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The story goes that while working for an English newspaper, Bruce Chatwin interviewed the designer Eileen Gray. They discovered a mutual fascination with Patagonia, and the 93 year old Gray told Chatwin to go there for her. Two years later he arrived in South America, quitting his newspaper job with a telegram; “Have gone to Patagonia”.
Chatwin makes no mention of this story in In Patagonia, the book spawned by the trip. Instead he chooses for his mythic start a piece of Brontosaurus skin (which actually came from a Mylodon, some sort of prehistoric giant sloth) in a cabinet in his grandmother’s dining room. The skin was from Patagonia, and among other things he was going to Patagonia to claim his own scrap of Brontosaurus.
These multiple origin myths are pretty characteristic of Chatwin’s storytelling. He doesn’t try to resolve his narrative into a series of certain events; he’s not too concerned with definite facts (which is probably why he has been accused of distorting and fabricating details of the book). Instead he explores possibilities, gathering local myth and opinion and adding his own theories. He traces, for example, the path of Butch Cassidy through Patagonia, visiting the cabin he lived in, talking with people with hazy memories of the outlaw. Eventually the path starts bifurcating; perhaps Cassidy died in Bolivia (the official line), perhaps he survived, perhaps he returned to the US, perhaps the whole fatal shoot-out was fabricated. The possibilities multiply and Chatwin explores them all, leaving them side by side, a whole Patagonian mythology.
There is an immense amount of research and reading behind the novel. Chatwin very rarely speaks of himself (somewhat ironic given the personal mythology he built for himself), but it’s clear that he is a tireless explorer and investigator. Aside from knowing of virtually every book, poem and journal ever to mention Patagonia, he chases down a wealth of extra colour and detail for every one of his stories and characters. Even the most minor figures, mere asides within the stories, are fastidiously researched: “The rest of Harry’s career was predictable. He went to the war, joined a fast set, married three times and ended up in England, the secretary of a golf club”.
Chatwin apparently adored Jorge Luis Borges (more mythology), and although Borges gets no mention in In Patagonia, his influence is thick within Chatwin’s style, particularly within some of the stories. Like Borges, Chatwin explores an idea and then begins to twist it, taking it to extremes, probing the possibilities. Writing of a a secret cabal of male witches in Chile, he finishes with “No one can recall the memory of a time when the Central Committee did not exist. Some have suggested that the Sect was in embryo even before the emergence of Man. It is equally plausible that Man himself became Man through fierce opposition to the Sect. We know for a fact that the Challanco is the Evil Eye. Perhaps the ‘Central Committee’ is a synonym for Beast”. Borges would have been proud of such a paragraph.
In between the witches and the mylodons, Chatwin manages to weave interpretation of Shakespeare (“into the mouth of Caliban, Shakespeare packed all the bitterness of the New World”), a Patagonian genealogy for Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, political intrigue, isolated Welsh communities, plenty of murders, noble savages, an El Dorado myth, Charles Darwin, water tigers, a Patagonian unicorn, Francis Drake and Ferdinand Magellan; the whole Patagonian pantheon.
In another of his books (Utz), Chatwin writes about collecting and obsession. Certainly with In Patagonia he is collecting the stories of Patagonia, going to great lengths to uncover them, studying and pursuing them obsessively. This is not your standard travel writing, Chatwin is telling other stories instead of his own. Perhaps he is stealing them too, or at least re-appropriating them. Still, his fascination with Patagonia makes for brilliant reading. Chatwin lived a vibrant life, full of adventure and controversy, but he knew enough to know that he didn’t have to create his own stories in order to write a great book. There are enough myths and stories preserved like that scrap of brontosaurus, that just need to be unearthed in order to enchant again and again.
Chatwin eventually tracks down his Mylodon cave, finds a site still littered with perfectly preserved evidence of the ancient beast. The cave is, like all of Chatwin’s subjects, and perhaps like all of Patagonia, a strange place where reality and myth overlap. Chatwin pilfers a few impossible Mylodon or Brontosaurus hairs and it is hard to know whether this is myth or history or possibility or fancy, but that is the whole point. Whatever the Mylodon was, it exists today as many possibilities, as a series of forking paths. Wandering these paths doesn’t bring much resolution, but that doesn’t really matter. It is in the possibilities that the fascination lies.
Yes I am aware of the irony of serialising a post that begins with ‘everything you always wanted to know’ (part one is here). In time I promise to really provide you with everything; it’s just quite a big topic is all. Far better covered in installments. Here’s some more of your everything.
1. It’s pretty safe to dismiss the myth of the green card husband. Mexican girls are not after you for your citizenship. They might be after you for a few free drinks (but even that isn’t certain), or a story to tell to their friends. They are not expecting a wedding ring, nor a family. They might be expecting a commitment; they might expect you to not expect one in return.
2. Expect to pay for her. Not because Mexico is some sort of traditionalist backward, but purely because you still believe in chivalry. And perhaps because enough Mexican dudes expect to pay for their girl that if you don’t do the same you will be placed at a distinctive disadvantage, your exoticness cancelled out by your shabby egalitarian stingyness. Anyway, expecting to pay for her is not the same as paying for her. And paying for her is no guarantee of your seducing her – in fact the inverse might be true. The more traditional the girl the more you will pay for and more time you will spend desperately hoping that tonight is the night she lets you hold her hand during the movie, or walk her all the way to her front door.
3. She is not expecting a wedding ring or a family, partly because she already has a family, which probably includes very protective parents, grandparents, brothers, cousins and uncles. Unless she is from another city and is in your city to study or work. In which case she will not live with her family, will not have a curfew, will not be worried about the neighbours or fish wives gossiping about her, and will thus be trying to do all the things she couldn’t while under the stern gaze of her hometown.
4. She is not expecting a wedding ring or a family, but if you are getting ’serious’ (whatever that means), and are planning on turning your Mexican girl into your Mexican partner, then consider that Mexico has great weather, great food, great art, great beaches, great people, and the family of your Mexican significant other. So why would she want to move back to your crummy hometown? There’s a reasonable chance you’ll end up being the one marrying early for the sake of a visa. Note: Mexican visas are expensive, so factor these into your Mexican girl/significant other budget.
5. She is not expecting a wedding ring or a family, but that doesn’t mean she’s doing anything much to prevent these things either. You may or may not end up paying, but you will be the one providing the prophylactics. She is not on birth control. This is a Catholic world still, and there is a reasonable chance that the pharmacist knows her sister’s boyfriend, or her cousin’s wife or something. Also note: prophylactics are expensive enough in Mexico that it may be worth reconsidering your interest in Mexican girls. Considering exploring Mexican food, or Mexican cinema instead. They’re both pretty good.
Happy creeping…
There were two absolutely must-experience events in Mexico for me, and they fell on consecutive weekends.
Four years ago I had arranged my round-the-world schedule to allow me to be in Mexico for Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. On the day I had taken a road trip into Copper Canyon in the north, where we saw one kid trick-or-treating and a lot of heavily-armed police, and nothing more.
So as with Cervantino I was determined to do it right this time. No matter how many hours I had to spend in transit.
Day of the Dead is a millennia-old tradition in Mexico. It was adopted by the Aztecs and later mixed with Catholicism. The essential idea has always remained the same though; that on one day of the year the spirits of the dead can return to earth, and that they need to be welcomed, attracted and guided with offerings. Today November 1 is known as the Day of the Innocents, when the souls of children return to their families, and November 2 as Day of the Dead, when everyone else returns. The hours leading up to these days are the most active part of the festivities, as graves are cleaned and prepared in the hours before midnight, and the arrival of the spirits.
Although every region has its own approach to Day of the Dead (such as ignoring it in Copper Canyon), some images are ubiquitous. Mexico is festooned with (decorative) skulls at the best of the times, but in the lead up to Day of the Dead skulls and calaveras (skeleton figures) appear everywhere. Market stalls are stacked high with colourful chocolate or sugar skulls. Pan de Muerto, or sugar-coated bread is everywhere (and is sorely missed as soon as Day of the Dead passes).
One of the best known Day of the Dead celebrations takes place on Janitzio, an island which might seem kind of Mediterranean, with its mess of twisting alleys and slope-hugging houses, if it wasn’t isolated in a reedy lake in highland Mexico. This entire region (Michoacan state) was at the heart of colonial Mexico, and is strewn with enormous churches brooding over tiny villages. The people of this region were never subdued by the Aztecs, preserving their own language and traditions, which are still remembered and practiced today.
Arrived in the village of Uruapan just after rain had doused the prepared altars, preventing candles from lighting and drenching the flower arrangements, leaving the town square awash in limp Marigold petals. By morning though, new altars were being assembled. I had assumed this was a tradition most keenly observed by the venerable old folk of the town, but the town plaza was full of teams of teenagers, arranging flowers, laying out food and drink offerings, colouring and sculpting sand, lighting candles, rigging the wooden lattices that serve as portals for the dead. Marigolds are the flower of choice for Day of the Dead, good for luring wayward souls. Petals were heaped and scattered over the altars. The flowers are infectiously bright; how can anyone not be cheerful when surrounded by so much colour?
Moved on to Patzcuaro, towards the heart of Day of the Dead. Previously a the heart of the Tarascan state and later an important colonial centre, Patzcuaro today seems to serve no other purpose than as a jumble of well-preserved and restored colonial buildings, studded with churches and plazas. The entire town had been taken over by street markets, food stalls and alfresco cafes. The hippies had descended in force, mingling with the local artisans to sell their wares. The fancy gringos reclined at shaded outdoor seating. The earnest photographers stopped traffic, capturing every angles, nook and corner of the city. Merchandise and paraphernalia were everywhere, hokey t-shirts and elaborate calavera figures, wrought crucifixes and candied skulls.
It was all just a prelude to Janitzio though, or whatever I had built Janitzio up into. Brochures and guide books spoke of traditional butterfly boats and candlelit processions across the water to the island, but these would have been hopelessly ineffective. This was a serious tourist event, and the lake resembled a multi-lane highway of boats, overtaking one another as they shuttled the endless stream of people to and from the island.
Undoubtedly something has been lost in the popularisation of Day of the Dead. The island itself was flooded with people. Every house and building had become a restaurant or souvenir shop. Alongside the relevant souvenirs were the ubiquitous tit-shaped mugs, the naked elf pin-ups, the bongs and psychedelic mushrooms. Like much in the region, Janitzio stays afloat through tourism. This was not a once-a-year market; this is Janitzio. Enough souvenirs to last for decades were accumulated in the narrow alleys and passageways.
Still, there was something about the island. The restaurants festooned with flowers and colours, the steep, crooked streets, the reedy waterways, the men paddling their boats, bringing their nets home as a full moon turned the lake to silver.
The hordes of people pitched leaning tents all over the island and began demolishing its ample beer supplies. They bought wooly hats to ward off the famous cold of the lake and hunkered over fried fish stalls. And then they – we – all descended on the cemetery.
Janitzio’s cemetery, cut into the side of one of the cliffs, and looking out over the waters towards the lights of Patzcuaro, is genuinely tiny. An arch at each end admitted the constant stream of visitors, and between the arches the graves were arranged in a ragged patchwork which left no space for walking, or setting up your monster lens on its tripod. It was very apparent for very early on that no matter how grand the island’s reputation, it was going to be swamped by visitors, and that there would be no hiding from this.
Reading accounts of years past, it sounded like people pilgrimed in from far and wide to attend to the graves of departed family members. It sounded like a vigil was kept by every grave, and that the festivities were foremost for those remembering the dead and only afterwards for the tourists. This certainly has changed. There must be those of the island community that feel imprisoned by Day of the Dead. During the festivity that become cooks and waiters and bar staff, salespeople and hustlers. Children carry jack-o-lanterns through the crowds, asking for money and posing obediently while photographers position them correctly. Those that can come to the cemetery must jostle to reach their plots. They must ask people to stop using their flashes and must ward off the drunk and the clumsy. Once they have arranged their altars they must sit silently and be photographed, or try to pray and sing over all the clamour.
Still still still, there is something extraordinary about Day of the Dead on Janitzio. I spent hours in the cemetery, arriving while it was still empty enough to feel alone in, and staying until it was impossible to move without bustling through other people and disrupting carefully arranged photos.
Some of those that arrived to clean up the graves and prepare altars arrived as a clan, bringing their marigolded scaffolds with them, and their many offerings and candles and their incense and their blankets. Others arrived silently and were barely seen, and planted re-used candles around tiny graves, sweeping away the grit and disappearing quickly. Some arrived in mid-conversation and were jovial and casual. Some arrived with solemnity. Some arrived and left alone.
When I arrived there were flowers upon graves and a few candles already lit against the darkening sky. By the time I left there were covered baskets of bread, and tall candles flickering throughout the cemetery, and many huddled forms crouched around graves keeping their vigils through the night. When cameras flashed the white light made the cemetery look ghoulish, but when they stopped the warmth of the candles and the flowers enriched the darkness but also brought an intimacy to the graves.
I spent a long time alone with three candles. They were each surrounded by a pile of stones and set over unmarked graves. When the candles guttered out they were not re-lit. They made me cry. Each dignified candle lit to help a lost soul find its way home, each flame lit by hands that needed to express that life without you was so much harder, each tiny light a yearning to be with you again, a prayer for togetherness.
The poignancy of the night, and of the candles that multiplied into the darkness, so that as the night grew deeper the cemetery grew brighter, was enhanced in a twisted way by the crowds. There was something beautiful in the old ladies sitting alone by the graves, in the old man singing tunelessly over the chatter. While these took place within the clamour, and among the camera flashes though, they assumed a greater gravity. There were thousands of people in the tiny cemetery, but these ladies wrapped in their blankets still sat utterly alone by cold, blue graves, lighting candles and remembering. To be alone in a crowd of such volume is not easy. Especially when the crowd is taking your photo again and again. That the rituals and vigils continue, that it is worth rebuilding toppled rock walls and sweeping away the bootprints, that it is worth scattering petals that will be trampled, and lighting candles that will be lost in the pallor of flash photography, says something of the faith and desire at the heart of Day of the Dead. That these people can still muster their dignity while drunks stumble over century-old graves and piss in the dark corners of the cemetery speaks of resilience, and slow-burning passion.
It was strange to me, to surround myself with a festival essentially about missing people. I choose to miss everyone by moving on and being always-leaving. I decide, every time I change location, that it is worthwhile to miss people if it means finding something new. I don’t have much concept of real yearning, of missing something unrecoverable. I choose to miss the people that matter. Those that light candles in the cemetery remember people that are irreplaceable, that they would never choose to live without. How can I explain how I choose to live? How can I ever feel lonely when I have chosen to be so? I have never been the one left behind, to keep vigil over a trampled grave.
So finally, despite what Day of the Dead has become, there is something profound here, something that swallows up the absurd crowds. As more candles were lit and the old man raised his tuneless song over the cemetery, and as the bell shuddered into the night, there was hush over the cemetery, or as much hush as a crowd of thousands can muster. Whatever communing with the dead takes place, and whatever need to commune with the dead drives this whole tradition, they are bigger and older and more patient than whatever crowds might quickly come and quickly go.
There was no question; I was going to Cervantino. It was destiny or something.
Four years ago, flitting about the world with amigo Andy, we arrived in a catatonic Guanajuato the day after the Cervantino festival (named after Cervantes, author of Don Quixote) had finished. Not just any Cervantino though; that year marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. The biggest Cervantino there could ever be and we were twelve hours late. Since that fateful day Cervantino had been a kind of grail for me; we errants have to have our quests and delusions and Dulcineas.
So when I arrived in Mexico it was clear that destiny was going to be played out, and that I would be going to Cervantino. It was so clear and I so convicted that I didn’t both to arrange accommodation or transport; I just kept telling people that I was going to Cervantino, I was going to Cervantino.
The festival couldn’t have come at a better time. Guadalajara was getting cold. The sun rose every morning looking like a spent apocalypse. It was grading season at school. I couldn’t find a housemate. I needed to get the shit out of Guadalajara.
So I did, Quixote style, full of hot air and daft notions and with no idea what I was doing. And it took hours and hours and hours of wheezing public transport. It was after midnight when I bumbled and clattered my way through the front door of a last-minute couchsurfer’s house in Guanajuato. But the brutal commute didn’t matter in the slightest; I was at Cervantino, and Guanajuato was already working its magic.
What is it about Guanajuato? It is an impractical town; all bent and twisted streets strewn about a highland valley. There are no straight roads, not logical way from A to B. It is a student city, an artsy city. The buildings are painted in bright block colours, every crooked plaza has its fountain, has its cafe, has it market stall and street food. It is a city of layers, the subterranean tunnels and byways, the colonnial streets, the narrow balconies, the university and church towers, the crests of the hills and El Pipila, the ridgetop monument that serves as the city’s compass.
Cervantino had started more than a week before I arrived, and had settled into an easy festival rhythm. In the blue morning streets mountains of beer, soda and water were being piled outside every cafe and bar. Tortillas were frying and tamales were steaming. Crumpled forms lay among their bottles and backpacks in the plazas. Dazed couples huddled together in the sunlight. Accommodation of the affordable variety is in very short supply; last minute fliers were being stapled to any surface not already festooned with banners.
For a lot of people the day would contain more hours of waiting than of festivaling, but as the day progressed the streets, the university steps, the plazas and cafes all began to fill. The theme of Cervantino ‘09 was the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, and the free films and exhibitions reflected this. Fizzing light bulbs hovering in darkness, deep space photography, nebulous abstractions in paint. The cinemas, the auditoriums, the museums and exhibition crawlspaces all filled with people. The families, the visiting artists, the couples and those that had actually booked tickets to events all savoured the offerings of the city.
It is for the night, and for the booze and the carouse that most people come to Cervantino though, and as the city turned dusky the flow of people increased until the main streets were all seething. But bacchanalia is not an official part of the Cervantino schedule; every night it must start of its own accord. The crowd of guys demanding kisses from passing gals, the breakdancers, the medievalists, the Quixote impersonator and his clanging, menacing spurs; they got the party started, trampling the no drinking in public ordinance. In their wake came the musicians, mimes and fire twirlers, and then there were competing strains of music echoing out of every plaza. The dancing began, and the staggering, and the groping, and the conga lines and the late night mayonnaise-drenched elote.
And as the rain began to fall one of the many many mariachi bands started a march through the street, and was joined by the thousands, and they converged on one of the arbitrary plazas, and still the people were pouring off buses and out of taxis and into the streets, last minute arrivals from anywhere, with no place to sleep and no way to keep dry.
The following morning was already my last morning, the streets were cool and wet but the sky was achingly blue. All-night figures sprawled in the parks and discreet tents had been pitched in grassy corners. There were many hanging head held in many hands. There were the last lingering fondlings of one night stands. And there were more people arriving, and fresh bands were shining their instruments, and the tortillas were frying and the beer was being delivered and it was all one endless carouse, all so fittingly hopelessly spectacularly quixotic.
And I had been to Cervantino.
In April Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez reached out to Barack Obama and gave him a gift. It wasn’t a billion barrels of crude or a letter of resignation, which were no doubt what Obama was hoping for, but rather a very normal and inoffensive-looking book (this was still far better than Evo Morales’ gift, which was another round of accusations that the US was trying to kill him. Sigh).
The book was Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, a tome of some existing fame which became an instant bestseller as it was passed from Chavez to Obama.
The title should give some indication as to what the book is about, but given that the gift was an untranslated Spanish-language edition, it’s safe to say Obama hasn’t spent much time pouring over its pages. To avoid the potentially awkward consequences that could ensue from the next meeting between Chavez and Obama (“how did you like your gift” “oh yeah, it was pretty, um, interesting” “so which bits did you like the best” “well definitely the um, the start was pretty, like, um, hey look, there’s Kevin Rudd!” “Who?”), I thought I’d provide some cheat notes to help Obama. He’s a busy man after all; he has a Peace Prize to earn…
Title: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Author: Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan journalist and freelance political exile.
Published: 1971, and then again later.
Chapter Summaries
Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 1: Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 2: King Sugar and other Agricultural Monarchs. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 3: The Invisible Sources of Power. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 4: Tales of Premature Death. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Chapter 5: The Contemporary Structures of Power. Explains how Latin America is exploited.
Seven Years After. Explains how Latin America is still exploited.
Setting
Venezuelan oil fields, Bolivian silver mines, Brazilian favelas, Caribbean sugar plantations, Central American banana plantations, Brazilian coffee plantations, Chilean guano deposits and copper mines, nineteenth century Paraguay, Zapatista Mexico, the Panama Canal, Argentine prisons, leaky slave galleons, denuded rainforests………..
Characters
The Spanish. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Villains.
The English, and to a lesser extent the other Europeans. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Came after the Spanish (see above). Villains.
The USAmericans. Outsiders that harvested, mined and plundered Latin America for their own benefit. Came after the English (see above). Villains.
The Oligarchy. Insiders that privatised, mortgaged and sold Latin America for their own benefit. Villains.
The International Monetary Fund. See the USAmericans.
Augusto Pinochet. Chilean general who became president/dictator through a violent coup. Friend of the Oligarchy (see above) and the USAmericans (see above). A villain.
Salvador Allende. Chilean socialist president overthrown by Augusto Pinochet (see above). A hero.
Isabel Allende. First cousin once removed of Salvador Allende (see above). Wrote the foreword to Open Veins. Likes it. Fled Augusto Pinochet’s coup (see above) carrying a copy of Open Veins (an early edition, before she had written the foreword).
Old Woman. Lives in a São Paulo hovel. Drinks coffee from small tin can and talks to author. Claims that Brazil is “ours”. An anecdote.
Quotes
“We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity”.
“The massacres of Indians that began with Columbus never stopped”.
“The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret – every year, three Hiroshima bombs”.
“There are less than 1,000 computers in Latin America and 50,000 in the United States”.
“One wonders if those that made us paralytic might offer us a wheelchair”.
“One writes to answer the questions that buzz in one’s head”.
Notes for the President (of the USA)
* Don’t take anything Galeano says too personally, after all you were only 10 years old when this book was published, and not directly complicit in, for example, the CIA’s support of Pinochet.
* Galeano is opposed to slavery, to indentured labour, to serfdom, and to other forms of labour exploitation. By aligning yourself similarly you may be able to reach out to those of the left like Galeano and Hugo Chavez. These people cannot vote for you, but being cordial to them might boost your popularity with certain demographics (most of whom also cannot vote for you).
* The CIA, the IMF, the green berets and the oil companies are for the large part unpopular within Latin America. This may be because every time they become involved in Latin America people start dying (according to Galeano). Finding less polarising cultural ambassadors to send to the region may prove worthwhile.
* Galeano wrote Open Veins in the years after Che Guevara was assassinated. Neither this event nor the ongoing embargo seem to have ended the Communist threat in the region. Cuba may be the country that has changed the least from the time of the book’s publication to today. It might be time to consider a new Cuba strategy.
* Five hundred years of exploitation has not caused Latin America to love unreservedly the Spanish (see above) or the English (see above) or the USAmericans (see above). For the USAmericans at least it is not to late to rethink this approach. It might be time to call off the conquest.
