My wife and I landed in a small pueblo that, on the drive down, no one beyond Jalisco seemed to know of. We quickly moved into a recently renovated house in Ajijic ... and found home. This was the early 1960s.
For a happy number of years the pueblo continued to possess its extraordinary laid-back rustic charm. This had attracted a number of U.S. veterans of World War II (“Pacific vets”) and the Korean war. A notable number of these shunned returning to the nine-to-five work-day on the United States, rife with neck ties, suits and the over-starched post-war life, thriving ambitiously in places like southern California. The surging U.S. economy was noted, not invitingly, by former soldiers, some dealing with what now is called post traumatic stress disorder.
They lived on the GI Bill. This seemed to irritate small collections of older U.S. citizens in nearby sub-villages. Such folk soon identified them as being attracted to either 1) the media stereotyped ”beatnik” movement of the 1950s, or 2) the later “hippie” cultural changes. This was fantasy. Vets here had more in common with what came to be known as the subsequent, and more seriously exploratory, “counterculture.”
Some Lakeside vets were artists of various kinds, writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, often about war experiences or of brisk cultural criticism. Lysander Kemp, a Jocotepec resident, was the brilliant translator of Octavio Paz’s unparalleled examination of Mexican culture, “The Labyrinth of Solitude.” Ajijic resident John Upton translated the excellent biography of “A Mexican village in transition,” “San Jose de Gracia.” Williard Marsh – author of the masterly “Mexican Hayride,” featured in Esquire and the “Best American Short Stories” – was just leaving the University of Southern California as professor of fiction and poetry. He was returning to Ajijic. Marsh and other veterans tended to shy away from Chapala where gringos tended gather. Willard & Co. preferred small pueblos well marked by “Indian” habits. They rejected “going home,” and sought low small-pueblo rentals, distant from the Mexican constabulary, and avoided the return to popular prewar social and intellectual habits.
For the unknowing or those disapproving of the vets’ grip on freedom, such people became erroneously associated with stateside “beatniks.” Some older U.S. burghers visiting or living here and saddled by poor educations or advanced age, lumped them with the blossoming U.S. “hippie” cultural impulse. Yet the vets’ view of life most comfortably fit the later “counter-cultural” movement. But waves of change occurring outside Mexico did not much move vets or serious new explorers of Mexico. Disapproval of such “young”northern cultural change seemed centered in Mexico’s few “pure Gringo” fracionamientos – gated communities – that sported “guard houses.” Constructed and manned by off-duty local police, these existed to protect “American” residents. They were viewed by Mexican citizens and many U.S. residents – certainly by veterans – as sad evidence of unabashed racism. Some later-arriving younger and rebellious gringos did act out the Kerouacian anti-conformist behavior.
One journalist familiar with the hippie-beatnik error, wrote: “... (T)he news media saddled the movement for the long term with a set of false images. Reporters are not generally well versed in artistic movements, or the history of literature or art.” And, he said, “most believe their readers are of limited intellectual ability and had to have things explained simply. Thus, media folk tried to fit something that was new into worn frameworks. Using a variety of familiar, conventional formulas, they fell back on the nearest stereotypical approximation of what these changes resembled ... They got scatterings of quotations and photos ... tried to wrap them in a misshapened package – giving it a widely desired negative spin. In this, they were aided and abetted by the ‘Poetic Establishment’ of the day.” A false cartoon.
Those gringos investigating such local legumes as peyote and mushrooms usually came to these psychedelic plants through Mexican Indians’ long use centered on medicinal, religious and/or spiritual use. And surprisingly found themselves in step with queries being conducted by the highest U.S. official authorities.
The U.S. government was experimenting with such plants for the same reasons: To discover the possible expansion of the mind‘s abilities. Writers Ken Kesey and Robert Stone – both of Stanford University – volunteered for this government project. Kesey early on joined the well-paying CIA-financed study under the aegis of Project MKULTRA, a highly secret military program, at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, where he worked as a night aide. The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs including psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, LSD, DMT on humans. The inspiration for his hugely popular novel (and film), “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” came while working the night shift at the Menlo Park Veterans’ Hospital. Kesey talked with patients, some under the influence of the same hallucinogenic substances that he was officially assigned to consume. He dropped the idea that such patients were insane. His experience with them convinced him that society had excluded them because they did not fit conventional ideas of how people were supposed to behave.
People entertaining similar concepts as Kesey were mentioned in this newspaper June 27, regarding “Mexico’s ‘Hippie Trail,’” featuring Carlos Castañeda, author of “The Teachings of Don Juan,” and a seemingly endless string of Don Juan texts. The first of these was his anthropological thesis, which excited University of California, Los Angeles professors and anthropologists. A friend, working in Mexico on her own thesis, invited my wife and I to the auditorium presentation of the Regents of the University of California publication of “Don Juan.” We talked briefly with Castañeda, a nimble and convincing speaker. I knew several university-connected people who were working in Mexico on similar inquires. His thesis dazzled them. Doubts came as anthropologists dissected subsequent texts.
In 1998, Philip True, reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, decided independently to hike through Jalisco’s challenging northern highlands. He had neither guide nor linguistic skills for that project. One needs as much knowledge as can be gathered when exploring uncongenial territory and cultures. Certainly a basic linguist ability. He lacked these. He was killed. Tragic, but not surprising. Also essential: Shedding the tourist illusion that wherever you go you will be greeted with open arms. A childish invitation to bad news.