Day 26-27

 Day 26-7

June 16-17, 2007

Chalchihuites (Zac., Mexico) – This weekend, I took a weekend excursion with about 8 other students and two of the teachers from Fenix out to a small pueblo about 2 hours from Zacatecas, called Chalchihuites.  It is the birthplace of the school’s founder and head teacher, Don Arturo Dorado Diaz.  He is a quite a character; a really friendly, outgoing, intelligent guy who takes “Second Language Acquisition Theory” very seriously.  He’s very patient with all of our “horrible Spanish,” and he is extremely good-humored.  Anyway, we took this brief twenty-four hour trip to get a taste of pueblo life in Mexico, and it is not surprisingly quite different from the city.  In this case it is a bit too cliché to talk about going back in time or something like that, but it really is a different life.  Most of the people work the land or for one of the mining companies.  Our group of Americans stood out, so we got lots of comments – some very friendly, some not as much.  Either way, we were definitely part of the weekend entertainment. 

Saturday afternoon, we visited an archeological site only about 2 miles outside the center of town.  This hilltop served as an ancient astronomical observatory, where early Aztecs measures the paths of planets, stars, and the seasons of the earth using very advanced methods of calculation and observation.  Carved on one of the walls is a thousand-year-old outline of a woman holding a serpent.  While the site was quite different from last weekend’s visit to La Quemada, for some reason it conjured some of the same feelings in me.  Standing in the wind, surveying the surrounding mountains and valleys, seeing a rain storm blowing across the sky from miles away, it all felt a little magical somehow.  It was really an interesting place. 

Later, thanks to our 7 year-old guide, Manuel, we saw the town’s elementary school, the two iglesias (churches), the open-air Sunday market, and an old-school bar with swinging doors like in an old Western movie, but without any seats inside (so we went somewhere else).  We got our dinner at a carniceria (meat store), and we enjoyed the very gracious hospitality of Don Arturo and his son.  Around 8pm, they got the grill going, and for the rest of the night the scent of fresh meat and onions filled the air.  We sat around his porch, enjoying some of Mexico’s fine beverage selection, watching our dinner cook and talking about life, philosophy, theology, ethics, language and all the rest.  It was a wonderful night, one of the best I’ve had here, and without doubt we enjoyed the best tacos I’ve had in Mexico. 

Earlier, I said that most people here work the land or the mines.  This isn’t really quite accurate.  Really, more Chalchihuitans live in California than in Chalchihuites.  This town, like the rest of the state of Zacatecas, runs in very large part on the dollars that are sent back every day from the US.  Don’t worry, this is not turning into some kind of political blog, but the migration of people from Mexico to the US touches everyone down here, and I cannot help but raise the questions…  What kinds of economic push/pull factors play into the decision to look for work in El Norte?  Why do we have jobs in the US that we American citizens simply will not do?  What kinds of hidden costs do we consumers pay for our relatively cheap stuff?  How dangerous, how low-paying, how back-breaking are these kinds of jobs?  Why wouldn’t people who work these kinds of jobs deserve the chance to become American citizens?  And aren’t Christians called to welcome the stranger in their midst, no matter how they got there?  The Bible knows nothing of an “illegal” stranger…  Isn’t this the word that the Church has to offer, that all are welcome at this table our Lord has prepared for us?