Mayo Indian Villages in Alamos Vicinity

Macho vaquero with his family

After doing our Alamos City walking tour with our guide, Emiliano Grajeda, he offered us another tour to visit Mayo villages close to Alamos and to meet the Mayo Governor of all these villages.  It would be a full day trip from 8:30AM to about 3PM using one of our vehicles and the price would be $36 per person, leaving the next morning. One member of our group of 3 couples was out of action with stomach problems on tour day but we were able to reschedule with Emiliano for the next day.  Meanwhile our 3^rd couple decided to leave early for San Carlos so then we had 2 couples and the guide in a 4WD vehicle that could easily negotiate the dirt roads.

On Tuesday morning, we arrived at the Alamos Plaza de Armas Visitor Center and picked up Emiliano and set out in the direction of the Alamos aeropuerto.  We drove through the countryside and were again amazed by the flowering Amapa trees all over the place. Also lots of cacti, especially the huge Etchos and Pitahaya "trees" some of which had weird bulbous areas in their arms.

The first 3 visits were to Mexican areas that were not Mayo Indian. Our first visit was in La Higuera to Rancho Los Arenales, a cattle ranch owned by 6 brothers who all had separate self-built houses and apparently, no wives or children.  

Besides cattle, they raised sesame for the seed that they sold for oil manufacture while the remaining stalks were stacked neatly in the yards and used for animal feed. 

 

Kitchen at the ranch

Looking into 2 of the houses, it was apparent that these ranchers were extremely poor, judging by the inside furnishings and aging facilities on the ranch.  Cooking facilities were the typical stone outdoor wood stove.  Dogs on the large property including a new litter of puppies were very underfed and very lethargic.   A covered pen near one house contained two friendly rabbits, a peacock, a couple chickens and ducks.  Likely food rather than pets!  A shy burro and the cows completed the animal menagerie.

One of the ranchers, Gila, after giving us a tour of the place, asked us to come into a back room of his house and pulled out onto the dirt floor a group of geodes and Indian mortars and pestles found in the hills nearby but we knew these could not be brought into the U.S. and didn't offer to buy anything.  He also showed the branding irons for his rancho. Like everyone we've met in rural areas, Gila was a happy, proud person who greeted us with all the hospitality he could offer!  The ranch overall was clean and orderly. Up on the mountain on the edge of the ranch, Gila pointed out a white rock outcropping and told us it was a mine and showed us slabs of stone similar to flagstone that they obtain there.  It was hard to understand how they made a living here.

The next stop was the Los Tanque Panteón or cemetery with some old graves.  This cemetery is open to the road but surprisingly there was no obvious vandalism like we sometimes see in the U.S.  The area around is fairly poor so there were very few elaborate tombs; in fact, many older graves had wooden markers originally which were now gone.  Being interested in genealogy, Lin wondered if burial records were kept for these very isolated rural cemeteries and especially how you would find a grave location that had lost its markers.  The highlight probably was a tall grave all the way in back with 2 large iguanas on top sunning themselves!

As the third stop came into view, we immediately thought of a Hollywood movie set in Old Mexico with a large reddish adobe hacienda partially in ruins!  And this was unknown to Emiliano also, so we stopped and talked to Antonio Montenegro, the man who lives there now and we discovered that this was “El Molino,” one of the haciendas of General Alvaro Obregón Salido, once Presidente of Mexico in 1920-1924!!  He is credited with using modern military tactics that ended the Mexican Revolución, established over 1000 rural schools and redistributed land to the poor and Indian people.  He was assassinated in 1928, after being elected Presidente for a second term.  This house has many rooms and was once the headquarters for a several thousand hectare ranch.   

The dog has a small part as well!

Antonio showed us around the house and described its former glory.  Antonio was very pleasant and proud of the former history.  The place has a lot of atmosphere and was very well built originally with many nice details.  Obregon had a private chapel built on the property and it appears to be in good shape.   Antonio is interested in selling the property and it would be great to see it restored and reused for perhaps some educational purpose.  Emiliano thought we should buy it and restore it and he could be the construction superintendent since he knew most of the craftsmen around Alamos!  Maybe only $50,000 U.S. to fix it up, señor!!  Interesting but we declined!   

Our 4^th visit was to Nahuibampo, a prosperous looking Mayo village.  To get there we crossed the Mayo River, a large wide year round river.  

We came to meet Fausto Lopez and his wife Maria, who have been married for over 70 years. Fausto is the Mayo Indian Governor of the 7 Mayo villages in this area. (Mayo is pronounced My-o) Fausto is 93 and Maria is close to that with wonderful smiling faces, heavily lined with age.  He was even joking that maybe he needed to find a new wife!  When we drove up, Fausto hurriedly brought out 5 more chairs for us, his guests, and invited us to sit and talk, in Spanish.  All important decisions in the Mayo villages are brought to him for his blessing so he is a kind and powerful man in his Mayo culture.  He seemed very pleased to have visitors and at the end as we offered 100 pesos per couple for his hospitality, he declined but eventually accepted.  Proud people!  This was a very, very pleasant visit!  His village was in very good shape with whitewashed rocks lining the dirt streets, pleasant appearing homes with flowers, electric and some with satellite TV, no trash and a primary school!  We'll treasure our portraits of Fausto and Maria!  

Next we traveled to Macoyahui, another Mayo village with a lot of history.  We stopped at the house of the couple who are the area cattle registrars, so anyone moving cattle to market or to another ranch must stop here with the animals, buy a 10 peso permiso with lots of paperwork and install an eartag on each of the cattle to be moved.  

 

The woman here prepared tortillas by hand and Emiliano went off to another nearby ranch bringing back cheese for our quesadilla lunch and they were quite good! Their son, Edgar, age 6, was interested in us and funny thing, when asked in Spanish for his name, he pointed to his head and said “cabeza” or head! His mother finally told us his name!  Like many rural children, he had some old toys to play with in the sandy yard to keep himself busy. 

The highlight of this village, historically at least, is a large 1620 Jesuit mission, Misión San Miguel, a beautiful long rectangular adobe brick church with about 10 arches that once supported a vaulted roof, which is now missing. 

The pictures show the scale of the building and its beautiful arches and bell tower in front. A small altar with a statue of San Miguel (St. Michael) with his sword is prominent on the altar.   On special occasions, like Easter, a priest comes and says Mass.  

It is a shame that this structure is melting away with no apparent effort by the government anthropological agency (INAH) to try to re-roof it or stabilize it in some way, as they have done on many of the crumbling old missions in Baja.   It was once truly a masterpiece!  And there is no vandalism or tagging anywhere!

The third visit in this village was to the nearby home of Ramón and Librada, both in their 80s or 90s.  Ramon for many years has made violins and guitars and has a government certificate on the wall congratulating him for carrying on the handmade musical instrument making tradition of the Mayos. 

After a tour of his house, where we saw as many as 5-6 violins and 4-5 guitars on the walls, he and his 2 sons brought out chairs for us to sit for a musical performance.  The photographs probably do not do justice to the performance.  Again the faces of Ramón and Librada were amazing with deep lines from a lifetime of outdoor hard work.  Librada is nearly blind in both eyes and has arthritis but she enjoyed talking in Spanish to Maryke.  She used to dance to Ramón's music, she said, but now she sits in her chair and lightly stamps her feet to the rhythm, while smiling broadly with pleasure in her family's talent!

Notice the sandals made out of old tires and leather straps

It also appears that Librada has very few teeth left or maybe none but she's in very good spirits and smiled a lot at us.  Ramón has taught his sons to play and together they play but all the instruments are difficult to tune and sound quite scratchy. They spent at least 10 minutes tuning up separately and together before the performance!  They are not likely to play Carnegie Hall any time soon but they must be given a solid A for effort!  Ramón tried his best to keep the melody flowing!   

It was moving to see the elderly father and his 40-50 year old sons make this effort to entertain visitors!  We all certainly clapped loudly at the end of the performance and Ramón smiled in pleasure!  He later brought out some wooden spoons that he carved and was selling for a donation.  Twenty pesos was accepted and then he gave the rest of his spoons to all of us!  We left a donation to help him keep the music alive!   Ramón and his wife both shook hands with all of us and seemed very pleased that we had come.  

Our final visit of the day was to the house of a older ceremonial mask maker in another Mayo village.  His wife greeted us and again she brought all the chairs out to make us comfortable.  A boy was sent to fetch the father. Meanwhile we walked around and admired their vegetable garden with tomatoes, garlic and more in neat rows with a large tree-style prickly pear cactus without spines near the yard fence, probably also for eating, called nopales in the markets.   

We felt sorry for his wife who got up and carried a full five gallon bucket of water from the porch into the house—a heavy load of probably 45 pounds!  Sad also because she had huge varicose veins on her legs and obviously is getting no treatment—must be painful, but again, she was very cheerful!  Finally the father came in apologizing that he had been working and dirty and had to take a shower before presenting himself to us!  He brought a sack with four ceremonial masks, all carved but unfinished except the largest one was decorated with horsehair but not yet painted.  Because they were unfinished, he was not anxious to sell them yet.   After more conversation, we shook hands and returned to the car.  We crossed the Mayo River again and were soon back in Alamos with fond memories of a very interesting and most hospitable group of people.   We actually were back about 5:30 PM, several hours later than Emiliano said, but he seemed in fine spirits and certainly enjoyed the days much as we did!

Lots of local traffic---not many cars!