Travels with my Family (5 page)

My mother decided we would have a different kind of Christmas that year. An original kind of Christmas. With no tree, no Santa, no turkey dinner, no stockings and no Boxing Day sale.

What was our present? A trip to Mexico.

We started out by flying to the city of Oaxaca. The name is easy to pronounce.
Wah-hah-cah.
Simple, right?

People do some pretty strange things with food in Oaxaca. They make a black sauce out of chocolate and hot chilies and spread it on chicken. They eat fried grasshoppers, too. Grasshoppers taste a little like potato chips. The only thing I didn't like about them was that the antennae get stuck between your teeth.

My brother didn't like that, either. He would sit in the restaurant, plucking the antennae off each grasshopper, and placing the bodies carefully in rows on his plate. Then he would eat them one by one, with his eyes tightly closed.

Then there were the radishes. In Oaxaca, people grow huge radishes, not to eat, but to make sculptures out of them. There are monsters, churches, musicians, villages, saints — all sculpted out of radishes. Then a few days before Christmas, everyone meets up in the main square to look at the radish sculptures. Of course, the best sculpture wins a prize.

Now that's what I call playing with your food!

Every night there were parades with people on stilts and floats made out of crêpe paper, and fireworks going off everywhere.

And piñatas, too. It was just like the stories we read in Spanish class. The piñata hangs from a pole or the branch of a tree, and a kid who's blindfolded has to hit it with a stick to break it open, so that all the candies and little presents fall out.

It looks simple, but it's not, because the adults keep pushing the piñata just out of reach of the kid who has to hit it. I know — I tried it.

After Christmas in Oaxaca, my parents decided we should go somewhere else for New Year's.

“Hmmm,” said my father, squinting at the guidebook. He needs glasses, but he won't admit it. Sometimes we even get lost because he can't read the road map. “It says here that Tehuantepec has one of the most famous markets in Mexico.”

“I think I've eaten enough grasshoppers for one trip,” said my brother.

“No, no, it says here that the specialty is
iguana,” my father went on. “Sounds interesting.”

“Well, I guess we'd better go there,” I said as a joke.

“Great idea! Tehuantepec, here we come!” he yelled.

And he went right out to look for a car to rent. That's the problem with my parents. When you make a joke, they always take it seriously.

So off we went, in search of Tehuantepec.

This time I got to sit up front with my father. My mother sat in the back seat with her eyes half-closed. The day before she'd eaten something that hadn't liked her at all. That happens sometimes when you travel in Mexico. The food is part of the adventure.

Every time my father hit a bump in the road, and there were more bumps than there was road, she would moan, “
Huevos Motul
.” That was the name of the dish she'd eaten. Some kind of eggs that had come from a chicken in a really bad mood.

By the end of the day, we reached Tehuantepec. And this wasn't just any day, either. It was New Year's Eve. We were going to ring in the New Year in a town where everyone ate iguana. Which, by the way, is some kind of giant lizard. Now that's a really great idea!

As we drove into the center of the town, a gang of kids ran across the street in front of us, dragging a man who was on fire.

“
El viejo año!
” the kids were shouting.

My mother half opened her eyes. “Oh, my God, what are they doing to that poor man?” she whispered.

“Are they killing him?” asked my little brother. “Is he dead?”

Since I'm learning Spanish at school, I knew that
el viejo año
means “the old year.” And I also saw that the guy they were dragging down the street was made out of straw and rags.

I was about to tell my mother that, but she'd already closed her eyes again. When you have a bad stomachache, nothing else matters.

We finally found a hotel. It was a pretty strange place. There was no pipe under the sink, so when you washed your hands and face, the water ran onto the floor and splashed your feet. That way, you could wash your hands and feet together. It saved a lot of time, I guess.

“I think I'll have a little rest before dinner,” my mother said in a tiny voice.

“Why don't you kids go exploring?” my father suggested.

“But I'm hungry,” my brother said.

“Don't worry,” I told him. “Maybe we can find you some barbecued iguana, or a cactus sandwich.”

“What's an iguana, anyway?”

“A giant lizard that lives in the trees.”

“I'm not
that
hungry,” my brother said.

We went out the door before my father could tell us to be careful. He always says that. Even if we're just going out to play in the backyard.

There were more strange things about the hotel. Downstairs, in the yard, there was a monkey with a long tail and a sad face. He hopped over to us.

“
No tengo bananas
,” I told him.

“What did you say?”

“That I didn't have any bananas.”

“I don't like it when I can't understand,” my little brother said. And he pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. A Houston Astros cap. He didn't know anything about the team, but he liked the star on the cap.

Along with the monkeys, there were turkeys in the yard. They took themselves very seriously, walking around with their chests all puffed up, like they were all the presidents of some country. My brother was afraid of getting bitten.

“Don't worry,” I told him. “They're not smart enough to bite you. Did you know that when it rains, turkeys look up with their mouths open to see where the rain is coming from, and they drown?”

“But it's not raining,” he said.

He did have a point.

I figured that there would be restaurants in the market, maybe even a fried iguana stand, and that we could find something to eat. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the market.

“Go ahead, ask somebody,” he kept pestering me. “You're supposed to know Spanish.”

But all of a sudden, I couldn't remember any words. I guess my Spanish was only good for talking to monkeys.

A very small man driving a motorized tricycle passed us in the street. He was pulling a little trailer, and standing in the trailer were two very large women, wrapped in purple shawls, with their hair all swept up, as swirly as the top of a Dairy Queen ice-cream cone. They were wearing little pieces of mirrors in their hair, and they looked like queens.

The next thing we knew, another tricycle buzzed by, pulling four even larger women on a trailer. They had mirrors in their hair, too, and they were wearing all kinds of ornaments, like Christmas trees.

I guess that's how people celebrate New Year's Eve in Tehuantepec.

At the end of the street was the park, and the center of town. There were scraggly palm trees with Christmas lights hanging in them. And people selling just about everything: balloons, flags, ice-cream bars, peanuts, candy and confetti. But no iguanas.

We watched men playing a game with dice and cups. You had to guess which dice were under which cups, or something like that. But before I could figure out how the game worked, someone shouted, “
Policía!
” and everyone ran away.

“Where are they going?” my brother wanted to know.

“I don't know. Home for dinner, maybe?”

“I'm hungry, remember?” my brother reminded me.

Ka-bang!
A firecracker exploded really close to us.
Ka-bang!
Another one, right at our feet. Then another, a little farther away this time. My brother forgot all about being hungry.

“We're under attack!” he shouted.

I saw the same gang of kids who had been pulling the straw man through the streets. There wasn't much left of the man, just a few smoking rags at the end of a rope. I guess the old year really was finished.

Now the kids were lighting firecrackers and throwing them at people. I guess that was another New Year's Eve custom in Tehuantepec. I didn't like it very much.

“Let's go back to the hotel,” I said to my brother. And this time, he didn't complain.

There was a restaurant next to the hotel. My mother had rice for dinner. Plain rice, with a cup of tea.

I had chicken. So did my brother. There was no iguana on the menu.

“That's okay,” my father said. “They say iguana tastes like chicken.”

When we finally got back to the hotel, it was very late, and we were very full. The monkey came hopping over to see us. This time I was ready. I had some pieces of banana in a paper napkin. They were fried bananas, but the monkey didn't mind.

“It's nearly midnight,” my mother suggested. “Let's go up on the roof. Maybe there'll be fireworks.”

She must have been feeling better. Up the stairs we went. The roof was flat, and it was made out of smooth concrete, like the other floors of the building. My father said that the owner had probably planned to build a three-story hotel, but he ran out of money, so he stopped at two for the time being.

Guess what we found on the roof? A goat. A baby goat, to go along with the hungry monkey and the flock of turkeys. The goat wanted to come and see us, but he was behind a wire fence. He had plenty to eat, and a little house to sleep in, but he looked lonely. I guess he didn't have many friends up here. I put my fingers through the fence and he licked them so hard it tickled. I still had hot sauce on them from dinner. But I guess the goats in Tehuantepec like hot sauce.

Pow! Pow! Bang!

“We're under attack!” my brother shouted again.

“Hit the dirt!” my father ordered.

There wasn't any dirt, so we got down on the concrete. Church bells started ringing. I stuck my head out from behind a pillar. Down below, there were men in the park, shooting their pistols into the air. Firecrackers were nothing compared to this.

“It must be midnight,” my father said, as if people shooting their guns at us were the most natural thing in the world. “Happy New Year, kids!”

And he crawled over to my mother on his hands and knees and kissed her.

A couple of bullets passed right overhead. I guess that made the moment more romantic. The goat was smarter than my father. He'd gone and hidden in his house.

“Don't worry,” I told my brother. “Tomorrow we'll have iguana flakes for breakfast. It'll be fun, you'll see.”

“I can't wait,” he grumbled.

When it comes to danger, Mexico has got every other place beat. After we survived New Year's Eve in Tehuantepec, my parents wanted to head farther south, towards San Juan Chamula. That's where we got caught up in something even more dangerous.

From Tehuantepec, we had to drive up into the mountains. Even though we were going south, the air was getting colder by the minute. The people we saw were wearing bright wool ponchos, but they were barefoot. I guess if you don't have any shoes, your feet get used to the cold. At least, I hope so.

Clouds were beginning to gather around the tops of the mountains.

“Do you think it's going to snow?” I asked.

My father didn't answer. He was too busy. With one hand on the wheel, he was squinting at the map and grumbling, as if it were the map's fault that he couldn't read it.

“Look,” my father said, “this road ends at Chenaló. At least, I think it does. Let's go and have a look.”

“What will we do when we get there?” my little brother asked.

“We'll come back,” I told him.

“I don't get it,” he said.

“You will when you get to be my age.”

As usual, I started to read the guidebook. My brother won't, because he doesn't like to try and say all the foreign names. My father was busy driving, and my mother gets a headache if she tries to read in the car.

“Hey, look at this! It says here that the Tzotzil Indians don't like to have their photos taken. They think it's like stealing their souls. Some tourists got killed trying to take pictures.”

“Wow!” my brother said. “But how will we remember what we saw?”

“We can remember in our hearts,” my mother told him.

“Do photographs really steal your soul?” he asked.

“They do if you think they do,” my mother told him.

My brother was very quiet. A little while later, he said, “I think I'll skip my next class picture.”

It was too bad we couldn't take any pictures, because the countryside really was pretty. There were tall green hills covered in forests, with fields built on platforms up and down the slopes. The platforms were called terraces, and they had been built centuries ago.

“Look at those trees,” I said to my brother. “Real bananas are growing in them.”

“I thought bananas came from the store,” he said. I think he was just joking, though you never know.

The road climbed up one side of a hill, and was about to coast down the other when my mother said, “Look at that view! It's so beautiful.”

“We'll stop here,” my father said.

He pulled off the road. We all got out of the car. My father put rocks in front of the tires, just in case the brake didn't work. The green hills seemed to go on forever, with higher mountains in the distance, and clouds stuck on top of them.

“Those clouds look like big fluffy hats,” my mother said.

“There's no one around,” my father decided. “Nobody's soul to steal. We can take a picture.”

“Don't,” my mother told him. “Remember, these people take that seriously.”

My father took out his camera from his pocket anyway. He aimed it at the hills and terraces below.

Suddenly, my brother shouted, “Look, down there!”

On the terrace just beneath us, where the banana trees grew, people were lying on the ground, face down, with their ponchos over their heads. They really didn't want their souls stolen, not one little bit.

“Did you take a picture?” my mother asked.

“No,” my father said. “I didn't have time to.”

“We're leaving. Now.”

We all got into the car. But when we tried to drive away, the car wouldn't move.

“Something's wrong,” my father said, worried.

“Maybe the Tzotzil people cast a magic spell on us,” my brother suggested.

“I think I know what it is.”

I squeezed out of the back seat. You can't be any fatter than a string of spaghetti to get in and out of a two-door rented car.

Then I went around to the front of the car and kicked the two big stones away from the tires. My mother started laughing as I got back inside. So did my brother. My father concentrated on his driving.

As we drove past the first terrace, I saw that all the people had gotten up again, and were working in their fields. That was a close call!

At the bottom of the valley was a crossroads. One of the directions led to Chenaló. But it didn't look as though we were going to get there. Big rocks were blocking the road, and on those rocks were men wearing scarves over their faces. When we got closer, I could see that they weren't much older than I was. And they all had guns.

“Chenaló?” my father asked.

“
Ustedes no pasan
,” they said. “Not for you.”

“Why not?
Por qué?
”

They stared at us. I guess
Why?
was not a question they were used to answering. They pointed in the other direction.

“Chamula,” they said.

“Were they soldiers?” my little brother asked as my father turned the car around. “They didn't have uniforms.”

“I don't think so,” my mother told him. “I think they were ordinary people, trying to get their land back.”

“Back from who?” my brother asked.

“The people who work on the land don't own it. And they don't always get a fair price for what they grow, like those bananas you saw. In a lot of villages, they don't even have schools or clean water. I think the guys blocking the road are trying to change that.”

My brother was quiet for a minute or two. And let me tell you, that doesn't happen very often.

And that was how we ended up visiting San Juan Chamula, another town that's famous for being a place where you can't take pictures. There were signs in several languages, warning people to keep their cameras in their pockets.

There did not seem to be very much to see in Chamula. We went into the church to look at the paintings. It was very dark inside, but when my eyes got used to the darkness, I could see that this church was different from other churches we had visited. Very different. First of all, the benches had been taken out, and the floor was covered with fir-tree branches. The statues of the saints, that usually sit on pedestals, were standing right on the floor, along with the paintings that are usually on the walls.

People were praying to the saints so hard they didn't even notice us. They had burning candles stuck in Coke bottles in front of the statues, next to squares of chocolate and little piles of chili peppers. It wasn't like any church I'd ever seen.

We didn't spend more than a minute in there. It felt as though we had wandered into someone else's house, where we didn't belong.

“Did those guys who were blocking the road change around the church, too?” my brother wondered.

“Maybe,” my mother said. “It looks like the Indian people are taking back the church and using it in their own way, just the way they want to take back the land.”

“It looks like they put a different religion inside that church,” I said.

“It was spooky,” my brother decided. “Nobody even looked at us.”

We sat down on a fountain in front of the church to figure out what to do next. We still felt the spookiness from the church, even my parents. The fountain was dry, as if there hadn't been any water in it for ages.

In no time at all, we were surrounded by a dozen little girls from the village. They were pointing at my brother and laughing.

“Rubio! Rubio!”
they cried.

“What are they saying?” my brother wanted to know.

“Something about rubies?” my mother wondered.

I pulled out my pocket dictionary. Along with the guidebook, it was really very useful.

“
Rubio
… That means blond. I guess they don't see blond kids very often.”

My brother took his Astros cap out of his backpack and put it on. He pulled it down as far as he could.

“I don't like this place,” he said. “Not at all. Everything's too strange here.”

All of a sudden a soccer ball came sailing in our direction. I jumped up and knocked it down with my chest so that it fell at my feet, the way my coach at home taught us to do. The ball was old and held together with tape. I looked up and saw a group of boys standing and watching me. I kicked the ball back to them.

“
Gracias,
” they said.

You can meet people anywhere in the world if you know how to play soccer.

Then one of the little girls who was braver than the rest of them ran up to my mother, reached up and touched her hair. My mother smiled and shook her blond curly hair. The little girl dashed back to her friends. All of them were giggling. Our hair sure made a big impression on them.

Two women came out of the church. One was wearing a long purple scarf on her head, and the other had a brightly colored bag over her shoulder. They were no taller than my little brother. The women clapped their hands and shouted something at the girls, and they laughed one last time before scattering off in all directions.

I never expected the women would walk right up to us. They certainly weren't shy, not like the girls. One of them reached into her bag and took out four cloth bracelets. She put a bracelet around each of our wrists.

We were too surprised to move, except for my mother, who held out her arm. Suddenly Chamula didn't seem so strange and scary anymore.

“Friendship bracelets,” she said. “Aren't they beautiful?”

My father reached into his pocket to give them some money, but the women shook their heads.

Just then, I saw something flying toward us out of the corner of my eye. It was the soccer ball again. I leaped up and headed it straight into the air. When it came down, I gave it a bicycle kick back to the group of boys.

They applauded — it was a pretty fancy move. Maybe my brother didn't like Chamula, but it was all right with me.

When the day was over, we left the town and drove out of the mountains, back down to where the air was warmer. That night we stayed in a big hotel that even had a television set. My father said we'd earned it.

The news came on the TV. We couldn't understand what the announcer was saying, and I didn't have time to look up all the words in my pocket dictionary. The announcer sounded very serious, as if something very important had happened. Pictures of men with guns standing by the side of a road came on the screen. They were wearing scarves over their faces.

“Hey, I know those guys!” my brother said.

Then we saw the church at Chamula. A man with a scarf over his face was standing on the edge of the fountain where we had sat, holding a very mean-looking rifle, and giving a speech.

“It's the revolution,” my father said. “Imagine that, we just missed it.”

We'll remember Chamula for sure — with or without pictures!