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2023, April 2023

Mayan Revivalist Architecture

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By Randy Jackson

One “best book” list I continually return to over the years is National Geographic’s 100 Best Adventure Books. A number of these true adventure epics have held me riveted from cover to cover. One of the books on this list is Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by an American lawyer turned archeologist John Lloyd Stephens (1805-52). The two volumes, published in 1843, contain the classic adventure tales of hardships, endurance, fascinating characters, and life in the Central American jungles of the 1800s. However, the tale’s mark on the world went far beyond a tale of adventure; it introduced a virtually unknown (and lost) civilization to the world, the Mayan civilization.

The Aztec civilization was well established in the historical records as a result of the Spanish Conquest. But right up until the beginning of the 20th century, very little was known of earlier ruins found in Mexico and Central America. The Eurocentric view, held by most scholars of the era, was that the Aztec civilization originated long before the Spanish conquest, with the arrival of some unknown peoples from Asia, Europe, or the Middle East (a foundational belief still held by the Mormon Church). Stephens’ book marked an important turning point away from this view, towards our understanding that the Mesoamerican civilizations originated independently. As a result of this book’s publication, the mystery of and fascination with an unknown civilization, the Maya, exploded in the popular imagination of the early 20th century. One aspect of this interest was the birth of Mayan Revivalist Architecture, which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Mayan influence on design and architecture came from the illustrations in Stephens’ book, which were made by a British artist, Frederick Catherwood, who accompanied Stephens on his Yucatan adventures. Catherwood’s illustrations not only conjured up romantic images of the discovery of a lost civilization in the jungle, they also inspired new concepts of design in architecture. As an indication of the importance of Catherwood’s illustrations, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of New York called his work in the Yucatan “a landmark of architectural illustration.”

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mayan Revival Architecture

One architect who first incorporated ideas from Mayan design was the famed American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s first exposure to Mayan architecture was in connection with some architectural work he did at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. One exhibit Wright would have seen at the fair contained full-scale models of four Mayan structures in the Yucatan, based on Catherwood’s illustrations. One was the Gateway at Labnah, southeast of Uxmal.

Any web searches of Mayan Revivalist Architecture will list a number of buildings designed by Wright. Wright’s renowned contribution to architecture, known as the Prairie School, has elements that can be seen as inspired by the ancient Mayans. Some observable architectural elements common to Wright’s Prairie School designs and extant Mayan ruins are horizontal lines, flat roof construction, use of natural materials, and Mayan motifs.

Later in Wright’s career, he drew most directly on the Mayan Architectural style for some commissions in Southern California. The first of the buildings he designed in this style was the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles (completed in 1922).

Beyond Frank Lloyd Wright, there were other architects whose designs are considered Mayan Revival; to name two, Manuel Amábilis designed the Monumento a la Patria in Mérida and Stiles Oliver Clements designed the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles.

Of the many buildings designed using the concepts of Mayan Revival architecture, most of them are in the United states. Five alone – four residences (including the Hollyhock House) and the North Hollywood Masonic Lodge – are listed in the Los Angeles Conservancy, which protects historically important buildings in LA.

One building in the Mayan Revivalist style that caught my attention is in Mexico City: The Templo de la Ciudad de México. My attention was first arrested by the architecture, but I was quickly astounded by the fact that it is a Mormon Temple. Astounded because of the irony: this architectural style was chosen in part because of the Mormon belief that the indigenous peoples of the Americas originated from the lost tribes of Israel.

The long-held belief that outside influences established the Mesoamerican civilizations that preceded the Spanish conquest was the very theory discredited by John Lloyd Stephens in his book – the very book that started the Mayan Revivalist Architectural style in the first place. Nevertheless, the Templo de la Ciudad de Mexico is a beautiful building. There are many other impressive buildings designed under the influence of Mayan Revival architecture. They are well worth some of your Google time.

Email: box95jackson@gmail.com

2023, March 2023

The Saga of Huatulco’s Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue)

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By Randy Jackson

During the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006-12), FONATUR relaunched a multi-year development plan for Huatulco (Relanzamiento del CIP Huatulco). This plan spelled out specific long-term development goals for each of the nine bays of Huatulco. The plan also included three large shorter-term projects that were initially funded by the Calderón administration. These were expanding the Huatulco Airport (completed in 2015), constructing the museum at the Parque Eco-Arqueológico Copalita (opened in 2010), and building Quinta Avenida – a pedestrian corridor connecting Santa Cruz and La Crucecita. This corridor project is still not complete, but after some years of inactivity, construction has now started on a number of the commercial lots along Quinta Avenida.

This pedestrian corridor goes by a few different names. One is Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue); it is also referred to as an andador turístico (tourist walkway), or as corredor turistico (tourist corridor). The corridor runs between Boulevard Benito Juárez in Santa Cruz, starting next to the Hotel Castillo, and the sports complex in La Crucecita. Many of us regular Huatulco-ites are familiar with this sunbaked 1.5-kilometer walkway that, for some years now, has maintained trees and shrubs and has security personnel on either end, looking at their phones.

My optimistic thoughts projected a soon-to-be completed pedestrian avenue, lined with shaded restaurant terraces, shops and hotels. Except here I’d like to paraphrase Woody Allen: “Optimism is the feeling you have before you understand what is going on.” The commercial construction projects along the pedestrian corridor would appear to be the start of the final stage of this project, but significant hurdles remain.

Development of the Pedestrian Corridor
The FONATUR plan for the corridor, issued in 2008, called for 33 lots with a parking area on each end. The plan spelled out in detail all the work to be undertaken by FONATUR to prepare the corridor, including water, sewer, internet and electrical infrastructure, as well as environmental impact and remediation. In 2009 the environmental approval for the corridor was granted, and then the project seemed to fall into a kind of dark age. Over the following seven years construction started and stopped. In 2014 there was a media report that the pedestrian corridor had been completely abandoned. Cables had been stolen by thieves and the company constructing the corridor had withdrawn.

But, as the children’s song goes, “The cat came back.” Sometime in 2016-17, FONATUR completed the project at a cost of 300 million pesos ($15 Million US) and the 33 lots went up for sale. FONATUR was looking for a single buyer of all 33 lots, and would not entertain selling individual lots. There were no takers. More years passed.

Then, following outside advice from a local business consortium, FONATUR reconfigured some of the lots that were too small, making 24 lots from the original 33. They then offered all of the lots for sale to individual buyers, and by September 2020 all 24 lots were sold. All of the lots are deemed as mixed commercial and residential. This means shops or restaurants on the ground level, and up to three stories above will be either hotels or apartments.

Following the lot sales, the pandemic delayed construction another two years, bringing us to the winter season of 2022-23. There are now a number of construction projects evident along the corridor. And this brings us to the unresolved issues facing the pedestrian corridor today.

Outstanding Issues with the Pedestrian Corridor
Pedestrian tourist corridors are a standard feature of FONATUR-developed resorts and exist in Cancun (Playa del Carmen) and Ixtapa. They are all named 5th Avenue after the famous shopping street in New York City. But unlike the pedestrian walkways in these other resorts, or any pedestrian street anywhere, Huatulco’s 5th Avenue climbs a (not insignificant) hill.

The biggest issue appears to be that of parking. The final phase of the pedestrian corridor project calls for parking lots at both ends as well as a pedestrian crosswalk to connect the corridor with the shops and businesses of Santa Cruz. The parking areas are yet to be developed, as FONATUR expects to sell the parking areas to a commercial parking lot investor for multi-level paid parking. To date these parking areas have not been sold and FONATUR is looking to the purchasers of the 24 lots along the corridor to collectively buy and develop the parking areas. My suggestion to anyone who suffers congestion anxiety is to suppress any thoughts of what traffic might be like with hundreds of new residents from the corridor, plus casual visitors, who need to cross the main thoroughfare into Santa Cruz at the traffic circle next to the Hotel Castillo.

Lastly, there is a temporary problem with electricity to the pedestrian corridor. When FONATUR built the 5th Avenue, the process of connecting the electrical network to the CFE system was not followed, leaving the purchasers of the lots without electricity. CFE is now providing temporary power until the exact protocol connecting the network is completed.

March is the month when many of us snowbirds migrate back northward, but construction on many developments in Huatulco continues throughout the summer, creating a buffet of surprises for us when we return next season. As for the pedestrian corridor, two of the construction projects have a posted completion date for the end of 2025. Assuming this is indicative of the other projects along the corridor, we can expect another couple years at least in the saga of Quinta Avenida Huatulco.

box95jackson@gmail.com

2023, February 2023

The Saturday Boarders of La Bocana

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By Randy Jackson

They began meeting at La Bocana beach on Saturday mornings for boogie boarding more than a decade ago. Back then the only boards available around Huatulco were boards too small for an adult. Although that meant the rides, even on the biggest waves, were quite short, they had a taste of what great fun it is playing in the waves. They returned in subsequent seasons with boards more suited to their size, and their fun in the waves really began.

A boogie board is a trademark term for bodyboards, just as Kleenex is a trademark term for facial tissues. However, “boogie” in front of “board” is an indispensable descriptor of the use of the device, much as “magic” is a descriptor to the term “magic wand” (a wand in medieval English means stick). To “boogie” is to dance, whereas a bodyboard could mean something you lay a cadaver on. So, in the spirit of good clean fun, the Bocana Boarders prefer the term boogie board. And by adding “ing” to “board,” as in Boogie Boarding, it becomes an activity of jollification.

The origin of this activity is attributed to the indigenous peoples of Polynesia. A lesser-known fact in surfing history is that most early Polynesians lay prone on their boards, and only rarely were they observed standing up on them. The Polynesian term for this form of fun is he’e nalu, or “wave sliding.”

The Saturday Boarders of Bocana are a small non-elite group of gringo-pensioners. They are much less fearful of the waves than the possibility of developing neck wattles. But then again, the waves in the snowbird season are generally modest, not at all like the cresting turquoise four-meter waves off French Polynesia. In fact, the surfer term for the type of winter waves at La Bocana is “shoreys.” In Tahiti, shoreys are mostly used by the surfers’ Swedish girlfriends to wash sand off their calves. To the Boarders of Bocana, however, shoreys are riotously more exciting than even the upward curve of bank stocks.

Like good surfers everywhere, the Saturday Boarders of Bocana have honed their skills using practiced techniques appropriate for the conditions. This type of boogie boarding requires one to stand in waist-to-chest-deep water, watching for the appropriate ocean swell that will break into a curl near one’s standing position. Then, facing towards shore, they tuck the back end of the board into their waist while looking back over their shoulder at the rapidly forming wave. Then, just as the wave is about to break overhead, they leap shoreward onto their board, their momentum joining the force of the wave as it breaks.

From shore, the boarder’s motion will appear to hesitate slightly as the wave crests. Then, tipping earthwards as the wave breaks, the boarder shoots downwards and disappears into the crashing water and foam of the breaking wave. It takes two or three seconds for the laws of physics to work out the boarder’s fate. Spectators on shore hold their breath. Sometimes a riderless board is shot skyward (“oooh’s” from the crowd). But, emerging from the wave-froth is the face of a skilled Bocana Boarder, grinning, out ahead of the wall of foam, careening towards the beach. The crowd cheers.

Oh, and the crowd? It’s an imaginary one. The wives and friends of the Bocana Boarders are there each Saturday morning for the event, but not to watch it. Some stroll along the beach, others are busy with their fish tacos and beverages at the restaurant. Alas, the Bocana Boarders’ daring acts of athletic wave conquest are rarely witnessed.

A good ride ends when the board smooches to a stop on the sand, just centimeters from the highest wave mark. That wave delivering the boarder to the beach was a final bit of energy culminating from planetary forces of wind and gravity. While the earth spins at 107,000 kilometers per hour, the gravitational pull of the moon sloshes the oceans like pulling a beer keg out of a bathtub. But as oblivious to these cosmic forces as they are to farting in Walmart, the Bocana Boarder rises from the beach, tucks his board under his arm, and heads back into the oncoming waves.

Yet in this dimension, where time exists, the fun in the waves must inevitably end. So while galaxies rotate, supernovas explode, and nebulas coalesce, there on the edge of a continent, on this blue spinning planet, the Saturday Boarders of La Bocana leave barefoot tracks from the water’s edge, with a promise of fish burgers and later the open-mouthed oblivion of an afternoon nap.

Email: box95jackson@gmail.com

2023, January 2023

Huatulco’s Water System: In Survival Mode?

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By Randy Jackson

In survival training, there is the Rule of Three’s: You can survive three minutes without air. You can survive three days without water, and you can survive three weeks without food. Air, it seems, is plentiful enough. But knowing we only have a three-day survival window without water should make us all prioritise a clean, dependable, potable water system. In Mexico, as in most places in the world, people depend on the government to provide sufficient potable water for their needs. In Huatulco, the potable water system, built and maintained by FONATUR (the Fondo Nacional de Fomento Turismo, the National Tourism Promotion Fund), is facing the challenge of meeting the growing demands on the water system.

Anyone living in Huatulco, even for part of the year, is well aware of the frequency of water outages. In some sectors, people are without water for several hours every day. Other sectors experience frequent unannounced water outages for multiple days each week. What has mitigated the seriousness of the water delivery problems up to this point is that virtually all residential buildings and hotels have water storage tanks and cisterns that hold three or four days’ worth of water. This mitigation measure can give the appearance of “all is well,” but it seems apparent that the demand for potable water in Huatulco is seriously challenging the capacity of the FONATUR potable water system to provide it.

In my attempt to understand Huatulco’s potable water system, I set out to answer four basic questions.

(1) What area and population does the FONATUR water system serve?
(2) What are the uses of water in Huatulco?
(3) How much potable water is available?
(4) How much potable water is needed?

First, what do we mean by “potable” water? Potable water covers normal household uses. Drinking, cooking, washing, toilets and showers. FONATUR provides “gray” water for irrigating street plantings, but many residents use potable water for lawns and plants. In Huatulco, it also includes the water used in swimming pools.

(1) WHAT AREA AND POPULATION DOES THE FONATUR WATER SYSTEM SERVE?

For a past article in The Eye (January 2022), I noted that the government census showed 25,000 residents in the Tourist Zone of Huatulco, including La Crucecita. This, plus the approximately 7,000 hotel guests here in the high season, means that the FONATUR potable water system is serving approximately 32,000 people. In a 2022 request to fund a water study, FONATUR indicated that this number would rise to 41,000 by 2030.

Other communities within the larger area of the municipality of Santa María Huatulco, which includes the communities of Santa María itself, Copalita, Coyula, and others), all have potable water sources outside of the FONATUR system. The FONATUR water system covers the area from the Copalita River (think La Bocana), westward along the coast covering all the communities and bays along the coast as far as Maguey, and inland to include La Crucecita.

Most of the FONATUR water delivery is by pipe to end use, but in some sectors, like H3, the water is trucked in by FONATUR.

(2) WHAT ARE USES OF WATER IN HUATULCO?

In 2018, FONATUR, under their obligations for transparency, published a presentation on the potable water system for Huatulco. The 2017 consumption data are summarised here:

(3) HOW MUCH POTABLE WATER IS AVAILABLE?

The FONATUR potable water supply comes from eight wells along the Copalita river. The total water extracted from the wells in 2017 was 11 million litres per day. In a recent budget request document (2022), FONATUR reported that their current well production was 15 million litres per day, and stated that the amount was insufficient to meet existing requirements.

A budget of $9.7 million pesos ($500,000 USD) was granted to FONATUR for a pre-investment study in 2023 of locations for new wells, with the goal of bringing the potable water supply up to 21 million litres per day. As this budget is only for well site selection, it is probably safe to assume that any additional potable water for Huatulco is some years away.

For some time now, I have been aware of persistent rumours that some of FONATUR’s potable water wells are impaired or non-functional. By visiting the wells and talking to operations personnel, I can confirm that all eight wells are in operation, and only one well (#8) has a reduced flow rate, roughly 25% lower than the average of the other seven wells. My investigation would confirm that the combined volume of all the wells is about 15 – 16 million litres of water per day.

Of course, the amount produced is not always the amount delivered. As shown in the consumption table above, 14% of the water produced from the wells was lost. Water lost due to leakage is a perennial problem in water delivery systems around the world. The loss rate in Canada and the United States is around 12%. In Mexico overall, the loss rate is thought to be between 20% and 40% as a result of underfunded maintenance of water infrastructure. Here in Huatulco, the reported 14% loss was before the last major earthquake. In just the previous month (December 2022), FONATUR finished replacing a damaged section of mainline pipe near La Bocana. Water lost from leakage is not only from the pipes and tanks used to deliver water to consumers. There are leaks in the water storage cisterns of residential buildings and hotels. Although the loss from private cisterns would not show up in the FONATUR water loss statistics, it would still reduce potable water availability to consumers, requiring even more supply.

One final note on water availability. Stating the obvious, the FONATUR Huatulco water system is dependent on funding. That funding is provided by the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). In 2022, Huatulco was allocated $250 million Pesos ($12 million USD) to improve deteriorated infrastructure, including water.

For 2023, the PPEF (El Proyecto de Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación , basically the Budget of Expenses project) has announced their proposed funding for the tourism sector as follows:

*Ixtapa (Guerrero), Huatulco (Oaxaca), Bahía de Banderas (Nayarit), Los Cabos and Loreto (Baja California Sur), Pacific Coast (Sinaloa), Cancun and Cozumel (Quintana Roo)

The 2023 appropriation for the Mayan Train is $8.7 billion USD. A Bloomberg news story from July 2022 reported the total cost to Mexico to complete the Mayan Train could reach $20 Billion USD.

(4) HOW MUCH POTABLE WATER IS NEEDED?

Water systems around the world are sized in accordance with the formula:

Population times average water use/person/day = Volume of water needed per day

The volume of water per person varies in different countries and regions. The international OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has collected data on the per capita use of potable water. The United States leads the world in consumption at 380 litres/person/day, Canada is at 335, Italy 250, and Sweden at 200 litres/person/day. I found only one reference on comparable water use in Mexico, and that was for Mexico City, which uses 200 litres/person/day.

To figure out Huatulco’s per-person use of water, I used the Huatulco water consumption by category table above. If residential users consume 34% of the supply, and the population is about 25,000 people, consumption would come to 154 litres/person/day. Per person use by hotels, 28% of consumption, is substantially higher. Depending on occupancy rate, hotels use between 450 and 900 litres/person/day.

I’m still, however, trying to answer this question: How much potable water is NEEDED? The full answer to this question would depend on what “need” means. Or better still, do we need all the water we use? So let me throw out one more number. The World Health Organization suggests the minimum per person requirement for water use is 30 litres per day (for drinking, cooking, personal hygiene and laundry). As we all use way more than that, it is an open question as to how much even modest conservation efforts might reduce the demand on the Huatulco water system.

Although water conservation could be an important part of the solution to Huatulco water shortage problems, conservation of a shared resource never seems to happen voluntarily. So Huatulco-ites should expect to see their water bills continue to rise, and water outages to keep on keeping on.

Randy Jackson email: box95jackson@gmail.com

December 2022

I really don’t know clouds at all.

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By Randy Jackson

I was in my early teens when I first heard the song “Both Sides Now,” a Joni Mitchell song first made into a hit by Judy Collins. Like my contemporaries back then, I was more into the burgeoning rock and roll scene, which didn’t include Judy Collins. But even though I first thought the song was more fitting for my parents’ generation, I was struck by its emotional power, which still resonates when I hear the song today.

It’s the first verse of the song, about the variability of clouds, that sets the stage for the subsequent verses on love and on life. As the song goes, clouds can be like ice cream castles in the air, yet they rain and snow on everyone. Clouds at times represent both the beauty of nature unfolding before us, and at other times they are the raw unleashed power of nature itself. It’s no wonder Joni wrote the line, “I really don’t know clouds at all.”

Clouds, whether they form ice cream castles or storms, are the visual manifestation of climate. Clouds (rain), or their absence (drought), have maintained and destroyed civilizations. Here in Huatulco, we are on part of the lands of the earliest mesoamerican civilization, the Zapotec, the people of the clouds. Although many of us are seasonal visitors here, avoiding the clouds, snow, and storms of winter, globally we continue to see more severe weather events, so it might be wise to know a little about clouds.

Four different cloud types – an interesting sample!

Cloud Type: Shelf Cloud
Photograph location: Yucatan, Mexico

A shelf or wall cloud has a dark bottom and a clearly defined structure low to the ground. Photographs of these clouds are among the most striking images of storm clouds. These cloud formations are very common (although typically not this clearly defined). They bring thunderstorms – if one is approaching, take cover.

Cloud Type: Anvil Cloud
Photograph location: Near the France/Italy border

An anvil cloud occurs when updrafts reach a point in the atmosphere where the cloud can no longer rise so it spreads out in all directions. This is also a thunderstorm cloud, with strong lightning wind and rain potential.

Cloud type: Overshooting Top
Photo Location: Greece

An overshooting top has such powerful updrafts that it bursts above the layer of an anvil cloud forming a dome much higher in the atmosphere. If this dome is sustained for 10 or more minutes, very severe weather is likely. If you see this formation, take shelter.

Cloud type: Roll Cloud
Photo location: Uruguay

A roll cloud is not a bad weather cloud. It occurs when there is a boundary like a cold front or certain breezes that cause a horizontal vortex, often over bodies of water. These unique clouds are fairly rare.

It’s no wonder Joni Mitchell’s line “I really don’t know clouds” has such universal appeal. Clouds are complicated. The International Cloud Atlas has two volumes with 224 pictures describing 10 main cloud families divided into 14 species. Do you know what the largest supercomputers in the world do (besides quantum mechanics)? Weather forecasting. And as we know, they don’t always get it right.

It turns out that clouds are a bit of a wild card in modeling climate change scenarios. Cloud formation modeling requires extremely fine-scale physics. The behavior of water droplets (what clouds are) in concert with temperature, humidity, winds, and numerous other weather variables, cannot be fully calibrated even with today’s supercomputers. However, advances in machine learning may have helped scientists take a step towards more accurate modeling of clouds. Author Chelsea Harvey, in “Clouds May Speed Up Global Warming” (Scientific American, July, 2021), outlines the results of recent machine learning algorithms on cloud formations and climate change. Unfortunately, new computer modeling rules out most of the moderate climate change scenarios. Although bad news for us all, at least knowing something more about clouds is helpful.

The scientific study of clouds is certainly over my head (pun intended, insert chuckle or groan). But there is one thing we all do know about clouds: they can be astoundingly beautiful. One recent morning at Santa Cruz bay, for example, a large bank of dark clouds dominated the horizon. The rising sun, just behind one corner of the cloud structure, was brilliantly illuminating the upper edge of the clouds while projecting geometric rays into the atmosphere. Down below, at the edge of the far horizon, rain clouds connected with the sea. And with the sea and sky the same slate gray color, Santa Cruz bay looked like a water ramp up to the clouds, meeting, as parallel lines seem to join at the farthest point of our vision. It was maybe one of a million beautiful cloud vistas on earth that day. I wonder how many other observers of such vistas, like me, started humming “I really don’t know clouds at all.”

*refer to the post in the magazine to see the photos of clouds with the descriptions

November 2022

B. Traven – A Mexican Writer with A Mysterious Past

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By Randy Jackson

I was first introduced to the works of the Mexican writer B. Traven in a Spanish class. We were assigned a short story by Traven, titled “Dos Burros.” I found the story compelling. There was something about both the story itself and the style of narration that appealed to me. So, of course, I googled B. Traven, and immediately plummeted down a curiosity rabbit hole about this strange and enigmatic writer.

In 1952, the Mexican government granted citizenship to Berick Traven Torsvan, a person who, by then, was a well-established writer, living in Mexico and writing under the pen name of B. Traven. How Mexican citizenship was granted to a person as fictitious as a character in one of Traven’s own novels is a mystery in itself.

To confuse his identity further, in Mexico Traven never appeared as Traven, but represented himself as Hal Croves, a supposed friend and agent of B. Traven. When the Hollywood producer John Huston paid for the movie rights to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he handed the cheque to a person claiming to be Hal Croves, a person with Power of Attorney for B. Traven. Both Huston and the main actor in the film, Humphrey Bogart, later claimed they always thought Hal Croves was B. Traven himself.

But why all this subterfuge? There are many reclusive writers, J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye, for one, and Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, for another – there are many more. But Traven wasn’t the reclusive type. He actively sought to deceive others about his true identity. After his death (March 26, 1969, in Mexico City), we learned the identity Traven was trying to hide was that of Ret Marut, a wanted man with a death sentence on his head.

The Hidden Past of B. Traven

The early days of the Weimar Republic in German (following World War I) were tumultuous, especially in the state of Bavaria (later leading to the rise of Hitler). In April of 1919, a Bavarian Socialist Republic was proclaimed following a communist uprising. Ret Marut became a committee member of that new Socialist Republic. He was arrested just one month later by a Berlin-based militia, which crushed the upstart socialist republic. Ret Marut was put in with a group of prisoners who were being summarily tried and shot. Before his name was called, a sympathetic guard allowed Marut to escape. Marut found his way to London where he was imprisoned for a time for not registering as a foreigner. Eventually Marut found work shovelling coal on decrepit steam ships destined to be scuttled for insurance proceeds. That work brought him to Mexico in 1924.

In Mexico, Murat began using the name Traven Torsvan, writing stories under the name B Traven. Within about a year his stories began to be published in Germany, starting with the serialised The Cotton-Pickers (Die Baumwollpflücker, 1925, published as a novel called The Wobbly [Der Wobbly, the short name for Industrial Workers of the World union] in 1926).

The Writing Career of B. Traven

The stories of B. Traven quickly became popular in Germany (almost all his published works were written in German and published in Germany). He was seen as an adventure story writer. His writing was reminiscent of the very popular works of the American writer Jack London (1896-1916). Traven’s first major success as a novelist was in 1926 with the publication, in Germany, of Death Ship (Das Totenschiff). As a testament to this book’s enduring popularity, years later Albert Einstein is reported to have said it was the book he would take with him to a desert island. Death Ship is seen as autobiographical for Traven. It portrays the life of an international undocumented seamen who is treated like a slave, no doubt derived from Traven’s own experiences in getting to Mexico in 1924.

In 1927, Traven published his most famous novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Der Schatz der Sierra Madre). This was the first of Traven’s novels to be published in Mexico (1931). Later it was also the first Traven novel to be published in English (1934). This story was made into the award-winning film of the same name, now considered a classic, by John Huston in 1948. The story of two down-on-their-luck Americans in Mexico who follow a prospector in the search for gold is well-known, especially for an inaccurate version of the lines delivered by the Mexican bandit Gold Hat, “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”

Through the 1930’s Traven published a series of six novels that are generally referred to as The Jungle Novels. These books tell stories of repressed Mexican indigenous people, and their ill-fated attempts to push back against the harsh dictatorship of President Porfirio Díaz, leading up to the Mexican Revolution. It is for these Jungle Novels that the Peruvian novelist Luis Alberto Sánchez (1900-94) labelled B. Traven the author of the Mexican Revolution.

The last of the Jungle Novels, General from the Jungle (Ein General kommt aus dem Dschungel) was published in 1940, seemingly marking the end of Traven’s most productive period. His final four novels before his death in 1969 were Aslan Norval (1960; rediscovered after Traven’s death and translated to English in 2020), Stories by the Man Nobody Knows (published in Mexico as Cuentos de B. Traven, 1969), The Creation of the Sun and the Moon (published in English in New York, 1968), and The Kidnapped Saint and Other Stories (published posthumously, in English in New York, 1975).

Macmillan Publishers now reports that books by B. Traven have sold over 30 million copies and have been translated into 30 languages.

The Stories of B. Traven

As mentioned, my introduction to the writings of B. Traven was the short story “Dos Burros.” What I found compelling was his clear, down-to-earth narrative about a time and place in rural Mexico that were unfamiliar to me. I later read a number of his other short stories, the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and I re-watched the movie made from the novel. I wish I had the skills to properly articulate what it was that attracted me to Traven stories. However, when I came across this description of Traven’s prose in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I thought this nailed it:

Traven’s works are harsh, filled with descriptions of danger, cruelty, and physical and emotional suffering, but his lean, direct prose has a hypnotic immediacy, and the narratives and themes are clear and compelling.

In the world of literary criticism, there is a perennial unresolved question: Do we need to know anything about a writer to bring more meaning to the works of that writer? Traven, who so desperately wanted to distance himself from his past, certainly had an opinion on this issue: “The creative person should have no other biography than his works.” I wonder whether Traven was aware of how his past and his world view so clearly impacted the stories he told. Probably the best example of this is his novel The Death Ship, which emerged from Traven’s own experiences. Traven (Ret Marut) was an anarchist with clear political leanings towards the underclass and social injustices, and against capitalist exploitation and greed. The Jungle Novels in particular clearly demonstrate these sentiments.

There are no happy endings in Traven’s stories. Of my readings of B. Traven, all the stories ended with my feeling as if things were left up in the air. Nobody ever seemed to come out ahead. A good example? The ending of the novel and movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, when the main character Dobbs (played by Humphrey Bogart) is killed and the gold dust blows away in the wind.

It is characteristic of Traven to never come down on anyone’s side, there are no winners in his stories. In “Dos Burros,” for example, a landless peasant is befriended by a wild donkey so ugly and unruly that nobody wanted him. But once people saw that the donkey was working for this peasant, two different people claimed the same donkey (dos burros), and the peasant ended up with no donkey at all.

No matter his up-in-the-air endings, or characters that never come out on top, B. Traven is read for the content of his stories, the adventure of his tales, the richness of his hapless characters, and his compelling narrative voice. B. Traven is a Mexican writer well deserving of his literary popularity.

October 2022

Ghosts: From Manitoba and Mexico

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By Randy Jackson

In Canada, back in the early 1980s, one could get a government grant to study French. Many college and university students, including me, did just that. I went to the University of Laval in Quebec City in the summer of 1982, a memorable summer of camaraderie amongst fellow students from across Canada.

The Haunted Manitoba Farmhouse

One evening, on the terrace of the Le Pub Universitaire, a brother and sister (students at the University of Manitoba) held a number of us spellbound with the story of their parents moving their family into a haunted farmhouse. They witnessed numerous poltergeist effects. which terrified them initially, but over time they came to see this ghost as more of a harmless trickster. This Manitoba farm family got to the point they liked having the ghost around. They told us the house would seem empty without it, and it kept unwanted relatives away.

Normally though, it’s the ghosts (not the relatives) that are unwanted. On that warm summer night in La belle province, the brother and sister from the haunted Manitoba farmhouse explained that ghosts were the trapped spirits of people who had died unexpectedly, or by suicide, and most often they died violently.

I now know this is a commonly held belief across virtually all civilizations of all time, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica, from early Chinese civilizations to Polynesia. It seems that no matter what the various beliefs different societies hold about the afterlife, ghosts represent an aberration from whatever afterlife system a culture holds. As Obi-Wan Kenobi is supposed to have said, “I sense a disturbance in the force, Luke.” Ghosts are spirits that are not supposed to be here.

The Malevolent Ghosts of Mesoamerica

In all the pre-conquest societies of Mesoamerica, the cosmos, creation, and the afterlife, were the domain of malevolent supernatural forces. Chicunamictlán was the nine-level Land of the Dead to the Aztecs (for most but not all the departed). Here the departed suffered a four-year journey of great pain and hardships to reach Mictlán, their final resting place. At Mictlán they were met by the god of death who received them with vengeance. The departed lived (and suffered) there until finally being extinguished altogether. Spirits of departed people (ghosts), you’d think, would want out of an afterlife like that. But to the Aztecs, ghosts were feared and unwelcome spirits of the underworld who brought only bad news or the foretelling of doom.

To the Aztecs, even women who died in childbirth were not benevolent. These spirits (known as Cihuātēteoh in Nahuatl) returned to earth on five specified days each year where they were thought to steal children, cause madness, and induce adultery in males (I wonder how many Aztec men used that as an explanation for their infidelity). The modern-day Mexican legend of La Llorona may have had its origin in this Aztec belief. La Llorona is thought to be the malicious spirit of a woman who murdered her children. To some, she is believed to be a siren, who lures men to their deaths, or she steals children to replace those she had murdered. Hardly the phantom door knob rattler of that Manitoba farmhouse.

Another sinister ghost-belief of the Aztecs was the origin of the modern day El Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, although to the Aztecs, it was not the respectful, upbeat celebration of one’s ancestors, as it is practiced today. The original ritual was held in August, when family members offered food, water, and tools to assist their deceased relatives in getting through the difficult four-year afterlife journey to Mictlán where they were put out of their misery.

Christianity Rescues the Ghosts

Under European Christianity, this ritual morphed into the somewhat similarly purposed Christian observation of All Souls Day. To the Christians, All Souls Day was introduced in the 10th century for people to pray for their departed friends and relatives stuck in Purgatory. Purgatory was believed to be an afterlife realm for deceased persons who had sinned a little too much to enter the kingdom of heaven directly after death. So prayers on All Souls day were a type of appeal to the divine to reduce the amount of punishment for these souls, and get them released into heaven. And, although this can be seen as a kind of parallel to the original Day of the Dead ritual, there is one principal difference as well.

To the Christians, the afterlife is eternal. To the Aztecs (and earlier Mesoamerican civilizations), life after death was limited. It was believed, following a period of suffering, that existence in any form was terminated – full stop. And this distinction, I think, reflects back on the cultural view of ghosts overall. It seems to me, the ancient Aztec belief system where the endpoint of an afterlife is individual obliteration (ending one’s suffering), any ghost appearing in this earthly realm could only be malevolent. But in all other societies, including Mexico post-conquest, ghosts are seen as far less threatening.

In fact, ghosts in today’s western hemisphere, although generally considered scary, are not thought to be physically harmful. They even make great tourist attractions. And in this light, the story of a welcomed ghost in that Manitoba farmhouse has some degree of cultural believability. To an ancient Aztec though, such a benevolent spirit would be inconceivable. But then again, if this ancient Aztec first visited a modern-day celebration of Día de los Muertos, he or she could probably be convinced.

August 2022

Tomatoes: Q & A

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By Randy Jackson

Here’s a question that will brighten anyone’s day: “Hey, do you want a toasted tomato sandwich?” Of course you do, everyone does.

Ah, the tomato. We love them, but take them for granted. For example, when we listen to the lyrics of Guy Clark’s song “Homegrown Tomatoes” –

Only two things that money can’t buy –
That’s true love and homegrown tomatoes –

we think, “Yeah, that’s true.” Nobody would sing about true love and an onion or bok choy. When you take something you love for granted, like the tomato, one day you wake up realizing you know almost nothing about it, and curiosity is aroused.

Questions abound: Where do tomatoes originate? Are tomatoes a fruit or vegetable? How many tomato varieties are there? Are tomatoes the most consumed thing ever? How big can a tomato get? What’s the weirdest shaped tomato ever? And the perennial question: Where could I go for a really good tomato fight?

The tomato is thought to have originated in pre-Inca Peru. Back then it was the size of a garden pea. Over the hundreds of years of pre-conquest Mesoamerican civilizations, a variety of types and sizes of tomatoes were cultivated. The Aztec (Nahuatl) word for the green tomato was tomatl (Spanish, tomate) and this is the word that stuck. Good thing too, because the Nahuatl word for the red tomato was xitomatl, which seems less marketable.

It was the Spanish who spread the tomato around the world. In Europe, documents mention the tomato as early as the 1540’s. For about 200 years, the tomato was seen as an ornamental plant for gardens and fruit-bowl displays, as it was generally considered poisonous in Europe. The first tomato recipe we have on record is 1692. But it took another 100 years before the Italians created the tomato sauce for pasta. The rest, as they say, is history.

Is the tomato a fruit or vegetable? Both really. Botanists classify it as a fruit. Nutritionists consider it a vegetable. This is because it is more savoury than sweet, and is often used in salads, not in desserts like most fruits. In 1893, the US Supreme Court declared the tomato a vegetable for tax purposes. Back then vegetables were subject to import duties, while fruits were not. It seems that the US Supreme Court changes its mind on some things, but has never re-addressed their tomato decision.

My guess was that the tomato would be the most eaten fruit/vegetable in the world. What with salsa, pasta and pizza sauces, ketchup, BLT’s, salads, soups, and on every hamburger ever eaten, what could top that? Well, potatoes. At least by weight and acres cultivated. However, before the potato can gloat over its top spot, we should recognize that most potatoes are used for French fries – and what is most often put on French fries? Exactly. Incidentally, potato chips are the second biggest use of the potato, and in Canada we have ketchup-flavoured potato chips – so there, potato!

There are over 10,000 varieties of tomatoes in the world. Most of these varieties are cross-breeds. About 3,000 varieties are considered “heirloom” tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are a sort of “purebred” tomato, traceable to a single genetic plant line. When it comes to the most popular tomato, beefsteak tomatoes seems to top most lists followed by the Cherokee Purple (heirloom tomato), and then Roma (paste) and cherry varieties.

The Guiness World Book of Record has the largest tomato weighing in at 4.9 kilograms (10 pounds 12 oz), with a circumference of 84 centimetres (33 inches). It was grown by Dan Sutherland in Walla Walla, Washington, in 2020. This tomato was the variety Domingo, which is a type of beefsteak tomato. And speaking of records, 121 is the largest number of tomatoes grown on a single vine. Possibly more interesting are the photos of weirdly shaped tomatoes that can be found on the internet. Often tomatoes grow pointed appendages out of their mostly symmetrical shapes. As a result, noses, pointy ears and penises are easily imagined. One tomato found in a British garden looked like the head of Adolf Hitler.

This off-beat aspect of tomatoes is topped by a festival in the town of Buñol, Spain, which holds an annual festival called La Tomatina. Forty to fifty thousand people crowd into this Spanish town for the world’s largest food fight. The only food thrown is tomatoes. You need a ticket to participate in La Tomatina, and only 22,000 tickets will be sold for the 2022 event (a ticket is 12 Euros or 250 Mexican pesos). The event will be held on August 31, 2022. About 100 tonnes of over-ripe tomatoes are provided for throwing at other participants in the town square. There are a few rules – most important is to squish the tomato before you throw it. Two words come to mind: stupidity and messy. As for being messy, the city is well prepared for the cleanup with street washers and fire-hoses all pre-stationed and ready to go after the event. Because tomatoes are acidic, the streets, buildings, statutes, and benches all gleam in spectacular cleanliness after the cleanup.

No longer will I take the tomato for granted. Already I am on the hunt for a Cherokee Purple. Of course, there are Brandywine Pink, Black Krim, Green Zebra, Gold Medal, Big Rainbow, Lemon Boy, Mr. Stripey, White Beauty … No luck yet, but I picked up some Yellow Pear tomatoes yesterday and tried them in a toasted tomato sandwich (lovely).

July 2022

A Birdwatching Guide for Huatulco

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By Randy Jackson

It’s almost as if humans have a special connection to birds. It is a heart-warming delight for all of us to see or hear a bird. I could even imagine some brutish invading Hun pausing his evil deeds to watch a little bird hop from branch to branch, singing a pretty song. Birds soften us all, especially little birds.

In my view, all of us are somewhere on the birdwatching spectrum. There’s that Hun at one end. At the other end of the spectrum is the fully kitted-out, pocket-ladened dude or dudette (ornithologist), who devotes a good portion of their time seeking even a brief glimpse of an avian creature.

On the birdwatching spectrum, I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m more of a bird appreciator. I do own a copy of “Birds of Mexico and Central America” and I have a pair of binoculars. I also have a few birdwatching friends. It is through these friends that I have met an amazing birdwatching guide who lives in Copalita – everyone just calls him Cornelio.

Cornelio (Cornelio Ramos Gabriel) is well known for his bird-guiding prowess, both locally and online. Cornelio grew up, and currently lives, in Copalita. As a young boy, while out gathering wood for cooking, he was intrigued by a little red breasted bird. Flash forward to one day in 1998 when he was working at the Camino Real resort. Some tourists showed him a photo of a red breasted bird and asked if he’d ever seen one. Cornelio took them to the place he had seen that little bird as a young boy. To everyone’s delight, they found the very bird the tourists were looking for.

As Cornelio described it, “when I looked at that bird through the tourists’ binoculars, I fell in love with birds.” He then bought a bird guidebook, a pair of binoculars, and began walking trails seeking out birds in earnest. Even when on his motor scooter, if he caught sight of a bird, he would follow it until he could identify it. In this way, over time, Cornelio became an expert on the birds in the Huatulco area.

Around the year 2010, by word of mouth, people began asking for Cornelio to guide them bird watching. This guiding work continued to increase, so that by 2014 he was able to leave his hotel job. Guiding bird watchers became his principal job. This work is largely seasonal for Cornelio, who is also a musician.

Before the devastating effects of hurricane Agatha on Copalita, I was able to ask Cornelio some questions on bird watching in Huatulco:

What are some good places to observe birds in Huatulco?

Huatulco National Park, Sendero Candelabro (on Cornelio’s ranch in Copalita, http://www.facebook.com/senderocandelabro), and along the Copalita River.

How important or popular is bird watching in Huatulco?

Huatulco is a good area for birdwatchers. On a good full-day walk, one can observe about 100 to 120 species.

What is the season for migratory birds in Huatulco?

Northern migratory birds begin to arrive in October and they leave again in March. Birds migrating from the south are around Huatulco between April and July.

Have you seen birds in Huatulco that were well off course, possibly blown here by a storm?

Yes, I’ve seen a giant cowbird and a Tahitian petrel.

What is the rarest bird you’ve seen in Huatulco?

Northern Potoo

Any particular captivating bird watching experiences?

Once in the community of La Esmeralda [a five-hour drive northeast of Huatulco, on the border with Veracruz], in two days I observed 30 birds I’ve never seen before.

Cornelio’s reputation has spread to the extent that he sees increasing numbers of serious bird watchers who wish to see the endemic birds of Southern Mexico.

To contact Cornelio, many online links will put you in touch. Facebook, of course, or Tripadvisor, even a Google search for “bird watching Huatulco” will work. His own website is https://birdguidehuatulco.business.site/, or Whatsapp (52) 958-106-5749.

Note: At the time of writing this article, Hurricane Agatha hit the Huatulco area causing severe damage. The town of Copalita was severely hit. Cornelio’s family house was spared, but the homes of many friends and neighbours suffered devastating damage. Cornelio is involved in helping his neighbours out. One way of helping some people in Copalita is to send funds to Cornelio for this purpose.

The last word, of course, goes to the birds. Our relationships to these creatures holds an element of “uplifting of spirits,” somehow more so than with any other creature we see in nature. As Emily Dickinson has said “I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.”

May June 2022

Then and Now, A Guidebook to Mexico

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By Randy Jackson

When I was in the second grade, my family moved to a small tourist town in British Columbia in 1964. The welcome sign to the town proclaimed “55 Businesses to Serve You”; the running joke was that 50 of them were motels. Such places in those days only saw tourists in the summer months, and most motels sat empty for five or six months each year. The owners were rumoured to be in Mexico for the winter. One of the motels was named “La Siesta” and the sign out front showed a man sleeping up against a cactus with a large sombrero pulled down over his face. When the snow had piled up sufficiently, the only thing showing was the cactus, like a green middle finger, flippin’ the bird at winter.

Growing up, I was aware of a number of people from our little mountain town who ventured to Mexico. These were all overland journeys, seemingly packed with daily adventures. More than the escape from winter, Mexico represented a wildly exotic place. It seemed incongruous that such a different place could be driven to. And in keeping with the 1970’s, what my friends and I came to see as something we had to do in life, was to explore Mexico in a campervan. While still teenagers, some of my friends had already done just that. It took me a bit longer.

Of course this urge of young adults seeking adventure and exploration beyond their own familiar world was not new. The “Grand Tour” of Europe taken by young aristocrats dates back to the 17th century. By the 1970s this luxury became available to the burgeoning group of middle-class youth, the Baby Boomers. They took up independent budget travel in large numbers. In Europe this overland youth exploration route came to be called “The Hippy Trail,” which ran from Europe through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan to India. The comparable route in North America became known as “The Gringo Trail.” Although this “trail” stretches all the way to the tip of South America, for a lot of us wistful youth of the 70s, the destination was Mexico.

While my Mexico dreams were still formulating in the snows of British Columbia, Carl Franz and Lorena Havens had been exploring Mexico on the cheap since the 60s. Their meeting in San Miguel with John Muir (no, not THAT John Muir), who had successfully published the book How to keep your Volkswagen Alive in 1969 (various editions had co-authors), convinced Frans and Havens to publish The People’s Guide to Mexico. The first edition came out in 1972.

My copy is the 13th edition – 2006 (as I said, it took me a bit longer). This book certainly fueled my notion of an exotic land crying out for exploration. But it meant more. By the time I got to it, the book was a cultural reference to a time and place, a quintessential expression of the youth of the baby boomer years that still resides in the neurological stalactites of my personality cave. To quote the authors directly:

One of the main purposes of this book is to show the traveler how to accept, as calmly as possible, the sights and experiences of a strange place.

This “strange place” is probably intended to mean any place that is unfamiliar. But Mexico is the unique tableau on which such a laid-back, hippy-dippy, humorous expression of time and place shines through. Mexico’s cultural strengths and quirkiness enable this guide book to stand up against the passing decades. Where else, for example, would a story of policemen stopping someone to syphon gas from their vehicle so they could get to a gas station (and offer to pay for it), resonate – besides in Mexico? Or the advice to clear out a bug stuck in your ear by adding a little tequila.

More than a guide to Mexico, this book captures the energy of the coming-of-age youth of the 60s and 70s who travelled to Mexico on the cheap, seeking their own versions of freedom and independence. That energy wave echoed along a far-away valley in British Columbia, where I heard it rattle the windows of those closed motels. Of course, this group of travellers that I so desired to join back then, were but one of many different groups of migrants and tourists over the ages seeking something in Mexico. Independent travel in Mexico still requires that attitude of calm acceptance of things that come your way. Mexico, then as now, isn’t as easily anticipated as, say, Singapore or Denmark. For good or bad, Mexico leaves a mark.

I’m still connected to this little mountain town my family moved to in the 1960s. Needless to say things have changed. Motels now receive tourists throughout the year. This modern and charming village has its own library, and their catalogue will soon include The People’s Guide to Mexico. I will donate my copy in the hopes that it will fuel the aspirations of future visitors to Mexico.