Patzcuaro haze.

Like the swallows that twist and float around our house every evening, I feel like I’m still looking for something elusive. Like everyone who travels, it is partly something inside us that keeps us out, looking for something beautiful, remarkable, or meaningful. The tasty morsel of the small fly that the swallow snatches out of the air, but like the swallow I’m still out looking even with all I see. The struggle I have is being the tourist, the one with money, amidst so much poverty and genuine struggle. It is difficult to be the tourist, the consumer of cultures and places, when the cultures and the places are in such clear danger of being used up; and what then when they are?

For a bit of context, we have moved on out of DF and are now in a town called Patzcuaro, in the state of Michoacan. Patzcuaro is known for its day of the dead celebrations at the beginning of November every year. It is a town that reminds me of Flagstaff in many ways, not the least of which are the pine trees and the seven fires burning around the city. Fires here are under radically different set of conditions: they have not been wholly interrupted by the fear of fire, so there is not an accumulation of a hundred year fuel load. Instead they are lit on purpose in most cases and they burn slowly and deliberately across huge areas of the landscape. Those areas recently burned are obvious when the rains start because they are the first to green up, the vivid green bunchgrasses against the burnt landscape. The smoke that fills the town and hazes the sky into a golden light still burns my throat.

Patzcuaro is also known for the massive Lago de Patzcuaro about 3km north of the town. The lake is a massive shallow lake that is known for the island of Janitzio, the town crowed by the 40m statue to the independence hero Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon. It is an odd middle-class Mexican retreat in the early summer. Ferries take you out to the island for 35 pesos, and the 50 person launch putters along across the oddly brown water. On a clear day the landscape of dozens of cinder cones that ring the lake must be stunning with the green mountains and red clay-tiled roofs of every town. But not today, as the haze from the smoke all but keeps your attention on the egrets that are balanced and strikingly white in the shallows of the brown water. A mariachi combo cracks out some Norteño tunes for the tourists from Sonora who ride over to the island with us, the drummer is clearly annoyed at me, the gringo who plugs his ear right next to the drum. They play a few songs and then pass the hat.

As we near the island the famous butterfly fisherman (known for their huge butterfly nets) paddle out in their canoes and sort of do a performance, showing off their nets and how they would fish if it were not for the lack of fish in the lake. Two of the men paddle up and hang on to the boat to ask for tips. Everyone obliges. Part of the show, part of the cost. It is especially sad given that the famous whitefish that the butterfly fisherman have perfected their skills on are now endangered, further threatening to make their display into more of an act. Given the number of boats that are beside the water as we circle the island, small flat bottom canoes in dozens of bright colors, the reality of overfishing is not much of a stretch. The island is covered in dingy brick and concrete houses built into every conceivable angle on the slopes of the island. Several young girls play in front of an empty restaurant.

Once we dock on the far side of the island from the little girls, the climb to the top of the island can begin. The streets are a narrow jumble of haphazard buildings built on top of and over each other, with the twisting and turning stairs leading in multiple directions at once, but always upward to the monument. The crafts are cheap and not authentic by any stretch. Their repetition draws us to conclude an Asian origin, the trinkets of mass production with only the name of the town different on them. It is the second sad display of our day. We venture that some racket must control the trade, as the trinkets do not change as we get higher and higher on the island. The paintings are the same, the keychains, the cheap boats of wood and colored string. All the same to the very top of the island. The monument at the top costs 6 pesos to even enter the gates, and is a statue of Morelos y Pavon, right arm raised, surrounded by more stands with more of the same trinkets. Given the line to enter the statue, we pass on climbing up to peer out of the narrow windows at the top of his fist.

On a clear day, the view of Patzcuaro must be stunning. The pine-covered hills ring the lake, rising in every direction to the rolling tops of mountains all around. Through the haze I count seven fires. The largest is to the southwest of Patzcuaro and looks to be making its way down toward the lake. The others are small and dot the landscape. There may be more, but they are not visible with the haze. Disappointed by the whole experience, we wind our way back down through the town, passing restaurants and bars and trinket stands in their endless repetition of the same. At times the dress of the women and the small fried fish and the man we pass knitting a real fishing net suggest a deeper authenticity of the town. The man’s hands dart around and back, around and back, knowingly knitting the net at a speed that remind us of a deeper unseen cultural memory. Besides, who am I to comment on the presence or absence of that which I’ve never seen?

On the boat ride back I wonder about the island, the center of the day of the dead for Mexico. After having seen so much beautiful and remarkable folk art in Patzcuaro it was a challenge to see so little on Janitzio. Was it simply the case that the classes were represented so clearly? The rich having province over Patzcuaro with its ornate artistry, the middle classes having only the cheap replications of that ornate quality? To be a tourist in a foreign land does confer a measure of objectivity, but it also does not always allow for intimacy except in rare cases. At the end of the day, I could see the cheapness of the popular art, the cheapness of the Asian replications of what in Patzxuaro had finally come to be so genuine. Was it simply a function of the conditions forced on Mexico, to be as Porfirio Diaz said, “so far from God, so near the United States”? To be now struggling with the free market as it cheapened and degraded what was once magical quality, with the very basic reality of survival at stake.

The challenge of Mexico seems so clearly to be its humanity. From the perspective of the United States we are apt to be grossly racist, or blame it on corrupt politics, or simply on our ignorance. The Mexico I am discovering is one that smiles even when begging on the street, who clearly appreciates being treated like a human, even if the act is as simply as saying, no gracias señora. The humanity of Mexico is in the artistry and beauty of its people, its culture, and land. For me, the struggle of being a tourist and of having so much amid so many who do not have anything, is in not objectifying. I am an outsider and will forever be outside the magical history of Mexico, but as I learn more about this country and its history I cannot but feel a sense of kinship. No longer do I feel we are so far apart. But I am careful not to suggest this in a paternalistic fashion, for paternalism has brought all the great problems to Mexico. Instead it is in the humanism of concern for a people I wish well, that I wish a good life to—in that is the first step toward a kinship and a recognition we are not so far apart.