Hound Dog
Aug 19, 2010, 9:50 AM
Post #1 of 4
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You donīt pull on Supermanīs cape,
You donīt spit into the wind,
You donīt pull the mask off that olī Lone Ranger
And you donīt mess around with....
My thanks to Jim Croce.
The August 17th edition of the New York Times has an article by its "Frugal Traveler" editor, Seth Kugel, entitled, "Picking a Spot, any (Undiscovered) Spot, in Mexico", in which Kugel recounts his adventure in rural Oaxaca State visiting the small rural Zapoteco village of San Juan Teitipac, (population +/- 2,500 souls) about an hour of less from Oaxaca City. He had been riding a bus from Tapachula, Chiapas on the border with Guatemala to Oaxaca City when he came upon the notion of picking, at random, a small, rural village with no known tourist attractions to visit just to get a feel for what travel adventures isolated, rarely visited small villages might offer the stranger popping into town for no apparent reason other than to quell a thirst for an understanding of rural village life in Southern Mexico. During the course of his bus journey from Tapachula to Oaxaca City, he had occasion to discuss this off-the-cuff idea with the bus driver who suggested he visit the bus driverīs home town of San Juan Teitipac outside of the city and located some kilometers down a rutted access road somewhat isolated from other communities located in more widely traveled locations.
This he did and I wonīt go into a recounting of his adventures in Teitipac except to say that he met a few locals who were welcoming (probably after being alerted by the bus driver), stayed at a local home for lodging during his abbreviated visit, ate some local meals of varying quality at rustic eateries and stumbled upon a 16th Century monastery behind the local church being restored by architects running the "Escuela Taller", a project largely funded by the Spanish government to teach young school dropouts trades relating to historic restoration of ancient structures.
That having been said, that article about the pleasures to be derived from random visits to isolated rural villages in Oaxaca State was not so much what caught my attention as one of the many e-mail responses to the article most of which, in the normal range of responses, praised the author for his insights in (and I summarize) this wonderful and romantic country of Mexico where serenely happy country folk live mostly in communal bliss tilling Godīs precious earth and raising livestock and that sort of thing which one comes to expect when reading e-mail chatter from the romantically inclined poorly informed.
The one e-mail response that caught my eye was from a Dr. Di Canio, a linguist at the Laboratoire Dynamique de Langage in Lyon, France who says he has been doing field work for about ten years in rural Oaxaca, especially in the Trique community who, while lauding the Frugal Traveler author for his willingness to travel off the beaten path to enlighten himself about life in rural, largely untouched, spots in Southern Mexico, warns the reader that, while the article is interesting, it is suggesting a reckless way to travel and insisting that in Oaxaca (and, I can assure the reader, in Chiapas where we live part of each year and other rural regions of Southern Mexico) randomly showing up uninvited in small, isolated towns is not generally a good idea unless you know someone locally who can vouch for you. Dr. Di Canio states that the stranger following such an ill-advised itinerary may very well be told by locals to leave or may even be physically threatened with harm. Dr. Di Canio concedes that the stranger presuming to show up unannounced and without any local introduction may very well be welcomed with open arms but, for every welcoming village there are other villages which he describes as "vehemently xenophobic" where locals will view stangers showing up uninvited suspiciously and with often open hostility.
We have spent almost ten years retired in Mexico and four of those years we have spent winters in San Cristóbal de Las Casas while traveling extensively in that region from Oaxaca State to the Yucatan Peninsula and our few years there have taught us that the traveler must at all times be respectful of local customs which may very well include the popular belief among locals, learned over the past four plus centuries, that mysterious stangers with imperceptible motives bearing gifts and/or glad tidings are sometimes of a malevolent nature and may undiscernably mean them harm after conclusion of first greetings. These folks learned this the hard way over the centuries. Visit them with a prudent regard for their customs you will not understand when you first arrive.
The entire article I site and the numerous e-mail responses to it may still be archived at the New York Times web site. I recommend the reader familiarize him/herself with the article and e-mail responses before visiting rural Southern Mexico.
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