelagos. On December 7, 1941 they bomb Pearl Harbor and provoke the entrance of the U.S. into WWII. The Axis doesn’t care because they feel invincible. German army and its blitzkrieg, the combined attacks of tanks backed by infantry and with dive bombers, the feared Stukas, become an efficient grinder of men. Japanese fighter planes are the best in the world, the famed Zeroes. The Japanese navy is modern and disciplined. Its land forces conquer and conquer again.

To threaten Australia, in May, 1942, the Japanese navy tries to land soldiers in the New Guinea islands. The U.S. Navy faces them in the Coral Sea and suffers terrible losses. A sunken plane carrier and another one barely afloat; cruisers and destroyers sunk and hundreds of planes downed but the Japanese have to turn back. Coral Sea is the first battle in which ships do not sight each other or have a cannonade battle. Instead, their airplanes bombed and machine gunned ships and sunk them with torpedoes. One month later, in the battle of Midway, in June 1942, the U.S. navy with the loss of one carrier and some airplanes sinks the four best airplane carriers of Japan with all their crews and airplanes plus a heavy cruiser. They had defeated better Japanese planes and ships. After Midway, the American factories produced fighter planes, a model every six months, that came our better armed, more shielded, faster, with a higher ceiling and more range. Japanese industry could only make small modifications to their basic Zero planes and did not have enough fuel to train its pilots. From Midway onwards, everyone knew that Japan was defeated, that is that from June of 1942 the result of the war in the pacific was fatally determined.

The boys, of that long gone age, knew who commanded German, Russian, English and American army groups; who were the Japanese pilots and the names of the airplane carriers that participated in the Pacific battles as well the name of the German ships of war and their fate. War was the main topic of conversation and to know the participants of the battles was a game to us the same as knowing today who is the good looking middle fielder English soccer player that played for Real Madrid and who the ugly Brazilian that played for Barza and now does for Milan. We followed the advances and retreats of troops that were displayed on maps tacked to walls of homes and shops. We heard war news in Spanish in short wave radios, both from Allied propaganda as well as the news from Radio Berlin. Culiacan, Sinaloa and the whole of Mexico was pro German, all except my father and uncles. They had traveled throughout the U.S.A. and knew its size and its industrial potential. They had no doubts that once their factories remodeled for war production they would overwhelm their enemies. Pressures from my friends weren’t easy to handle.

On May 13, 1942, German submarines torpedoed the Mexican oil tanker Potrero del Llano, formerly named Lucifero, and on the 20^th of the same month they sunk the Faja de Oro, Genoano before. Both had been Italian tankers that had been sequestered when they couldn’t leave Mexican ports because of American subs and did not pay port dues. German subs would sink other four more tankers: the Tuxpan, Las Choapas, Oaxaca and Amatlan.

An incredulous country received this news. A version was born that the tankers had been sunk by the Americans to induce us to war. Up to date too many Mexicans believe this is so. They also think that Roosevelt, knowing of the imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, did not warn his own navy. These beliefs continue even though historians in hundreds of books contradict them. These beliefs are fodder to anti American feelings common in Mexico. To keep being pro Axis, when officially Mexico had declared war, would have serious consequences for some families as we will see later on.

In the first end of term school festival, I sang with other three boys the beautiful Italian song Santa Lucia Lontana. Since then and to date, no one in Culiacan has asked me to sing again. I have serious grievances against local people.

Sumer holidays come and we travel to Guadalajara to pass the summer.

School years

2011-03-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

First grade. Grammar school.

I was born on August 1, 1934. Without having been to preschool or kinder garden, since there weren’t any in those times in Culiacan, I entered grammar school in September 1940. I was six years old.

It was a small private school owned by Miss Lola Favela and only two blocks away from my home. I crossed Flores Street, where I lived, at mid block and had to walk east to the corner of Morelos Avenue, then turned left then left again, going west on Hidalgo Street, then cross to the entrance. In Culiacan we called streets those that ran parallel to out river and called avenues those perpendicular that carried runoff toward it. A month or two after Christmas the school had to close because the State of Sinaloa had a new law that required that all educators had to have a college teacher degree.

During my brief stay with Miss Favela, I was taught to read, write, add, subtract and recite multiplying tables. Maybe with the aid of a thin wood ruler applied to the upward bent palm of my hand or by pulling on my sideburn hair, whatever, the case is that Miss Favela taught and that you learned as fast as possible.

I was then enrolled at another small private school with the Moncada teachers. That school was near the corner of Buelna Street and Guerra Avenue so that I had to walk to the corner of my block and two blocks north to the entrance. I crossed only Rosales street. The school closed by Easter for the reasons explained. I was then inscribed at a nun’s school that is still the Colegio Sinaloa.

The main political figures of Sinaloa politics were the Three Cornels: Delgado, Loaiza and Leyva. They were fervent followers of General Cardenas, president of Mexico. Among their revolutionary fevers they had decided that all “confessional” schools should close. They wanted to eliminate their backward way of thinking. So they harassed them into closing. The government did not have enough schools to receive all students in public schools but that little hitch would be solved by time. Education in Sinaloa, from the Cornels onward, would be progressive, scientific, patriotic, socialist of course and free of darkness and superstitions. Their plans included closing the three nuns’ school in town: the Sinaloa, America and Montferrat schools. They had begun their forward looking experiment with the smaller home schools owned by teachers who had learned their trade by dedication and vocation. The Cristero war and religious persecution had ended in Mexico since 1929 but our local politicians were still going at it twelve years later in 1941.

The governor of Sinaloa was Delgado and in his home the Delgado women were devout Catholics. This practice was tolerated because religion was women’s business. Politicians did not go to mass but they baptized their children, made compadres and had church weddings for their daughters.

So then, we attended the nun’s school going into de backyard of a private home by a side door and we took classes under a shed in the patio. What kind of persecution it was? Imagine a long line of small children with backpacks with books entering and going our of a house’s side door supposedly in secret. Ridiculous.

The nun’s religious order that ran Sinaloa School had already gone through similar government hostility in their home state of Aguascalientes, so that they had nuns with college degrees and consequently the state couldn’t close it. Delgado’s social friends convinced him not to close the America and Montferrat on condition they send their teachers to college; which they did.

In December 0f 1940 a new president of Mexico took office. He proposed a policy of national reconciliation and declared that he was personally a believer. The Cornels were discouraged.

Leyva broke away from his army friends. He abandoned “cardenismo” as former president policies were called and joined “camachismo”, the new president’s way of thinking. Delgado and Loaiza remained cardenistas. When Delgado’s term came to an end, the official party that would become the PRI, proposed a candidate that no one had heard about in Sinaloa. Delgado nominated Loaiza and made him an independent candidate. He won the election. Not easily for there were clashes and several dead but local interests prevailed and Loaiza became governor.

I spent a total of eighteen years in school but I promise no to write about them individually.

Chemistry

2008-10-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

Chemistry

He had gone downtown to buy bolts and nuts to repair some farm implement. He had just arrived from the fields having been under his tractor trying to fix the settings of the plow. He was untidy and sweating. While he waited for the lights to let him cross the street, a group of girls arrived. They were dressed in a uniform that consisted of marine blue skirt pants and a short sleeved white blouse. They had a basketball that they merrily passed back and forth among themselves even though it was evident that their game was already over. All the girls had sweaty clothes and the group smelled rank. He was not paying much attention but suddenly he perceived the strange aroma of musk and fresh yeast. He turned and saw that it came from one of the girls and that she was looking at him.
She had arrived there with a group of friends and she was conscious that their appearance and odor were disagreeable. Nonetheless, they had been playing and their state was temporarily inevitable while getting back home. She could not explain why she smelled the emanations coming from the man standing by the corner. She saw him as several years older than her, tall, dark and of manly looks. She would not have noticed him except that he smelled of must and wet soil. When he looked at her, she, with all the coquetry in the world lifted her nostrils and smiled. He blushed but immediately after he assented with his head. She did the same.
They would see each other again. If they had accepted their humors: What more could they ask for?
- Women: what a mess! – Said the future beaus not yet knowing that in a few years they would lose their appetites thinking of them.
- Let’s make a bonfire. – They exclaimed so we gathered wood and in a few minutes we had a vigorous fire going.
- Now I will tell you a story that I read when I was a child like you. It’s called:

The Fifteen Stars

There was no defined race of horses in Arabia. It is believed that due to the interbreeding of local middle east horses with the courageous race of the steppes of Turkmenia and with the tireless ponies of northern Mongolia, a race of horses of a certain value was emerging. Nevertheless, because interbreeding was haphazard, the quality and appearance of the animals was uneven.
They were of many colors. White and light gray to pure black; bay, sorrel, chestnut, zain, dapple, roans and others. Of various sizes: tall and short, sturdy and slender, and of different body proportions: long or short, thick or thin trunks, with a big or small head, with hand longer than the legs and viceversa. The animals were a mixture so diverse that no order could be established.
Muhammad, who would later be the founder of Islam, at this story’s moment was a horse dealer and he determined to define the character of a new race. He wished it to be the best race of them all. He wanted horses not too small but neither too tall. They were to be mounted easily and to be fast learners, stand long journeys and be intelligent and with lots of spunk. He wanted them courageous and tireless. A small light and short head with a straight face, small upright restless ears and large expressive eyes. A thin neck followed by a medium long not very deep trunk with a wide breast and a straight back. He preferred a long strong rump with muscled thighs and strong joints. He wished his horses with short fine hair and did not mind the color. He also wanted them to eat little, water once a day and have a long life.
For months he chose the best horses he could find. He personally oversaw their training to give them a good rein without losing bravery. When he had a proper selection he thought them to obey him.
He then built a strong corral next to a fresh water fountainhead. He enclosed the animals and did not water them in three days. The hot sun gave them a maddening thirst, more unsettling because they could smell the fresh nearby water. The horses stamped their hoofs on the ground, whinnied irritated and even charged the fence.
When Muhammad considered that the animals’ anxiety was unbearable he opened the corral’s gate. The animals stampeded out running to the fountainhead to quench their burning thirst. Then Muhammad whistled ordering them to return.
Fifteen mares obeyed him returning without having had a drop of water. As a reward he gave each a skin bag of water slightly sugared and salted. He then named them as the brightest stars in the sky.
Let’s lie in the sand and see the stars after which the mares were named.- I told my listeners.
The sky was beginning to show stars which I began pointing to the children. I indicated one of the first to appear:
- See that one. It’s called Mirzam from the Arabia word “al murzim” that means the forerunner because it comes out before Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky.
- Which is Sirius?- asked Arturo.
- I told you it is the brightest: you tell me which it is.
- That one.- said all at once.
- I want you to notice that Sirius with those two, called Betelgeuse and Procyon, forms a very large triangle of equal sides.
- It’s beautiful- The boys said in awe.- We had never noticed.
Then I showed them Dubhe and Merak that always point to Polaris, the north star; then Altair from Aquila; Aldebaran, the brightest of Taurus. Now I want you to see a constellation, that is a formation of stars, in the shape of a kneeling man with a bow in his extended arm and a pair of arrows in his other hand. Do you see those small stars forming an arch? Do you distinguish those two small ones above Betelgeuse? Those are the tips of the two arrows. The three horizontal stars are the waist and below them is Rigel, from the Arabian language “rijl” which means knee or leg. This hunter is named Orion and once in a moment of pride he boasted that there wasn’t an animal he could not defeat. He had just said that when a small scorpion stung him and he died. Since then, the hunter Orion appears and then he hides because Scorpius is following. In a few more hours, if we’re still around, we’ll see this formation in the shape of a scorpion.
-They are beautiful.- everyone said. The Big Dipper showed itself very brightly so I told them:
- That’s the Big Dipper, follow its handle and you’ll see Arcturus, fourth in brightness.
- I see it.- said Rafael- but it’s yellow.
That’s it. There are white and yellow stars and sometimes you can see them a bit rosy. I kept pointing at several other stars as they became shiny.
- That’s Vega of Lira, fifth in brightness and beautiful; Capella, the sixth, that glows together with a small white star that spins around it and a red dwarf that goes along. The Arabs called it “alhajot” which means “she goat” as does her name that comes from Latin.
- As time passed we went for snacks and cokes. I was able to point Deneb of Cygnus, that is the swan. Her name in Arabian is “al danaab” that is the tail of the bird. Because of it’s name, this constellation is sometimes referred as the “Sign” meaning the sign of the cross because it’s brightest stars form a cross. I showed them Spica, the tassel. I kept showing them stars until finally Scorpius appeared and I could show Antares its great yellow star. Then I told them:
- Well young men, I wanted to show you some of the stars after which Muhammad named his chosen mares. To this day, when an Arabian sheik has guests he invites them to a banquet offering the best dishes. Guests have to burp to show they are satiated with good food. It’s bad manners not to do so.
- Ugh.- said Arturo who is quite squeamish.
- If the host feels the guests merit a special treat he will show them his most precious jewel. What he shows off above all his possessions. That is a horse which he can boast descends from one of the Prophet’s stars.
- Grandpa.- asked Arturo.- Why didn’t he name Polaris any of the mares? You always say it is the most important star.
- It is in our northern sky. Polaris is always in the north celestial pole. All the other stars seem to turn around it, but it is nevertheless a small dim star. Perhaps he named his mares only after the brightest. You should know that he didn’t choose stars of the southern sky where there are some very bright ones.
- Do you mean that people who live in the south see a different sky?- Arturo asked.
- Yes. They see other constellations although the same way we see many of their stars, the ones not too far south, they can see many of ours, the ones not too far north. From Altata, if you wake up before dawn you can sometimes see Crux, the southern cross that is always in the celestial south pole.
- Grandpa.- said Sergio.- Don’t wake us up before dawn to see a few dim stars. Besides, I don’t understand how you can start a new race of horses choosing only mares.
- Tell us something of Altata.- asked the local boys, Rafael and Panchito.
- OK, but pay attention because it is a little sad.

Easter Stories

2008-05-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

Rival
- Architect. – I addressed my daily coffee companion at the local drugstore. – Listen to me for a moment. I’m going to tell you what I just saw.
- Go ahead.- He said.
- You have noticed the way this hot August day is ending. A glorious sunset completely colors everything. Behind a tall wall of gray and black clouds, an enormous bright red disk hides and reveals itself. Sometimes the thick clouds speckle it, sometimes when thinner they brighten like diamonds and around
each you can see solar rays radiating as if wands of light. Everything in the city takes the color of the sunset, sometimes rosy, other times golden. It’s an afternoon for ugly ducklings. Even they look well.
- What in heavens are you going to say? – Griped the architect so I continued.
- A young girl standing in the middle of the street blocked the way while I was trying to go past the parking space available, to back my car to park it on Madero Boulevard. I honked trying to call her attention. Her body language was unmistakable; she had misinterpreted me and deliberately did not turn to pay attention. She was no more than twenty with nice round features and you could say rather pretty, if you like full moon faced beauties. I lowered the passenger window to tell her to please move but she again thought I would approach her with some impropriety so she looked away from me.
- We were going through those maneuvers when a naughty wind forced itself between my car and the cars already parked. Her dress rose. Against the afternoon light I saw the golden, turgid and humid skin of her thighs. Over the terse surface a fine, thin, delicate and bright velvet. Like dewy wheat on a spring morning. I also saw the brighter flash of her intimate underwear.
- Stop your story. – Demanded my companion but I didn’t.
- She put down her dress and turned towards me with anger as if I were to blame for the situation. She was making a petulant and defiant gesture when the friendly wind gave me another look.
- Babbling old fool! – I read her lips while she crossed the street and went away.
- Even in her tantrums, she was right at last. For my part, I finally understood the song that begins saying: “ The rival of my love is the wind that caresses you”
- I want to hear another similar story. – Said Sergio with his bright eyes.
- Well. - I answered. - But don’t go around repeating these tales and saying I told them to you.

Easter Stories

2008-04-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Bears from Mocorito

My cousin tells this story. He, his wife and a group of friends went camping in Yosemite Park in California.
The forest rangers assigned them parking areas and besides giving them the park instructions in writing they read them aloud explaining what they could do during their stay. They were surprised that the rangers insisted that all edibles should be kept in the containers made of strong steel and welded to thick railings anchored in heavy concrete foundations. These were fixed installations provided by the park. Each container was made of steel plate with a lip at its opening and with a rubber gasket to seal its mouth to its lid. The campers to be were told that the bears in the park should not be able to smell the food because they would be attracted to it. The bears were big and heavy, didn’t fear man and were extremely dangerous.
The campers settled, obeyed the camp rules about storing their food in the indicated containers and went visiting some of the recommended sights. They were tired from the trip and from having had to set up camp so they had a light dinner and retired to bed.
The next morning, my cousin rose early and lit a fire, opened two cans of chilorio (pork spiced with pasilla red peppers and cumin) and while he heated the pork in a pan he put tortillas on a flat heating pan He began to slice hot green peppers, onions and tomatoes to make a sauce. While he labored in his make-do kitchen, a wagonload of park rangers arrived.
- What are you doing? – They asked.
- I’m making breakfast. Why?
A ranger brought a shovel out from their wagon and began digging a large trench in the ground while another took a bucket of water from a water tank. My cousin barely had time to remove his pans before the rangers doused the fire.
- What is happening? – He was asking when they took his cooking pans and dumped the food in the trench and began covering it filling the hole in the ground.
- What was that food? - Asked a ranger who explained that its smell had invaded the whole park.
- It was chilorio. It’s spiced pork. It is a common enough breakfast in Mocorito, Sinaloa the part of Mexico where we come from.
By this time, all the camper had risen from bed and were alarmed at seeing so many agitated rangers and more park vehicles arriving.
Said the chief of the park rangers:
- A few minutes ago we received a report that several bears were heading towards this area. Then from another part of the park bears were sighted also moving fast with a fixed bearing. We triangulated and concluded they were heading this way. Reports have kept coming. All the bears of Yosemite are coming here. Gather your things, take down your camp, load your cars and go. We will guard you while you get out.
- Oh! – Said the park chief. – And no more chilorio please.
- Damn bears! – My cousin let out, they are probably from Mocorito.
The press in California reported that week that the bears of Yosemite had been behaving strangely. That the cubs whined asking for a promised breakfast and that mother bears scolded the males for having broken their promises and cheated their families.
My cousin says that the Yosemite Park’s administrators have posted signs in all entrances to the park that read: “All edibles allowed, except chilorio”
As you can see my cousin Carlos seasons and spices breakfast and conversation better than anyone.
We came to the beach to get away from the girls so they would not hear what we talked about. - Complained Fernando.
- That’s right. - Said Arturo, Sergio, Rafael and Panchito. – We want to hear stories for men.
- OK, then but don’t tell your parents I told this story.

Easter Stories

2008-04-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

The lucky Grouper (A Fisherman’s Tale)

- Yesterday we went fishing and I caught a swordfish. – Said Sergio.
- What’s the biggest fish you’ve caught, grandfather? – Asked Arturo.
- It’s a tall story and you will not believe it.
- Tell it. – Said Sergio.
- It is about a huge fish and all anglers who have fished these waters caught it at least once.
- Oh, grandpa, come on! - Complained Arturo.
- We want to hear about it. – Demanded the rest of the audience.
- Very well. Here it goes.

Many years ago, before your parents were born, the road that comes into Altata crossed, over an arched culvert, a deep branch of a coastal channel. By word of mouth, it began to be known that a large fish was in those waters. Every angler, except professional fishermen who live in Altata, began talking of the fish. As time passed the fish grew. I got together the best anglers I know to talk about the fish and try to find the truth behind the stories.
- Have you heard about the fish in the culvert? – I asked Mario, a cousin of your grandmother who is the best fisherman that I know.
- How would I not know? – He responded angrily, looking me in the eye. – Once when I had caught only trophy-sized fish I decided to dump the smaller ones back in the water. I personally dumped a twenty-five pound grouper into that pond.
- I caught it once. –Said Mariano. – I was returning home with my iceboxes full of fish fillets when remembering the big grouper, I told myself that with the good luck I was having, an attempt at catching it was worth a try. So I stopped by the culvert and cast my line with my biggest reel and fishing pole. I caught the fish and since I had a weighing hook with me I hung it and can tell you that it wasn’t so big. It weighed seventy pounds. Since it was a hot day and no more fish would fit into my iceboxes: I returned the grouper to the water.
-
- Besides being big, it is a lucky fish. – I commented.
- Are you going to begin with your damn comments? – Said everyone and they turned towards Pancho to ask him about the huge fish.
- I can testify. - Pancho said. – It is a big grouper. I took my snorkel and swimming fins and very early on a Saturday I went looking for the big fish. I prepared a strong crossbow with double thick rubber elastic cords and steel harpoons. I was approaching the culvert when I saw the grouper. It had its mouth open and it has the diameter of the culvert opening. That fish weighs at least two hundred pounds.
- Don’t you believe us? – Asked Mario, angry and threatening.
- Of course I do. - I answered. – How could you think otherwise? But the grouper is growing very fast. We all know that fish grow faster once they are caught but this one is getting bigger while still in the water.
Mario arose angrily but my cousin Carlos intervened telling us that he had also caught the fish.
- I also caught the grouper but as I had been warned of its size I did something different. I took my Jeep, the one with the winch on the front bumper. I parked it on the road on top of the culvert. I used the steel cable for a line, baited a butcher’s hook with a ten-pound red snapper and began fishing while sitting at the wheel of my Jeep. To my surprise I felt a very strong pull on the line. I turned on the winch but it slipped because its motor was too small. I managed to turn the ignition key of the Jeep and putting it in reverse and with the four-wheel drive I pulled the fish out of the water dragging it until it rested on the pavement. Since I had blocked all the traffic everyone saw the fish so that I have many witnesses. You can ask anyone of them, if you don’t believe me. Nevertheless I had to return the fish because all the passersby demanded that such a splendid animal should not be sacrificed. All the men present pushed and pulled together until we managed to dump it again into the channel. Wow! I can't even guess how much that big grouper weighed.
- That’s really a big one. – I said. – It must be the first fish in history that everyone catches, weighs and releases.
- We are going. – Declared all present. – It’s useless talking to you.
- Why don’t you take a big caterpillar tractor, next time? With a D8 you can perhaps manage it. – I suggested. – But no one was listening because they had left me all by myself.
- Tell us another one of uncle Carlos stories. – Requested Arturo.
- Pay attention, then.

Easter Stories

2008-03-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

Wonderful Mineral

My friend, Amado, at almost seventy years of age, continues to be charmed by the mysteries of nature. He knows why the new king of the pride kills the cubs of the defeated old lion king. He can tell you of the habits of fifteen-year-old female elephants. He becomes long winded while telling who went up river in the Orinoco for the first time and who crossed Siberia running the line of the railroad from Russia to the Pacific Ocean.
- Grandpa: Why does the big lion kill the little ones? – Asked Arturo.
- We’ll visit him and let him tell you personally. You’ll also have the chance to see two margay cats he is raising. They were given to the local zoo when they were kittens and the zookeepers didn’t know what to do with them so they commissioned Amado to nurse them. But that’s another story. I’ll now begin the story I want to tell you. Amado once said to me:
- I was given some wonderful mineral sand. Oops, I forgot whom I was talking to. I refuse to tell you.
- I would like to hear of it. –I said. – Why won’t you tell me?
- You don’t believe in anything and make fun of everybody. I will not tell you.
- Oh, come on. You are dying to tell me. Come on.
- OK, but I hope I will not regret it. I was given some wonderful mineral sand brought to me from the Sierras. Last night I poured a small pile of it on my bedroom floor, turned off the light and then stuck a light bulb into the mineral. The bulb began showing certain luminosity, as if it wanted to turn on.
- Amado. – I asked. – If you had poured more mineral into a bigger mound, do you believe the bulb would have got brighter?
- Don’t pester and interrupt me.
- OK. –I insisted. – Just tell me: Did you push the bulb into the sand or did you turn it while screwing it.
- That’s it! I knew you would come back with some foolishness. Why did I have to tell you?
It took me some time to appease my friend but what he definitely refused to do was to show me the mineral sand. We miss some wonders by being unbelieving.

Easter Stories

2008-03-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

Grandmother had finished her stories. Arturo addressed me saying:
- Grandpa, tell us a story for boys. Grandma tells only tales for girls.
- OK. - I said. - But they will not be violent.
- I want to hear about space monsters. - Said Sergio.
The afternoon had darkened, the moon would be coming out late tonight, the heavens began to darken and the night had turned cool.
- Call your friends that live in Altata. We will go to the edge of the shore, sit on the boats and I will tell you stories for men.
- Ok. - Said Sergio. - We’ll build a bonfire.
Raphael and Panchito, friends of my grandchildren and Fernando, my brother’s son and namesake, arrived. We gathered on the beach sitting on our old sailboat.
- First let me tell you that this bay of Altata is an inshore lagoon of tranquil waters most of the year, except for crazy February and not so sensible March, and in some areas, like at its mouth where it flows into the ocean. It’s separated from the Sea of Cortez by that long peninsula that we wrongly call Redo Island. Although open waters are more than a mile away across Redo, on quiet nights you can hear the drumming of the waves. Before I begin telling you other fairy tales I want you to keep quiet and listen. What do you hear?
- A boat passing by. - Said Sergio.
- That is not what I want you to listen for. Pay attention. What do you hear?
- The noise of the sea in the other side of the island. - Said Arturo.
- I’m going to tell you what I hear.

Natural Rhythms

Natural phenomena have rhythms that seem repetitive to those that do not know how to listen to them.
Those who do not know the sea will believe that it has an unchanging sound. Others have learned to distinguish its volume: stronger or weaker; its time, paused or quick; its temper, soothing or suddenly explosive; its tone, baritone and some times deep bass. Never does the sea have the voice of a woman.
We know that the wind causes the change in the height of the waves. Dominant winds, that blow for months in one direction over a lengthy and unobstructed stretch of open waters, cause the slow rise and fall of swells of very long amplitude, two to three hundred yards in length. Their height will depend on the speed of the winds. These are the basic undulations over which ride the rest of the waves. New winds, lasting a few weeks, raise waves of ten to thirty yards of width that are mounted over the swells. Fresh or sudden wind rushes, lasting hours or a few minutes, rapidly produce curls, of one to a few yards in width, that ride on top of the waves. When paying attention to the murmur or roar of the waves breaking on shore we begin to understand. We hear quiet waves. We think there are no curls, and the lower parts of waves and swells are coinciding on shore. The drumming becomes louder and we are awed and know that higher waves are arriving riding on top of the swells. Suddenly we hear a crashing thunder and we are aware that a curl riding on a wave has reached shore at the very top of a swell. The explosion of these waves shakes the shores. It is mighty man’s voice.
I promise, in a few months, to take you to the Sierras to spend the next holidays. I want you to learn to listen to the wind streaming past the pine branches. It is a soprano voice, sometimes mezzo, rarely contralto. It is a whispering voice, sleepy, subtle and voluptuous but, in the end fickle, it can also be threatening. When angry it shrieks and gives goose pimples to the bravest of men. It is the voice of a woman. It’s frightening.
- Are you finished? - Asked Arturo.
- I want a mystery story. – Said Sergio.
- I’m going to tell you of a wonderful mineral I was told about but that I didn’t see.

Easter Stories

2008-03-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

Second Story

Everyone enjoyed the first story but Leah wanted it explained step by step. She began asking: What is God’s tree, mocking bird, blossom, cocoon, silk? Arturo joined the questioning wanting to know why silk was cold in winter and how was it that knowing how to talk to animals the mocking bird was not intelligent.
The questions would have gone on forever but Mar began hitting the book and was so restless on her grandmother’s lap than she gave me the book. Mar complained because she wanted the book to be read by her grandmother. I gave it back and Mar tried to open it.
- Tell them the second story. – I asked my wife. She then ceremoniously opened the book and announced:
- Now I will tell you the story of a girl called Mar.
- What is the girl’s name? - Asked Leah.
- In this story it is Mar. - Grandmother answered.
- OK. - Condescended the star of all stories. - But in all the rest, her name will be Leah.

The Best Gift

The Mayan Lord gathered his people in the plaza of Tulúm, the city-state he governed.
- I called you to announce that I will give a special prize to whoever makes the best gift for my daughter Mar, whose first birthday is next week.
The date arrived and the Lord again summoned his people to an assembly where, in a solemn public audience, the gifts would be delivered.
First came the goldsmith who presented a piece of laminated gold made into Mayan frets linked to make a necklace.
- What a beautiful jewel! – Said the Lord but Mar was totally uninterested.
Next came the jeweler who offered a pair of earrings and a pendant made of jade and obsidian brought from far away Anahuac.
- Magnificent jewels. – Said the Lord but again Mar couldn’t care less.
Then came the toy maker who had made a colored wind twirl but the day was calm and you either had to blow hard on it or run fast enough to make it twirl. The Lord understood the toy and thanked the toy maker for the offering but indicated that Mar was too small to play with it.
Then came the tailor who had made a white cotton doll with a nose of the same cotton material, flax hair, lapis lazuli for eyes and red coral lips.
- What a strange doll. –Said the Mayan Lord. – I have never seen a girl with this coloring. Yellow hair, white face, blue eyes and red lips. To what lengths do tailors venture in order to be original?
Anyway he gave the doll to Mar, who before you could say “Papadzules” yelled: Nose. And she tore it out with a yank. She then pulled out the eyes and mouth, tore at the hair and taking the doll by a foot began shaking it over her head until it split, spilling the coconut fiber filling all over the place. In a jiffy the doll became a shredded rag.
The Lord spied a fisherman in the audience who had a small bag under his arm. Filled with curiosity the Lord asked him:
- Do you also bring a gift?
- It is a modest gift. While weaving my fishing net I heard that you wished for a gift for Mar, whom the entire town loves. Thinking of her I made this gift.
- Show it. – Ordered the Lord.
The fisherman went to two adjacent palm trees that were separated by a few steps. He tied each end of a horizontal net to their trunks. He asked the Lord to lay Mar on the net and to rock her gently. Mar settled into the soft net and liked the fresh wind caused by the rocking motion; she smiled and then went to sleep. Sweet dreams enveloped her and the whole town marveled.
- It is the best gift. – Decreed the Lord and then asked the fisherman.
- What would you like as a prize?
- Whatever your lordship wishes. I have my prize just in seeing Mar’s smile as she sleeps on the net.
The Lord gave the fisherman a nice house by the sea and ordered that spools of cotton string be delivered in such quantity that by teaching many helpers, sleeping nets could be made for whoever wanted them. The fisherman prospered selling his nets and thus were born the hammocks used by the people of Southwest Mexico.
Mar does not comprehend very well what the story is about but at each mention of her name she becomes restless because she understands what is most important: That she is the star at least of this story. When the tale ended she let go her contagious laughter and tried to open the book hoping for the story to be told again.

Easter Stories

2008-02-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

First Story

Leah came to her grandmother to ask her to tell a story. She sat astride one leg and Mar imitating her, sat on the other.
Grandmother told me to bring her an illustrated book of children’s stories. Having told her grandchildren the same stories during the last holidays she had asked me to write some new tales. The new story would be narrated while looking at pictures of Pocahontas. Arturo drew up a chair to listen. Sergio, who does not resign himself to being no longer the youngest of the family, went by without looking at his cousins, showing his disregard for children’s stories.
- I’m going to tell you the story of a little Mayan girl from Cancun.
Began grandmother but was immediately interrupted.
- The little girl’s name is Leah. – Added the star of all stories.
- Of course. – Said grandmother while Mar looked at the open book and paid attention.

The Little Mayan Girl

The little Mayan girl named Leah was sad because she did not have a dress. Clothes in those long gone times were made of shells tied with grass strings, during summer the shells were hot and they were cold in winter. The girl wanted a dress that would be cool in summer and warm in winter.
“What can I do to make a dress?” – She thought. – Who will help me?
One morning Leah, while trying on dresses made of leaves, heard a voice that said:
- Why do you put leaves on yourself and then throw them away? What are you doing?
She turned and saw, on a branch of a God’s tree, a bird of regular size with gray wings over a brown body. She answered:
- The shells with which we dress are uncomfortable so I’m trying to make clothes with leaves but some itch; others produce rashes, while others crackle and those that do no feel wet break easily. But: How is it that being a bird you can talk? Furthermore you are not beautiful as birds are in fairy tales.
- Of course I can talk. – Answered the bird. – I am the mime of many tongues. I’m not pretty but I’m the bird that can imitate all other birds. I can peep, chirp, caw, crow, coo, thrill, cackle, warble, gobble, shriek or tweet, yell or talk and sing and I know the voices of many animals.
- What is your name and how many languages do you speak?
- I’m the Mocking Bird and I speak a thousand voices.
- Could you talk to the little spiders that weave the webs that they spread between twigs and branches and that in the mornings are laden with dew and look like strings of brilliant stones?
- O course, I know their language. I told you I’m the bird with a thousand voices. What do you want to ask the little spiders?
- I want to know what I need to make a dress.
- I’ll be back soon. – Said the mocking bird and he flew off in search of the spiders. He found their webs but he could not see them because they were hiding in the branches.
- Where are you? – He asked.
- Go, go, go. You have to leave. – All the spiders answered at once.
- I want to ask you a question.
- Go, go, go. You have to leave. You eat the same moths, crickets, flies and mosquitoes that we do except that you pick them with your bill while we catch them in our webs. Go because the insects are afraid of you and will not come this way as long as they see you around.
- Tell me what my friend, the little Mayan girl, needs to make a beautiful dress.
- If you go promptly we’ll tell you. - The spiders demanded.
- OK – Said the bird. – I’ll leave as soon as you tell me.
- You need dry thread to weave. Ours will not do because we make them gummy for the insects to get stuck. We hang threads between twigs or branches and then draw circles on those lines to make our webs. You need dry thread that can be woven by going over and under one thread and the other to make a cloth. Far, far away over the mountains, there are worms that make silk thread with which a dress can be made.
- Thank you little spiders. – Said the mocking bird and flew away to search for the worms that made silk.
He crossed the mountains and looked and looked but he could not find the worms until he saw a cocoon that had bent around itself a leaf of a white mulberry tree. A silk worm was coming out of it. He immediately asked him:
- How do you make that little house where you live? It seems to be made of thread but it has an entrance into it.
- I draw circles with the silk I make as it leaves my body. That is the way I build my home.
- How could I get a good fiber to use as thread so that my little friend, who lives far away in Cancun, can make herself a dress that will be cool in summer and warm in winter?
- We can't go there. – Said the worm. – Because we live only in these trees. Furthermore, even though ours is the most beautiful filament, in fact it is warm in summer and cold in winter. It is not the thread you are searching for. You will have to look for another material and then weave it to make cloth.
- But where would I look; how do I weave it?
- I’ve already told you and I do not like to repeat myself. – Said the worm and went into his cocoon and refused to come out.
A very sad bird began its trip back home. He had not found what he was looking for but then he saw a God’s tree that was putting out its seeds to the wind. Each seed looked like a brilliant star. From its center in all directions parted long straight rays of a white fiber full of light.
“These threads are beautiful” Thought the bird and caught a seed with its claw and started pulling out its rays with its bill but as soon as they dried they broke.
Sadder still he continued flying back while looking for something useful. He then saw a cotton blossom of white resistant threads. He grasped the blossom and began pulling with his bill trying to draw out a thread but it was tangled and could not be pulled out.
- Such good dry thread. – He exclaimed but it is tangled. Not knowing what to do he went home.
He found Leah and told her what he had done: talked to the spiders and the worm and about the God’s tree seed and the cotton he had found. Said the bird:
- I now know less than before my trip.
- It is that you do not realize that you know what you do. – Said Leah.
- Please, don’t confuse me more. Can’t you realize that even though I know a thousand voices, I still have a bird’s brain?
Leah answered him thus:
- The little spiders told you that you needed dry thread and they taught you how to weave. The worm explained how he makes his cocoon by making circles with his thread. Therefore that means that by unraveling the cotton, we will have the resistant thread with which we will weave the cloth.
They went to pick cotton and she patiently drew out its fibers and weaving them made a cotton fabric from which she made a beautiful dress. She decorated the collar and hem with bright colored flowers. Furthermore, cotton was cool in summer and warm in winter. Leah was so happy that she danced with pure joy while the mocking bird sang with his thousand voices.
Since then, in the Southwest of Mexico, the girls dress with cotton hipiles decorated with bright flowers and Mayan frets.

Easter Stories

2008-02-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

Mud

On Wednesday of Easter Week Mariana arrived from Mexico City. She is a three-year-old pretty doll of long black hair, delicate face and large black shiny eyes. It was late afternoon; the children were building sand castles on the beach. While her parents said hello to everybody and were telling of their long trip by car, Mariana and her younger brother Victor joined the beach architects. Before an hour had passed, Mariana was covered with sand and mud from head to toes. Her beautiful eyes shone through the layer of mud that was her face. Her hair, recently in a ponytail tied with a silk white ribbon, was a mess. Her white princess dress now matched her new hairdo and the state of her face. When her mother saw Mariana she could not believe it was her little girl.
- Just look at you. Covered with mud. I’m going to shower and change your dirty clothes.
- I want to keep on playing. - Said the little girl.
- We’ll clean you up right now and change you. - Said her mother and took her away.
In a few minutes Mariana was returned. She now had her hair tied with a scarf and she was wearing new pajamas. Her mother warned her:
- I don’t want you to get dirty again. We’ll give you dinner and to bed.
- I want to finish the sand castle.
- No castles. You have clean clothes now. Dinner and to bed.
Mariana began to mutter insisting on playing again in the sand.
- You are already clean. - Her mother insisted.
- In that case, I want my mud back. - Said little Mariana.
She kept asking for her dirt. The same dirt that she had earned sharing work with her new friends from Altata. She sobbed and between sobs she repeated:
- I want my mud back. I want my mud.

Mar

Why? – Asked Arturo my oldest grandson who was six years old when his cousin Mar was born and christened. – Why did they name her Mar? (Sea in English) Why did they name her salty water?
My wife, the grandmother, told me: “You have to see her to believe.”
En fin. Grandparents exaggerate so much that I thought it was just another comment.
Mar, who lives in Cancun, had stayed with us for a short time when she was a few months old. She has just returned already walking but saying very few words even though she is the respectable age of one year and five months. Accompanied by her mother and by her older sister, Leah, Mar arrived late last evening and she was asleep.
Next day, I entered her room quietly and her mother placed her index finger over her mouth with the unmistakable sign of keeping silence. She then showed me the upright palm of her right hand telling me to wait, not to be overanxious.
I breakfasted and went to work and by the time I returned home past noon, Mar was taking a nap. I noticed she had thick wrists and ankles, wide shoulders and strong arms and legs. Also a patch of honey hair. The figure and wheat colored hair of her mother combined with her father’s face.
- Don’t wake her. You’ll see. – I was told.
- We had lunch and I went to my bedroom to try and take a siesta. Mar was pulling at my nightstand drawer. She saw me and raised her arms to be picked up. Once in my arms she began hitting my chest saying:
- To, to, to, to, to, to.
- What’s her problem? – I asked.
- It’s a fight because she doesn’t know you. – They told me.
- Call your grandfather handsome.
They told her. When she heard this preposterous suggestion, Mar suddenly pushed herself away with her hand in my face while she violently thrust her head backwards. I barely managed to avoid dropping her, I lowered Mar to the floor and she looked at me. In her violent outburst one of her nails had severed a piece of my nose.
Today is Palm Sunday. Mar came to my room at six in the morning. She saw me and came close. She began softly hitting my chest while saying:
- Chucu, chucu, chucu.
But she was smiling and playful. I put her on my chest and she began jumping as if trotting on a horse.
So began the day that ended at eight at night. I was mauled by being struck, pushed and pulled. I felt that my shoulders would drop, that my arms had gone numb, that my lumbar region was feverish, that I lacked pieces of my nose and my knee meniscuses were screaming. Mar turned to her mother and said:
- Bee bee.
- She will have her bottle now and then go to sleep. – I was informed.
- Thank God. –Said I. In truth you have to see her to believe.

Jagannath

When Indians celebrate Vishnu, in his avocation of Jagannath or Lord of the World, they have a parade whose main attraction is an enormous decorated float. It is so big that once set in motion it becomes unstoppable. The English adopted the word that became Juggernaut, meaning a force or object that flattens whatever crosses its path.
My granddaughter Mar is also an unstoppable force of nature. She has a sister, Leah, who is all the competition in the world and more than is fair for any baby to face. Leah is three and a half years old, she is precocious, has had language skills since she was a baby and she knows she is charismatic. Mar, on the other hand, is strong, robust, obstinate and so resolute that when something comes to her attention she makes a beeline towards it, trampling in her path chairs, flowerpots and tables. By signs, yells, bites and tears, pushes and pulls; Mar also communicates and gets what she wants.
Mar is used to people ignoring her because they are surely listening to the famous stories called: Leah Snow White, Leah Red Riding Hood and Cinderleah, told of course by Leah who would be playing the leading part. It is the reason therefore that Mar goes about not listening when spoken to because she does not imagine that they are talking to her.
When Leah allows you to distract yourself from the permanent attention she demands and if you should dedicate an instant to Mar, she smiles as if she owns the world. Any gesture, word or song that Mar thinks is directed to her, amuses her and she lets go with her cheerful laughter. It is the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

Easter Stories

2008-02-15T09:07:00.000-08:00

Two Years Later

In alternate years, my married offspring spend Christmas and Easter Week with us and the holidays of the following year with their in-laws. These festivities begin on Friday and can last until Passover Sunday, depending on the holidays given by my grandsons´ schools. Two years later, our family gathered again in Altata to spend the Easter holidays. My youngest daughter was the first to arrive. She came bringing her first child, a beautiful baby girl named Emilia.

Sleeping Babies

Why the strange feeling, emotion and mystery we feel when we watch sleeping babies?
- I am moved because I see them innocent, defenseless and totally dependent. I feel tenderness. - Said a young single woman.
- They remind me that soon, when I am gone, they will still be here. My father thought that he had been part of a lucky generation. They had seen the arrival of the car, paved streets and highways, the airplane and fast and inexpensive travel, penicillin and control of atomic energy. I saw the birth of the information revolution and the beginning of genetic control. I ponder: What will these infants get to see? - Commented a young grandfather.
- I wonder at the marvel of creation. - Added a thoughtful grandmother.
- I observe their skin without blemishes, their facial expressions that seem at times smiles, in others pouts and on occasions even gestures of having made assertive and important resolutions. – Reflected a first time father.
- I also like to see Emilia sleeping. - Added my daughter. – How can I not be happy seeing her sleep when I’m exhausted and short of sleep because Emilia did not give me a moment’s rest last night?
It’s that my daughter is the experienced mother of her first baby, a beautiful five-month-old little girl.

Lingua Franca

I visited Emilia daily before dawn. Usually I wake up and rise at five and dress for my morning walk. During Emilia’s visit I would enter her room before going out to exercise. While her mother still slept, she would usually be awake turning in bed with her eyes open.
- Emilia, good morning. You are beautiful this morning. I’m told that you are a talker but I still haven’t heard you.
During the first few days, Emilia only saw me and kept quiet. On the third, or was it the fourth, visit I told her:
- Hello beautiful. You are especially active. You look like your father but I see, because I want to, a certain resemblance to my family.
Emilia looks at me moves her arms and legs and answers:
- Ta lala, ta lala, ta lala lalá.
In lingua franca, universal language of babies, Emilia told me:
- I know your voice, I like your hellos and you seem nice.
Next day, I sat by her side and spoke this way:
- I am told that you are a well-behaved and quiet child. How do you feel in Altata? I hope weather conditions give us the opportunity of going into the sea together.
Emilia stares at me raises and lowers her head and says:
- Ta lala lalá, ta lala, lala, lalá.- Which means:
- I feel your warmth, I recognize your smell and I know your voice.
On mornings when I embraced Emilia while I danced and sang to her:
- You have, my love, the mottled green eyes of the girls of the north. One looks into them and sees the colored pebbles of the brooks of our dreams. - Emilia smiles saying:
- I hear your voice and begin recognizing your image. Your arms give me confidence. I am familiar with your smell and your warmth.
We continued talking and began to become friends. Towards the end of her brief stay, Emilia recognized me even a few steps away. She once surprised me saying:
- I know who you are even though you are not near me, what is more, even though you do not speak. I know who you are just by looking at you. You are the one who carries me safely and sings in the morning. That is your name: “Sure arms, joy in the morning”
What an immense mystery a child’s development is! In her baby talk, Emilia made only important statements while I was at a loss for words. No matter, because my attitude, tone of voice and body language were also in the universal language that is the one my granddaughter speaks and understands and perhaps because of it she granted me the privilege of addressing me.
In a few months when, God willing, I will see her again, she will have learned to say poppa, mommy, water, hungry and so. She will depend more and more on language to communicate and to understand. She will grow and the process will speed up. Hopefully she will keep the universal language she now knows so well.

Emilia

Emilia is a charming girl of large expressive eyes. She easily goes from the arms of one person to another’s and her way of looking, that seems to examine everyone, always provokes smiles.
In her mother’s arms, Emilia is looking over every adult in the party in which everyone seems to be speaking at the same time.
A man approaches and extending the upward palms of his hands he invites Emilia to go to him. Emilia looks at him and when he gets near her she perceives a bitter odor. She becomes aware that something is not right in the elevation of the man’s offered arms and in the unfinished extension of his fingers. This man couldn’t care less about her. For reasons of his own this adult is faking tenderness towards children, Emilia refuses his arms.
Emilia sees a young woman coming over to say hello to her mother. The woman tries to take Emilia from her mother’s arms. She utters terms of endearment bur Emilia does not like the cadence of her voice, the pauses between her words and the emphasis of her phrasing. That woman, that is not aware that she exudes a black humor, wants the people at the party to notice that the child will not grow up to be as beautiful as she is. Emilia disregards her becoming very stiff and staring at her.
In the buzz of the party there is a man who stands out entertaining everyone telling jokes. He is a middle-aged man who talks and laughs loudly. He spends most of his time celebrating his own jokes. In one joke after another, the man manages to repeat that he has noble feelings. He demonstrates his generosity in one tale, in another his compassion for the weak, in a third, his courage and temerity, and so on. He looks at Emilia and offers his arms to her. She sees a shadow in his gaze and turns away her head.
Emilia sees a soberly dressed woman drawing near. That woman has feigned surprise when she hears coarse words and alarm when profanity borders on the sexually crude. Very proper and prim she asks for Emilia but the child has already seen her sad soul and becomes scared. Emilia stammers saying: Ma-ma. Ma-ma. She buries her head in her mother’s bosom.
Sitting on a chair leaning against a wall there is an old man with a hard stare. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t emit opinions, and nobody draws near him. He looks around the gathering with the feeling that he is being observed. He looks carefully asking himself who could it be watching him. Suddenly he finds the inquisitive eyes of Emilia. The man smiles and a beautiful light brightens his head like a luminescent halo. He emanates a sweet and wholesome scent. Emilia keeps looking at him and restless in her mother’s embrace she offers her arms to the grouchy old man.

Easter Stories

2008-02-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

Leah

When she was only a year and five months old, Leah my granddaughter, accompanied by her mother, my first daughter came to spend spring break during Easter week in the small fishing village of Altata, located on the Pacific coast of Sinaloa, Mexico.
During eight days she shared our house with uncles, cousins, and friends and of course with us, her maternal grandparents. Though tall and well built for her age, Leah still walks and runs with the unsureness of a toddler. Her ability to associate nouns with verbs is way beyond her years and amazes anyone who hears her speak. Her grandmother lifts her to the level of the light switches:
- I'm going to switch on the light. - Says grandmother.
- Switch on lights. - Repeats Leah.
At every chance, Leah goes to the low built cabinets where spices are stored and which she can reach:
- These are no nos.-says her mother.
- Nonos. - Declares Leah pointing at them.
She enjoyed walking on the trampoline, set up in our neighbor’s front yard, because she felt the floor giving in under her weight and springing her up at each step. She laughed and looked for nearby watchers who could appreciate her boldness. Of course she never tried to actually jump.
Leah lives in Cancun a tourist resort very far away from Altata. Because of her father’s work he had not accompanied his family for the holidays. So she would remember him she was often asked:
- What is your name?
- Leah.
- Leah and what else?
- Leah Castellanos.
- What’s daddy’s name?
- Juan Pablo.
And so the days passed until the unavoidable date arrived of returning to the cities. Everyone was packing, sweeping and mopping floors, picking up toys and generally tidying up the house to leave it shortly. Leah had gone through this recently, when her mother and she had traveled here from her home.
Leah walked into the living room, approached the low table that serves as a centerpiece, picked up a conch shell, put it to her ear, heard the sea and said:
- Cancun.

The Grandfather

My wife, the proud grandmother, who had been present at Leah’s birth and had visited her in Cancun for her first birthday, kept talking enthusiastically of her charms. I did not understand which they could be until Leah arrived and I met her.
I take her in my arms and she looks very seriously at me with her slanted little eyes. While I pump her right arm up and down I begin dancing and singing the Mexican waltz Alexandra:
I would like to tell you
What you mean to me,
You’re my love,
You’re my soul.

Leah watches me as if wanting to tell me this is very odd to her. I keep singing:
I would like to tell you
That you fill my life completely.
I’m with you Alexandra
With all my love.

With her arms, Leah pushes herself away from me turning to her mother asking her to take her. Three more times I dance and sing to Leah, the same twirls and the same song with the same results. We are dancing for the fifth time and I’m about to finish the song and this time I sense some agitation in Leah:
I’m with you Alexandra
With all my love.

She is looking at me with her knowing, happy face:
- Leah Castellanos. - She corrects me, laughing.

The Grandmother

Arturo and Sergio are the sons of our oldest son.
- Why- I ask my wife- do I notice something special in your feelings for Leah? Something different from what you’ve shown for Arturo and Sergio.
- Because she’s a girl. - She answers.
- I also notice that Leah’s aunts and cousins pay her more or a different kind of attention than they did for my grandsons. Is there a women’s secret society and are you welcoming a member of the clan?
- Yep. The same as you do with your Tubby’s club. Or would you deny that you receive the new members of the brotherhood with a special joy? So do we with our fellow sisters.
The days keep passing each almost identical to the others during the holidays. Grandmother turns to Leah and says:
- Chinese, little china, we are going to change your diaper because your beshoind is stoinky.
- Stinky behind. - Says Leah.
- Say grannymosh my love.
- Grandmother my love- answers Leah.
- Beauteous, preciocious, smalliungs. - Says grandmother.
- Precious Leah. - The child.

Sergio

Sergio is the youngest of my grandsons. He lives in a world of fantasy. Aboard an old sloop that was once a 14 feet Tern sailboat we are going to row across to the undeveloped shore of our inland lagoon. There is a short length of mangroves next to a fairly deep channel. Occasionally there are fish there when the tide is coming in.
We bait our hooks and begin fishing. The party is comprised of two children, Sergio and Giorgo his guest, both wearing life vests, and two adults, one per child, to row and help with the children’s fishing.
- I want the fishing pole. - Demands Sergio.
- You will take turns with it. Giorgo is your guest so he goes first. - I tell him.
- I don’t want to fish. I want a coke.
- We’ve just arrived. - I explain. - We’ll have a coke in a little while when we get thirsty. - This is going on while the other adult opens a beer.
- Why does he open a beer and I can’t have a coke?
We are talking that through when Giorgo hooks a small fish. It would be his first trophy. In the emotion and disorder of reeling in the fish, with a helper who does not know what to do, we finally land the fish on board. I decide to return.
Giorgo goes home to show his catch to his family, they take pictures and celebrate. In front of our house, there are some fishermen retrieving a long net taking out the last survivors of our lagoon. They keep the fish of commercial value and discard the rest on the beach. Sergio takes one of the fish lying on the sand, walks home and addresses the people who have gathered for lunch under the palm canopy:
- Look at what I caught.
- What kind of fish is that? -They ask while they applaud and take pictures.
- It’s a flying fish. The fishing pole bent until the tip went underwater.
- Was it hard to catch him?
- Yup, the pole bent so much that I thought it was going to break.

When Sergio was three years old he decided that all women should show him their breasts. He did not achieve his purpose so now that he is four he doesn’t like girls.
Mariela who is eight, my brother’s daughter and aunt to my grandchildren, taught a pair of dance routines to her Easter companions, all younger than the teacher. Natalia and Elena, her sisters, the twins, Cecilia and Rebecca, daughters of my niece Mercedes, who were also in Altata for the holidays having come from Saltillo, many many miles east of paradise. The ensemble rehearsed in secret and surprised everyone by announcing the show.
We gathered at four in the afternoon on the covered front terrace of a neighbor’s house. A master of ceremony makes the presentation. To the tune of a cassette recording, the five dancers went to the end of the porch and each struck a different fixed pose. One pretending to rest her chin over the palm of her hands; another framing one eye with the extended forefinger and thumb, the other hand on her hip; another with her arms stretched to her side, palms of her hands turned up with a gesture of uncertainty; the fourth, bent over a forwarded leg, her elbows over her knee and both open hands on her cheeks; the fifth dancer with her fists on her hips lifting and lowering her head as if saying here we go. A pause for impact, the music resumes and then the dance. Two numbers and then the applause. Families who have enjoyed similar performances know that their quality corresponds to the age of the artists and to the two-day rehearsal. They also know that no one could watch a show as beautiful or as unforgettable.
Sergio refused to watch the girly show. One of his uncles invited him to be present but to act peeved. Sitting next to each other they placed their closed fists over their knees, pouted and lowered the ends of their lips in a gesture of disapproval of the entertainment.
- Why are you sitting in such a manner? - I asked.
- Because we are Mexican machos. – said the adult.
- I’m a Martian. - Said Sergio.

Arturo

Sergio’s older brother is Arturo. He is a formal young adult, curious, inquisitive and thoughtful. Since he began speaking he pronounced his words correctly.
Arturo and Sergio’s mother, my daughter-in-law, wasn’t but now she is. (Play of words in Spanish) Tall and so beautiful that in her presence professional models would make excuses saying they haven’t felt well lately. Because she has an architect and interior decorator’s vocation, she takes occasional drawing classes. One afternoon she took Arturo to the studio where a nude model was being drawn. Next day he took his kindergarten’s manual homework to his mother for approval. It was a drawing of a woman surrounded by small bubbles. An oval for a face, vertical lines on top for hair, little circles for eyes, a pear for a nose, an ellipse for a mouth; the trunk with breasts, that is a pair of circles with their center standing out; and with legs and arms. Of course the small thicket of little short black lines was in its place.
- What is this? – She asked.
- My teacher in the shower. - Answered Arturo.

Everyone eventually becomes old. Infants become children, then teenagers that mature and grow old. Everyone and that includes Mexican women but not Mexican men because we are different. We pass from infancy into childhood and here we stay until the end.
Arturo and friends watched the tricycles and four-wheel bikes passing on the beach. The drivers, even while these vehicles are for one passenger only, carried three to four passengers per bike. Of course they did not wear helmets or knee and elbow padding, boots or any kind of protection. How else then would we teach them to take risks and become men? Most were Arturo’s age. The spectators decided to wet sand to make balls and throw them at the passing bikes. They forgot that young children have older brothers. When I hear the terrified shouts of my grandchildren, older boys are chasing them throwing large rocks and clams at them. Clams are still plentiful in the sands of Altata. I come out to tell them to stop their aggression but they did not heed my words until I had to yell at them. I forgot that young children have young parents.
Arturo goes alone into the living room. He stayed there quietly until two hours later he asked:
- Grandmother, why did they hit us so hard?

The Conch Shell

Leah took several days to get accustomed to living with her extended family. There were fourteen people divided between adults and children and there were many visitors daily. Once back at home, in Cancun, in the intimacy and shelter of her small family, only child with dad and mom, she points to family photographs and asks:
- Cousins, where are the cousins?
We grandparents wish she would ask:
- Where is dancing grandfather, where grandmother, my love?
Perhaps it is too much to expect. We have to be satisfied trusting that as time goes by and Leah grows and becomes a young lady whenever should she see a conch shell she will put it to ear, listen to the sea and say:

- Altata!