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My Saddam was not hiding,
although if he had been, I seriously doubt that he would have ever
been discovered.
I met Saddam and his family in the southern part of the Sierra Negra
of Puebla,
a lightly populated area of breathtaking natural beauty -- towering
cliffs, virgin forest, unexplored caves, and spectacular waterfalls -- that
was, at the time, still inaccessible by road.
When the people of the region, who mostly speak a dialect of the
Mazatec language, wished to interact with the outside world, they
had to trek down from their villages, cross the Petlapa river into
the state of Oaxaca, and climb over 1000 meters on muddy, rocky
trails to the village of Chilchotla in the Sierra Mazateca. Some
Sierra Negra Mazatecs would make this slog several times a day,
carrying sixty pounds of material, for three or four dollars per
trip.
Until last month, this was the way that I reached the Sierra Negra,
hiking down from the Sierra Mazateca, where I had conducted intermittent
anthropological fieldwork since 1993. My compadre Juvenal, from
the town of Huautla, introduced me to the lowland village of Matzozongo,
just over the river at the bottom of the valley.
Matzozongo is a steamy jungle town, where sweating men squat in
the shade outside their thatched roofed houses and drink the refreshing
fermented sugar cane drink called tepache.
Matzozongo is a true tropical paradise, where nature has provided
a different crop of fruit for every month -- oranges, mameys, mangos,
papayas, and others that I have never seen anywhere else.
From Matzozongo, one must go uphill in every direction, to a handful
of more remote but cooler villages spread out under the towering
slopes of Zizintepetl (3260 meters), called the Grandmother mountain
because she shrouds her face with clouds the way an old woman covers
her face with a rebozo.
I first Jose Juan in Matzozongo in 1994, but since then he had
moved back to his home town, the village of Pilola two hours walk
to the south, and it was there that I found him in 2003 at his isolated
house between two steep arroyos leading down to the river.
Jose Juan is a dashing figure and an iconoclast. In his youth,
he was a brawler who often found himself in trouble with the law,
especially when he worked in the city. Now 50, he has settled down
and makes a good living growing sugarcane and transforming it into
the potent, intoxicating poison known as aguardiente, which he sells
for thirty pesos a liter.
Jose Juan speaks three languages fluently: Spanish, the Mazateco
of his father, and the Nahuatl of his mother (whose father was also
a swashbuckling figure, the great cacique or boss of Pilola and
Zacatepec).
Jose Juan despises organized religion, and refused to name his
children after those phony, deceiving saints. So he named his daughters
after African nations and cities instead -- Kenya (now 13) and
Nairobi (now 7).
He was going to name his son Sudan, keeping with the theme. But
another name caught his ear when he heard it on his solar-powered
radio in the early 90s. And so it was that he named his middle child
Saddam.
Saddam is a stocky child who bears a slight resemblance to his namesake,
but he has a warm nature, wields a mean machete, can skin a ram,
and sink a jump shot, as can Kenya.
His father's sense of humor showed when I met the toddler
son of one of the young men who work for him at his palenque (still).
Jose Juan thought that it would be appropriate for his worker to
name his child after the son of Saddam, to seal the relationship
between the two families. Uday now walks unsteadily through the
fields and forests of southern Puebla.
I returned to the Sierra Negra last month by bus along a new road.
I was concerned that the road would end the region's isolation
and open my personal Paradise to swarms of tourists. I need not
have worried -- the road was treacherous, slow-going, stony, and
utterly terrifying, and on more than one occasion our bus -- the
only one of the day -- began to slide over the cliff, only to come
to rest at the edge on what appeared to be a life-saving pebble.
Jose Juan and his brother Romulo make excellent tour guides and
hosts, despite their opposite personalities. Jose Juan is the romantic,
macho adventurer. Romulo, born almost totally blind, is the educated
intellectual who loves to talk about politics and the nature of
the universe. But both are in love with their environment, and both
seem to sincerely enjoy trekking about the mountains, introducing
me to new villages, new swimming holes and caves and waterfalls,
and new friends.
Romulo took me on a several hour hike to the village of Tepexilotla,
the last community under the walls of Zizintepetl, nestled in a
green, verdant basket. Here, I met two new guides, Bernardo, the
biggest landowner of the village, and his friend Chico, who had
just spent six hours planting corn, and were sitting down to the
traditional post-planting meal of spicy, chicken mole. They assured
me that I was the first foreigner ever to reach their hometown,
and after lunch decided to celebrate by taking me to see a high
waterfall, one that they had seen from a distance, but had never
actually reached.
We set off -- four Mazatec men with machetes, two liters of tepache,
and a gun (in case we encountered one of the aggressive, deadly,
and abundant palanca snakes -- the fer de lance), myself, and my
two companions.
After crossing a river, we found ourselves climbing on a narrow
path to an abandoned cornfield. The path eventually trailed off
into nothing, and I gradually reached the terrifying realization
that we were on a narrow patch of green halfway up high, sheer cliffs.
My guides manufactured a path as we went, hacking away with their
machetes like a giant lawnmower, yanking on roots to make sure they
could handle my weight, and periodically splitting up to search
for the easiest route back down, which turned out to be a fairly
challenging climb down roots, branches, and rocks -- the perfect
palanca habitat.
Eventually we reached our destination, a beautiful, perhaps 140
foot waterfall cascading into a deep pool. Bernardo arrived before
us and stood next to the water, his arms stretched out, his face
illuminated by a broad smile of pure, sincere delight.
The smile stayed on his face as we drank the tepache, and as began
the arduous task of hacking a path back up the mountain.
Next time I visit the Sierra Negra, Bernardo and I will hike in
the other direction, and explore the slopes of the grandmother mountain.
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