A Journal Entry: Street Dogs of Tepatitlan

by Daniel Cano                                                                       

                                                                                    

Starting early

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.”

                                                                                     

Museo Municipal, Tepatitlan

     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.

                                                                                      

Another day in the plaza

     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?

                                                                                       

Hard at play 

     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?”

                                                                                       

The bus central: waiting for a kind traveller

     “When I arrived at the bus station in Tepa, I saw many of the dogs everywhere.”

     “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.