Late August and early September 1994 brought the rains that much of the countryside expected to get in July.
Five o’clock Sunday morning, slogging down the red mud road from Gelacio Trejo’s adobe house to borrow a bottle of Mostachon for a calf getting eaten up by screwworms was like running an obstacle course with your eyes closed. It was engrossing but not entertaining. It had rained all night and there was no chance of getting my Volkswagen Jetta — purely a city car — through the river of mud and rocks that was the road at the bottom of the hill. All sensible folks in that neck of the woods drove pickups or something larger, or else rode horses, mules or burros. And there weren’t any other kind of folks around, I’d been told, just intruders who didn’t know better.
For several days I was taking care of livestock belonging to Gelacio, who had gone with his family to see a doctor in Colima about his cancer problem. It was black outside, and I wondered if I could find the house of the local, uncertified veterinarian in this dark. Rancho Santa Julia seemed to be living in constant mountain fog. Lightning, dimmed by low cloud cover, winked, and muffled thunder grunted, threatening more rain. Below in the village — a cluster of 16 or 17 tile-roofed houses — a single bare bulb shone on muddy pools in the school yard.
A baby cried inside one of the dark houses. In another, snores sawed through the cracks in the door. A large dog leapt soupy ruts in the cobbled street to bark at me. I threw a stone to turn it back. A sleeping voice called once from behind a plastic-covered window, then was silent.
Walking was mostly slipping and sliding, stumbling on unseen rocks, trying to stay out of the deepest holes of water. Suddenly, right next to me was a lurching movement and I flinched. A black cow that had been lying in the dry center of the cobbled road climbed back-end first to its feet, snorting and unhappy.
A small wind lifted, banging the rusted Aga Cola sign at the corner of an adobe wall. Along the arroyo that served as the pueblo’s main street, the rising breeze rippled pools of water reflecting the school-yard light. Skidding around troughs of mud, I climbed to the grassy path passing in front of the few shuttered stores of Rancho Santa Julia. In that low-fronted adobe building to the left with the sitting log beside the narrow door was where they would later be selling car parts and freshly slaughtered beef. Two doors from it were steps to the tienda for bicycle parts, beer, refrescos, canned goods candles, candy and kerosene.
A series of flashes showed a sharp cleft in the path where someone’s drainage ditch cut to the street. Ahead, a stout figure was approaching with a shovel on his shoulder. Huge drops of rain began spattering down, banging on my straw sombrero like buckshot, then suddenly stopped. A dog slunk across Calle Hidalgo and there was a smell of skunk in the air.
“Buenas dias,” I said as the rain started again.
“You’re out early, señor,” said the main, whose face I couldn’t see.
The rain came down hard now and we stepped into the shelter of a huge Camichin tree.
“I’m looking for Eleno Arauja’s house,” I said.
“It’s that one at the end of the street, with the piece of plastic nailed over the doorway.” My early-morning companion wiped rain from his face. “He gets up early like you and me.” He grinned, turning his face to the distant light. “I and some others have to put up the flagpole at the school for the fiestas patrias, before going to the fields. The June winds knocked it down.”
“Is there a lot to celebrate this September 16?” I asked.
He frowned at me and looked away without speaking, then shrugged. “Pos, the elections went a lot better than I thought they would. A lot of people said there would be a mess, like in 1988. Or else there would be a lot of violence, afterward.”
“But many people wanted a change, yet the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) won.”
“Well, lots of people here talked about change, but voted for PRI. What other party has any kind of agricultural project? The priistas have screwed us many times, but we know how that system works, no? Who knows what the other politicos would think up?” He frowned. “City people believe we’re dumb to think that way. But they don’t make their living farming. The worst thing about the priistas is the selling off of ejidos (communal lands). Once a farmer does that, then he’s got nothing in the future for himself or his children. He has to move to the city, live in a stinking rat’s nest with strangers who hate campesinos. But politicians are very blind people, they can’t see that.”
Shaking his head, the man smiled at the water flooding Calle Hidalgo. “But there were no milperos (subsistence farmers) running for president in the other parties either.”