by Daniel Cano
August 5, 2016, Tepatitlan, Jalisco, Los Altos
1:00 PM
At 104,000
people, Tepatitlan is the second most populated city in the region known as los
altos de Jalisco, my ancestors’ homeland before their arrival in Santa Monica,
California in 1917.
So, legend
has it, my grandfather, Nicolas Gonzalez, as a young man, had already made the long
trek from his family ranch, Mitic, in Jalisco to work north of the border. Possible?
Maybe. Mitic is nearly 1000 miles from the El Paso border, the Mexican Ellis
Island. It would have been a brutal journey in the early 1900s, even for a man
travelling alone. Although, watching one’s family suffer from hunger and/or
violence is a strong motivator.
Los Altos
is part larger region in Mexico known as el Bajio, mostly an agricultural
region, farms, ranches, and villages, home of Mexico’s most exported cultural
traditions, Tequila, charros, and mariachi music. In my grandparents’ Santa
Monica neighborhood, most of their neighbors migrated from Los Altos, specifically,
the ranches around San Juan de Los Lagos, a pilgrimage site for Mexicans.
Maybe
that’s why my deeply religious aunts taught me the story of Juan Diego and the
Virgen de Guadalupe when I was barely able to understand. I still remember
accompanying my aunt Josie to mass. If I looked toward the rear of the church, she
would warn, “No, don’t look back there. That’s devil behind us.”
I’ve
travelled through much of Los Altos, but it’s my first time in Tepatitlan. I’m
trying to understand the heritage my family bequeathed to my siblings and me. I
walk down calle Hidalgo and come to a beautiful historic building, #197, El
Museo Municipal de Tepatitlan, about an hour from Mitic, where part of my family
resides, still working the land. Some historians claim Mitic, like many
villages in Los Altos, was an indigenous settlement before the arrival of the
Spanish, so am I as much Chichimeca as European?
Once inside
the museum, the first thing I notice are the precolonial dog figurines, a lot of
them. A sign says the caciques’ (local rulers) families, in this region of
Mexico, placed the miniature dog statues beside the caciques when they were
buried. The dogs were believed to escort them into the next world.
Since my
great-grandfather Juan and his family owned many acres in Mitic, going back to
the early 1800s, was he a descendant of caciques? After all, it was rare for
anyone but the most politically and socially connected to acquire that much
land during the colonial period, especially Indians.
I don’t
recall any of my relatives having dogs, not even my grandmother whose home in
Santa Monica was more like a farm, complete with animals and vegetable gardens,
and a lot of dirt for us kids to play, same with the neighbors’ homes. The
cries of roosters are clearly etched in my memory.
I pass more
signs, coats of arms, and Indian relics…Tecuexes, Caxcanes, and the greater
Chichimeca, who populated the lands from Zacatecas to Jalisco. In 1530, they first
laid eyes on the white man. The Spaniards who conquered and settled Jalisco
came from the regions of Castilla, Andalucia, Estremadura, and the Basque
regions of Spain. Many were veterans in the campaigns against the Mexica. They
observed the brilliance of Tenochtitlan and participated in its collapse.
Two Spaniards
who conquered Los Altos were Nuno Beltran de Guzman and Pedro Alvarado. The
museum doesn’t mention it, but I read somewhere that Beltran was known for his
savagery toward the Indians, who weren’t nomadic in this region but sedentary, living
in villages, and growing corn and beans and domesticating animals. They weren't savages but lived
by the rules of their leaders and gods.
In 1542, after
conquering Los Altos, the best Spanish fighters travelled to explore the lands
to the north. The Caxcanes, Tecuexes, Zacatecos, and Chichimecas took advantage
and started what would become the Mixton Wars. The Indians won many battles in
their attempt to expel the invaders and recoup the lands. In one battle, they killed
Pedro Alvarado and many of his soldiers and Indian allies.
Seeking
vengeance, and complete control of the territory, the Spaniards returned with four
to five-hundred soldiers and upwards of 30,000 Mexica and Tlascalteca warriors.
Unable to defeat such a force, the Tecuexes and Caxcanes who survived were
forced into labor and adopted the Spanish encomienda system.
Jalisco was
different than other conquered lands in Mexico. The Spanish who invaded this
region avoided mixing with the indigenous groups. Tepatitlan and larger towns
were meant to be pure Spanish settlements, segregated from the Indians who
lived in their ancestral villages, except to work for the encomienderos.
Indian
labor on Los Altos’ farms and ranches provided sustenance for the development
of Guadalajara. Over the years, the Indians adopted the conquerors’ customs, but
ultimately, the Spanish were unable to avoid total mestizaje. Could that be a
reason so many Jalisciences, today, have light skin, and can point to, at least,
fifty percent or more European DNA on their Ancestry charts?
How did
that affect the early migration into the north, where so many Spanish and
mestizo explorers hailed, originally, from Jalisco and the regions north?
Because of their agricultural skills, many migrants from Jalisco, Michoacan,
and Zacatecas, like my grandparents, were in high demand to work on American
ranches, farms, and dairies.
During
Hidalgo’s war for independence, many of the fiercely Catholic and conservative
people of Los Altos rejected the movement towards independence, seeing themselves
more loyal to the mother church and the king of Spain than a revolt,
apparently, led by liberal, anti-church indigenous forces.
These
notions, more than likely, carried into the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and
1920s’ Cristeros Wars. Many Mexicans who arrived in El Paso and crossed into
the greater regions of the Southwestern United States, like Los Angeles, came
from Central Mexico. Perhaps, rather than fight in a rebellion they didn’t
understand, they decided, like all my grandparents, to take their families and
flee north. So, are those Mexicans who came to the United States during those
years, not “migrants,” as the media labeled them, but refugees and exiles,
escaping war and famine?
6:00 P.M.
Five perros
de la calle (street dogs) gather each day in the Plaza de Armas. They chase
each other, roll around on the grass, sleep huddled together, and hope for a
handout from people in the plaza. The dogs are gentle. Children jump on them,
ride them like horses, and pull their ears and tails. The older kids wrestle
them. Some kids kick them a shoo them away. The adults, mostly, ignore them. I
notice, they are the same dogs who were here yesterday. Maybe someone owns them, and they come to the plaza to get out of the house. Who knows for sure?
Later that evening,
I see a man in his 40s, long hair, well dressed, walk by, and the dogs follow
him across the street and around a corner. I figure he must own the dogs. A
little while later, the dogs are back on the grass, playing or sleeping. As
night falls, the plaza begins to empty. I see the man go into a pharmacy. Two
dogs sit outside, waiting for him. He comes out of the pharmacy and sits on a
stoop, a shorthair golden retriever on one side, a small black mutt on the
other.
I approach
him. He can tell I am a stranger in town. I ask, in Spanish, of course, “I am
just curious. I have been watching the dogs for a couple of days playing in the
plaza. Are they yours?”
“Well, they
follow me.”
“But you
don’t own them?”
“No, they
are street dogs.” He pets the black mutt. “People whose dogs have pups just
toss the pups to the street. They raise themselves.”
I look to
the dogs in the park. “All these dogs, but they look so healthy?”
“People
throw them food. I try to feed them when I can. These two,” he pets both dogs
on either side of him, “won’t leave me. It’s very hard. You get them and you
begin to like them. Then, yes, it bothers me to see them on the streets.” He
shrugs, “What can I do? I am nice to them, so four or five of them follow me
home at night and sleep outside my door. The neighbors complain. I don’t have
room for all of them inside. This one,” he looks at the retriever, “sleeps
inside.”
“Doesn’t
the government do anything?”
“No, they
don’t care.”
I remember
an article I read. I tell him, “I once visited Belize, street dogs everywhere.
A local newspaper warned everyone to keep their dogs and cats inside the house.
On a particular day, it said government workers would be catching them and
injecting them with poison, as a form of control.”
“Imagine?”
“When I
arrived at the bus station in Tepa, I saw many of the dogs everywhere.”The bus central: waiting for a kind traveller
“At the bus
station, the dogs know people will give them scraps of food.” He looks down at
the retriever, again. “A woman was taking care of this one. She would let him
sleep inside every night and feed him, but it became to much for her, so he
went back to the street.”
“That is
very sad. The government should have some type of program for them.”
“They do,
but, in the end, it costs too much money.”
“Well, you
do a good thing by trying to take care of them.”
“I do what
I can.”
He says his
name is Felipe. We bid each other good night. He continues to stroke the fur of
both dogs. He rises and walks up the street. The dogs from the park see him,
catch up, and follow behind. I walk back to my hotel.
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