It’s “snowbird season.” Thousands of visitors escaping punishing northern cold are — or soon will be — enjoying Jalisco’s sun and more amiable temperatures. And that means cultural collision. Last week I overheard several visitors exclaiming that there were fewer cultural differences than they expected, though a couple did concede that some things did puzzle them.
Beyond McDonald’s
Understanding Mexico — beyond the McDonald’s, yogurt and plastic surgery stands — isn’t and shouldn’t be, easy. Like many others early on, I ran into more than a little of bewilderment when dazzled by Mexico, and especially its folklore. Entranced by just about everything in this Republic, I roamed some often unlikely places, festooned with notebooks, pens and pencils, soon adding a camera, then a tape recorder, and for a while toted around a fold-up yellow carpenter’s yard stick. (I can’t remember measuring much with it, but I wanted to be prepared, just in case.)
A good informant
An early encounter had to do with “Los Tastoanes” in the pueblo of Santa Clara de los Corrales. Weighty with serious intent, I went to the soccer field where the Tastoan performance was to take place and asked around trying to find a good local informant.
I finally got one, Don Eleuterio Toscano, who was the classical picture of what I believed an authentic carrier of oral tradition should be. Wrinkled, white-haired and bent, he had been a Tastoan performer for 50 years, but wasn’t dancing because he’d sprained an ankle.
Hideous masks
When the Tastoanes came howling out onto the soccer field, each wearing a hideous carved mask, well covered from neck to ankles in old G.I. overcoats and what looked like World War I puttees, Don Eleuterio hobbled onto the field to perform with them, gimpy and grimacing. The Tastoanes smacked him and each other soundly with long rope whips, yelling and growling, and soon he came hurrying back.
“What are they doing,” I asked.
“They’re Tastoanes.” He grinned.
Two kings arrive
Suddenly two men marched onto the field. They obviously were kings because they wore cardboard crowns, long robes and amazing rubber Halloween masks. They strode regally from one corner of the campo de futbol to the other. Don Eleuterio said they were measuring land.
“Why two kings?” I asked, recording equipment at the ready.
“There are two kings,” he said flatly.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But why?”
Don Eleuterio said nothing for some time. “My ankle is hurting,” he told me finally. “I shouldn’t have gone out to dance with those muchachos.”
“But why are there two kings?” I persisted, poking my recorder at him.
“Pos, they are the kings of Spain,” he answered.
“Which Spanish kings?”
“Pos, sabe, Señor. There are always two kings. That is the way it is.”
I wrote that down.
Saint in trouble
Soon everybody’s attention was drawn to the plight of the Spanish saint, Santiago, a young man in ribbons with a Texas hat, who was in deep trouble with the Tastoan forces.
“What are they doing to the one you said was Santiago?” I asked with concern.
“They are skinning him alive,” Don Eleuterio said. “They are taking off his skin for the two kings.”
I thought of Freud. “But why?”
“Pos, they always do that. It is always done. You see”
“Are they angry at Santiago?”
“Oh, it’s only a play, Señor.” Don Eleuterio patted my arm. “Don’t worry.”
Like an anthropologist
Then one of the Tastoanes steadied a sheet of paper on the back of an obliging fellow player and read a speech through his wooden mask about one of the kings whom he sometimes called el presidente, sometimes the god, Huitzilopochtli. Getting all this down made me feel like a true anthropologist.
“Is he a beginner?” I asked. “He doesn’t seem to know his role yet.”
Putting back skin
Don Eleuterio laughed. “He is an old Tastoan. He’s just trying to impress people by pretending he can read.”
Then all the Tastoanes ran to Santiago with friendly nods and conciliatory pats on the back.
“See,” said Don Eleuterio helpfully. “They are putting Santiago’s skin back on.” He was pleased to have anticipated my question.
“It’s a happy ending then.” I scribbled rapidly, pleased to recognize this brief triumph of Western logic.
Don Eleuterio frowned at me. “Oh no, Señor. There is much more. You will see.”
Sighing, I looked at my notes, and realized I had a lot of description, but nothing that told me what was actually going in out there in the dust, among the shouts and cracking whips. I had quotes, pictures, recorded sounds. But I still didn’t know what I was looking at. Rather slowly it came to me that I was in a much more foreign place than I imagined. I wasn’t until later that I realized that not only had I been asking the wrong questions, but that I expected things that seemed vaguely familiar to have a familiar meaning. They didn’t and don’t.