Ajijic resident Armando Garcia-Davila, who likes to refer to himself as a “blue collar writer,” moved to Ajijic with his wife, Kathy, in May, 2017, from Santa Rosa, California.
He’s presently putting the final touches on “The Trip – Racing Toward the Cliff at the End of the World,” a memoir-based novel 13 years in the making. All the while he continues to crank out his colorful prose and poetry, which he reads at two Ajijic writing groups. As a Mexican-American who has recently moved to lakeside, Garcia-Davila says, “I’ve returned to my roots.”
When he was a kid growing up in San Diego, his family visited his mother’s home town of Hermosillo, Sonora. “When I arrived at Ajijic I felt as if I’d stepped back in time. I was that happy 10-year-old again in Hermosillo.”
For Garcia-Davila, San Diego was the place of rich childhood memories growing up Mexican-American and Catholic alongside six siblings – one his identical twin. Those memories provided enough material to inspire his award-winning poems and prose.
As an English major in college, Garcia-Davila knew he wanted to be a writer. “After graduating I knew I didn’t want an office job, but being that I lacked the confidence to become a writer, I ended up working as a landscape contractor. I worked hard, raising my family on that income.”
In 1989, when President Bush sent troops to the Persian Gulf, Garcia-Davila was moved to do something. After losing a close childhood friend to the Vietnam War, he wrote a letter to this friend 20 years after he had died, vowing to oppose the Persian Gulf war in his honor.
“Knowing that a lot of people were going to die for nothing, I submitted my letter to the newspaper and they printed it as an op-ed piece in their Sunday edition. I was amazed that something I wrote got published. I never stopped writing after that.”
For several years, around 2005, after having ended a 23-year marriage and living alone in a Northern California forest, Garcia-Davila hit a writer’s block. That’s when his friend suggested he write a memoir. The subject he chose was the month-long motorcycle trip he took in 1968 around the United States.
“My older brother, a Catholic priest at the time, accompanied me, along with two high school friends,” he says. “Riding our motorcycles, we encountered the late 60s in all its ugliness and glory: from hippies and anti-war demonstrations to women’s movement marches and Southern racists.”
Writing a memoir about the trip eventually turned into a novel that Garcia-Davila describes as a “hero’s journey: A boy leaves on a long and dangerous journey where he is forced to face his fears, overcomes them and returns a man.” He’ll be sending the manuscript to his agent in a few months.
Shortly after Garcia-Davila and his wife moved to Ajijic, his twin brother Fernando, and his wife Jan, joined them from San Diego.
“Fernando and I wanted to retire together,” says Garcia-Davila. “When our wives got online looking for affordable places, Ajijic popped up.”
Arriving in Ajijic for a visit in January, 2017, the couple strolled to the plaza, stopped at a realty company and signed up for a home tour two days later. It was on that tour that they found their hacienda-style dream home.
“Part of the home’s attraction,” he adds, “was the beautifully painted mural of young people dancing ballet folklorico, the same traditional Mexican dance that I performed in college.”
On their third day, they made an offer, which was accepted. “We sold everything and came back to Ajijic with suitcases full of clothes. It was quite a whirlwind.”
Recently, Garcia-Davila was notified that he’d been awarded a full fellowship to the renowned Writing By Writers workshop in Tomales Bay (California). Last year he attended the workshop, which brings aspiring writers into close community with nationally known poets and writers for four days of workshops.
“I must have made a good impression on the staff last year for awarding me this fellowship, and I’m thrilled.”
He continues: “One of the workshop leaders will be Mexican-American poet, Luis Alberto Urrea, who writes the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read. He’s right up there with the greats.”
Living a mere five-minute walk from each other, the brothers are working on a series of stories about growing up Mexican-American and attending Catholic school in San Diego, which they’ll eventually publish.
Says Garcia-Davila, “Most of the stories are humorous. Some tragic, others heart-warming. We started writing them while attending a weekly Prompt Writers group. I practically had to drag Fernando there but now he loves it and is writing several hours a day. He’s getting good at it. He even had his first story published last May in a monthly lakeside publication.”
Happy settling into village life, Garcia-Davila feels like he’s found his home. “Like Hermosillo, Ajijic folks are kind, generous, accepting … and laugh a lot!”