Foreigners and Mexican city folk driving on “secondary highways” between pueblo-sized communities this time of year often complain of horses and cattle grazing on rainy season-born wild grass and weeds along the sides of roadways.
Pueblo authorities, yearning to imitate the dubious charms of big cities, arrest such livestock. (They confiscate them and fail to feed them, then fine the owners when stockowners come looking for them.) True, a good amount of this livestock are set loose to free-range the verges of roadways. It’s an ancient custom.
The government’s war against small family farmers is seen by many as a gift from President Miguel Aleman (1946-’52), though it was underway before that. “Another pinche catrin (f..ing dandy) who got rich stealing from his Veracruz neighbors. That rich boy Aleman thought he was better than all those who work the land,” is the way my friend, Pepe Peredo, sums up that slice of Mexican rural history.
Pepe is a blockily built old-fashioned rancher who often spends evenings thumbing a spine-split set of history books a liberal priest left behind when he disappeared in the 1970s. Campesino ranchers and farmers existing on thin resources (in the present inflation- and corruption-riddled era not an easy task) still practice habits that have long helped their families exist; roadside livestock grazing is part of that.
As we rode down from his horse pasture, a low dark line of clouds was coming across what once was called El Comalito (The Griddle). Some years ago, it was diminished by a government-encouraged housing project that remained half-finished. Today, as we rode across one corner of what remained of the lake El Comalito, it was handsomely ornamented with broad ponds of rain water reflecting the low sky. We were following huellas (tracks) of two run-away, probably stolen, horses. Last night’s downpour had cut an arroyo across the fence line of Pepe’s horse pasture, uprooting three posts, laying the barbed wire flat. More troubling was the fact that the day before two riders rode up to the base of the Pepe’s mountain ranch. No one knew who they were, had never seen them before. They quickly disappeared.Last evening, Pepe sent one of his sons to keep watch over the livestock. When the wind grew sharp, and it began to rain hard, the 17-year old came home. Pepe swore, telling me about it. Anyone who gave in to “flabby spines,” or tendencies to be incompetent disgusted him. They invariably meant trouble for those around them, he always said.
Pepe had surprised me by asking if I’d go with him to look for the two missing dun-colored geldings. He has three sons, but the 17-year old’s behavior troubled him. “Besides, the boys need to work the ranch and watch for more thieves,” he said.
I’d recently been favoring a stove up back, the result of years of riding too many spooky horses across rocky mountainsides chasing stock heading for any place without a fence. When I mentioned that I might not be as fast in jumping ravines as before, Pepe had squinted uncomfortably at the clouds. “Pos,” he sighed, “The boys are in their thoughtless stage. Hot headed. These days that can get you shot, with all the narcobanditos, corrupt police, and political henchmen, killing anybody they want. But they won’t shoot a gringo.” He grinned.
I snorted, and listed the number of North Americans who’d been killed fairly recently, usually for their money. (When working livestock, I carry an old worn wallet with a single hundred-peso note, two fifties and five twenty peso bills. If somebody wants that bad enough to stick a pistol in my face, they can have it.)
But I knew the number of foreigners didn’t compare with the number of local Mexican victims. We both knew several of those folks. So I went with him, hunting missing horses and keeping an eye out for cut-throats, hoping to find the first, not the latter. We’re long-time friends. He’s an admirably, hard-working, serious-minded, calm-hearted man.
We came up out of El Comalito, the horses lunging a little to keep from slipping in the thick mud, and found ourselves in a growth of carrizo, a long mini-forest of reeds. Carrizo used to grow wild along Lake Chapala, especially at the west end. Almost all “middle class” Mexicans in Lakeside pueblos in the 1960s used it for the ceilings of their homes, the blond stripped reeds neatly tied with lia de dos cabos. On top of that, to deal with dust, pests, birds and lizards, rain and wind, they used curved hand-made red clay tile tejas.
“Good place to hide horses, around here,” Pepe said. He loosened his straight-blade, cane-cutting machete in its saddle scabbard.
We rode carefully through the healthy stand of carrizo and found no horses. But at the south end of that tall reed forest, we came across tracks. “Mira, hombre,” said Pepe, stepping down to brush leaves from the huellas. “That’s the right front herradura of the older horse. Worn a bit at the point of the shoe.”
We followed the tracks, clear as a thick-stroked dark oil painting finished just a couple minutes ago. We came out of a field of hoja ancho and other rainy season weeds that showed the horse trail plain as if the two duns were pulling a plow. It went up onto the roadside of an old bache-pocked asphalt two-lane.
There, about ten meters to our left was a herd of six horses tended by a youngster maybe twenty years old. He was foolishly herding the stock, probably all stolen, in leisurely fashion, letting them crop good grass by the roadside.
“He must feel proud of himself, the way he’s dawdling along,” Pepe said in a peeved way. “We need to be careful,” I said. “Children are running around with police-sold weapons these days, people over here are saying.” I went left, Pepe went right. The kid didn’t even realize he was surrounded until I snagged him off his horse with my hook-nosed field machete.
“Stay,” Pepe ordered, as if he were talking to a dog.
There was a cluster of traffic dangerously slowing to a creep. People in hulking SUVs and over-priced double-cab pickups, cheered. One older, well-coiffed Mexican yelled, “Make him get those dam horses off the highway.” Pepe rode boldly into the jammed, lazy traffic and said in a jarring voice, “Drive this piece of shit to the junk yard and let the livestock graze in peace, a..hole.” Traffic began moving.
He zig-zagged back to poke the boy in the chest with his cane-cutter. “Before we get you to the police, we’ll get the names of your thieving friends.”
“Maybe I won’t tell you.”
Though not meaning it, Pepe said softly, “Maybe you won’t get to see the police.”