The final installment from Kirk Stephan as he unco
With all the audio, visual, olfactory, psychic and political impressions that have been bombarding me of late it’s been a few weeks getting back to this report.
The last leg, from Palenque to back “home” in San Miguel de Allende, northern Mexico, has been the most spectacular. Elevating, edifying, stupefying, outrageous, all come to mind.
Heading northward from Palenque takes you to the heart of the bizarre land of Chiapas. Volcanically, this is the most staggering landscape I’ve seen. The pincnoclines (the miles-long layers of millions of years of rock sediment) here become vertical and radical rollercoaster-looping, up and down and around. This, of course, evidences explosive upheavals many times in the past. Before people…
In the lower levels of this range, only an hour from the pyramids, appears one of the world’s most beautiful series of waterfalls. “Agua Azules” are pools and cataracts of stunning turquoise and sapphire colored clear water, white sands and crystalline-studded grey limestone cliffs. The clear waters swirl and crash endlessly as if Niagara Falls were transforming itself before your eyes into the Caribbean Sea.
Then, up and up through Aspen forests and Pine jungle, until you reach for a sweater and close the windows to the crisp chill. Down again, slightly, is San Cristobal de las Casas, another colonial treasure of old architecture and cobblestone. We’re still so high I have to pull out my electric heater for the first time in many weeks in order to sleep. Like many, this city is a tad noisy and dirty; I long for the clean, quiet countryside.
So the city fades behind to pinpointed lights as the road begins its real adventure. Each passed village is filled with bright white and red-colored costumes decorating the indigenous peoples going about their work. Then the road begins to deteriorate as the heights become alarming in their leaps and dives. The crisp chill of the higher levels suddenly turns to tropical sweaty heat as the “highway”, or trail rather, dives in to deep valleys. None of the roads have sidings and your imagination screams to not get too
“near the edge…”
Ocozocoautla, Apitpac, El Bosque, Simojovel. Tiny villages with strange names and crammed full of colorfully clothed indian peoples drift pass your view. Then a village with over a thousand men and women sitting in the main square. Waiting for “something” it would appear, since there was no conversation. Only silent stares at the invading “tourista”. Since most Mexican people make a great show out of conversing and gesturing, this was kind of a creepy feeling…
These are displaced Chiapas Indians, I discover, and they’re not alone. All parts of the state have similar to-dos. Thousands and more indigenous families left their meager homesteads in these past years, fleeing murder and torture by the “secret squads”, whoever they were. They now huddle and gather more to the north of the state, and casualties seem to be down, as if they are now just about where they are wanted to be…
To get back to the Chiapas “rebellion” aspect, let me repeat part of the last chapter, (remember?) when we were in the shady grove by the stream, with local landowners AND the ranking general of the Mexican Army in Chiapas (!): The moon was getting high and bright and we were all several sheets to the wind, and…
Later in the evening I ventured to pry some tidbit from the general about the rebellion.
“Do you think Commandante Marcos might be a Cuban?” I ask in my naive Iowa drawl.
“Phoohf…He’s just an internet!” replied the general. “He doesn’t exist, even. Just flotsam and pieces of cyber-propaganda from the media…!”
Just after this exchange the general seemed to choke a bit, clear his throat, and add: “…and poverty! Where do you see THAT? Look around!”
And of course he was right; we were seated in a shaded cove of trees on one of the richest ranchos in southern Mexico, eating and drinking expensive tidbits provided by the wealthiest landowner about! It seemed, upon reflection, that the general was trying to divert conversation from his previous comment, which was by then seared upon my memory: “…doesn’t even exist!!!!”
Read all three parts of Highway Tales: Final Report
Part One
Part Two
Part Three