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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.
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.
The moment we were out of Guadalajara the land became steeper and greener. Was Guadalajara intentionally founded in an unspectacular pan of land, or has it just buried all the prettiness beneath car parks and cine centres? Who cares; all the prettiness you could need is scattered just beyond the city limits. All you need is a car…
My first weekend out of Guadalajara, dashing off after school, stuffing a pack with things I wouldn’t need, and volvoing off into the lush coconut groves that separate the city from the beaches.
We the mandatory, token English teachers among the many international students and multilingual Mexicans. A pristine house of many rooms and terraces had been rented on the peninsula that interjects between Manzanillo’s two long arcs of beach. Manzanillo, the country’s busiest port and a prominent notch in the belt of expat-retiree-friendly destinations that wraps around Mexico. The downtown streets swell with American franchises. Close to the water piles of green coconuts await consumption, their husks scatter throughout the city. The jungle and the green encroaches everywhere upon the city, reclaiming unwanted shells of hotels and gas stations.
On the first night lightning splintered the sky sending us scampering from the pool. The weekenders washed up at the house in waves, and when the house overflowed we surged on to occupy a dingy hotel and a spectacular apartment-owned-by-someone’s-parents.
There were too many people, we couldn’t stay cohesive. We took our respective beers or someone else’s and dispersed along the beaches. The Pacific coast is where the surf is at in Mexico; the Caribbean is for flat, immaculate beaches. The Manzanillo beaches roiled up waves that broke right onto the sand, spitting out limp bodysufers.
We took a boat to the rocky outcrops where austere pelicans watch over the mouth of the bay. They sat alone, their long beaks in their chests, one eye half-ignoring us, the heaps of guano attesting to the long centuries of their vigils.
We snorkelled among the same fish we snorkel among in Australia, and I was surprised to see them here.
On the beach below the spectacular apartment the stones were scuttling and cracking because every second one of them was a hermit crab. More crabs had climbed the stairs to, for some reason, live in the swimming pool. At night the lawns rippled with fireflies and it seemed unfair that all this pretty animalness was confined to the deluxe condo part of the city. But everywhere in the city there were lizards and the silhouettes of sea birds, and scorpions too, as it turns out.
The kind of weekend at the end of which you realise you have not even had time to change your underwear of take a shower. There was only time to fall asleep on the beach or on the terrace, or to bolt from the car to pick up more Doritos and beer and Gatorade. There was no time for food. The kind of weekend in which it takes hours to get out of the pool and seconds to get dressed because you’d only be disrobing again anyway. The kind of weekend in which you lay on the bed in the early morning feeling individual beads of sweat lacing their way down your skin until you realise you could be in the pool but wait longer anyway because the sweat is actually quite enjoyable. The kind of unfair weekend that spits you back up among the weekdays mere minutes after you left them behind to go Manzanillo.
Life in Paraguay is essentially life lived one-handed. The conductors on the buses as well as most of the passengers, the pedestrians in downtown Asunción, the motorcyclists in Concepción, the police, the shopkeepers, the idle knots of men in the plazas all manage to go about life using only one hand. Their other hand is forever occupied in clutching a tereré or maté cup; the accompanying thermos is always close by, wedged in armpit or crook of elbow.
Maté is not unique to Paraguay. In northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and in every street in Uruguay people sip on the strong infusion of tea through metal sieve-straws called bombillas. Paraguay, though, is the home of tereré, the same infusion served iced, sweet and packed with medicinal-or-otherwise herbs.
The prevalence of tereré, especially given the inconvenience of relinquishing forever the use of one hand for the sake of lugging it about, defies logical explanation. At all hours and in all situations, tereré is sucked upon in an almost preconscious, unintentional way. It reminds me of the relentless consumption of coca in Bolivia. It reminds me of a child fastidiously, resolutely dragging his security blanket with him at all times.
Perhaps because of this one-handed lifestyle, or the assurance gained by the touch of the tereré flask, or the properties of the tea and herbs, Paraguayan life takes place at a permanently sedate pace. It is a land in which hours and decades disappear easily, where things change slowly and horsedrawn carts still clack along the uneven paved or dirt streets. It is also a place in which people can hide, a haven of obscurity where people can do things they wouldn’t do elsewhere. In the 17th century the Jesuits set up camp here, building their reductions, their missions, and melding their culture with that of the indigenous groups to produce successful, syncretic communities utterly at odds with the exploitative style of other colonial projects in the Americas. In 1767 the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territories, and their little utopia came to an almost overnight halt.
Later Paraguay became the site of New Australia, an attempt by Australian leftist outsiders to build a socialist Utopia, This project in time also fell apart, as its members bickered and formed factions and breakaway communities. Eventually the Paraguayan government put an end to the project, dividing up the land among the community members. Apparently Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister tried to start an all-Aryan New Germany shortly after this.
More successful and showing no signs of disappearing or being disappeared are the Mennonites. The promise of unsettled land and complete seclusion drew them groups of Mennonites from the persecutions of the norths down to the wilds of Paraguay, where they could and can practice their religion in peace. Other groups (eg Japanese, Korean, Jewish refugees, Nazis, the Moonies) have also found their havens down in the obscurity of Paraguay.
The country is not always a sanctuary, though. A long history of dictators-acting-with-impunity has kept Paraguay a paradise of corruption, and at times cruelty and barbarism. It has long been a haven of contraband and cut-throat, cut-price shopping for big brothers Brazil and Argentina. Most of urban Paraguay hugs its river-borders, as close as possible to potential customers and commerce. Paraguay’s largest export is hydroelectric power, of which Brazil and Argentina enjoy vast amounts at criminally low prices.
The isolation of Paraguay has also preserved pockets of wilderness and wildlife, and perhaps most curiously of all, a language. Prior to European colonisation, Paraguay was inhabited by many small indigenous groups speaking a variety of languages, many completely distinct form another. Today though, Guaraní is the language of choice, and is more widely spoken than Spanish, with which it shares official language duties. This is the only case in the Americas of an indigenous language being adopted on a widespread scale by non-indigenous speakers, and stands in awkward discord with the plight of indigenous people and culture at large. Several indigenous groups today are on the brink of extinction, their entire remaining populace living in roadside shanties that look out across land they are legally entitled to, but still are powerless to inhabit.
I spent a good deal of time not quite sure of what to do in Paraguay. Its only superlatives, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam and the world’s largest aquifier – a huge underground source of freshwater – are not the most thrilling prospective destinations. This is not to say that Paraguay is short on things-worth-looking-at; they are just little known or publicised outside of the country. I spent much time on buses or in plazas watching one-handed life trickle by me. The people I encountered were both shy and eager to help; they would point me in the right direction, pause as though to say more, and then quickly slip away. Although Paraguay has long been a haven for outsiders, these have tended to keep to themselves. The volunteers and tourists that turn up in Paraguay, hoping to find rather than lose themselves, are curious specimens for locals. Even the owner of my hotel in Asunción asked me what was keeping me there (for four nights).
Sometimes the cautious hospitality was incredibly helpful; in Encarnación I was eventually escorted by police patrol to the house of a friend of the couchsurfer I was supposed to be staying with but couldn’t contact. Other times the best-intentioned help didn’t work out; trying to leave Ybycuí I was told that Paraguayans always stop to offer a ride to anyone in need. This is true, but most Paraguayans aren’t on long-hall journeys from town to town. The few available rides on that empty road were mostly over the next hill to the next farmhouse.
The languid pace of life slows even further out there in the suburbs, the towns, the villages, the little concrete houses lost among overgrown gardens and herds of long-eared cows. On that night when I couldn’t find my couchsurfer I stayed in the poorest house I will probably ever stay in, a thing of corrugated iron and crooked-fitting wooden pailings and dirt floor. This was also where I received the warmest welcome fo Paraguay, where I was given a bed and plied with traditional food (including the chicken that had just had its neck wrung). It was here in this least probable of settings that I was finally, fully welcomed into the world of the one-handed, sipping on hot maté to counter the rain drumming on the iron roof and staining everything with brick-red mud.
