THE DECLINE OF MEXICO'S MENNONITES: FROM AG POWERHOUSE TO CARTEL COURIER AND FOREST PILLAGER

 

Mennonites in Campeche at Harvest (Photo Reuters)

In Cancun we'd often see Mennonites in straw cowboy hats hawking cheese wheels at downtown stoplights. Smack dab in the middle of a thorough-fare, young men in Bib overalls would stand fearlessly on the center line, waving their products as cars zoomed by on both sides. We later learned the Men-nonites had a long history with Mexico and the Yucatán stretching back to the early 20th century.

The Mennonites trace their roots to a group of Christian radicals who emerged during the Reformation in 16th century Germany. They opposed both Roman Catholic doctrine and mainstream Protestant religions and maintain a pacifist lifestyle. They emigrated to North America to preserve their faith.

In the 1920s a group of 6,000 moved to Chihuahua in northern Mexico and established themselves as important crop producers. In the 1980s a few thousand moved to Campeche on the edge of the Maya Forest which is second in size only to the Amazon. According to Global Forest Watch, a non-profit that monitors deforestation, the Maya Forest is shrinking annually by an area the size of Dallas. In Campeche, the Mennonites bought and leased tracts of jungle land for farming, some from local Maya. 

Burning Fields in Campeche

In 1992 Mexico legislation made it easier to develop, rent or sell previously protected forest, increasing deforestation and the number of farms in the state. When Mexico opened up the use of genetically modified soy in the 2000s, Mennonites in Campeche embraced the crop and the use of Round Up, a glysophate weedkiller, designed to work alongside GMO crops, according to Edward Ellis, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana.

Higher yields meant more income to support large families. For the Mennonites, a family of ten children is not uncommon. They typically live simple lives supported by the land and choose to go without modern-day amenities such as electricity or motor vehicles, as dictated by their faith. But their farm work has evolved to use harvesters, chainsaws, tractors. While most Mennonite communities remain in Chihuahua, now another 15,000 Mennonites also live in Campeche.

Mennonite Girls in Cleared Field (Photo Reuters)

Presently the tide has turned on deforestation in Mexico and both ecologists and the government that once welcomed the Mennonites' agricultural prowess believe the rapid razing of the jungle by these new ranches is creating an environmental disaster. The Maya Forest is one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet and the habitat of endangered jaguars, plus 100 species of mammals to which the jungle is home.

A 2017 study published by Universidad Veracruzana showed that properties cleared by Mennonites had rates four times higher for deforestation than other properties. Under international pressure to follow a greener agenda, the Mexican government has persuaded some Mennonite communities to sign an agreement to stop deforesting the land. But not all communities have signed such an agreement.  

In speaking to Reuters, a Mennonite school teacher in a pueblo on the edge of the forest stated that the agreement has not impacted the way they farm. The Mennonites have signed on an attorney who states they believe they are being targeted by the government due to their pacifist beliefs while other land destroyers are not bothered.

Between 2001 and 2018, in the three states that comprise forest growth in Mexico, 15,000 square kilometers of tree cover was razed, roughly the size of the country Belize. With changing weather patterns and less rain, harvests are smaller in general for all concerned, both Mennonites and the indigenous Maya.

The Campeche Secretary of Environment, Sandra Loffan, clocked in stating the Mennonites did not always have the correct paperwork to convert forest land to farm land. An agreement was signed last year, 2022, to create a permanent group between the government and Mennonite communities to deal with land ownership and rights, and disagreements that arise including those from locals stating the Mennonites are abusing logging rights.  

Typical Mennonite Buggy

But this is only one of the Mennonites' problems in Mexico. Ten years ago connections between the community and Mexican cartels were exposed when a mule pipeline from Chihuahua to Alberta, Canada, was discovered. In this unlikely alliance, the pacifist Mennonites were growing tons of marijuana for the cartels and shipping it north, smuggling it in gas tanks, inside farm equipment and cheese wheels. For background, in an old ABC interview, Michael LeFay, Immigration and Customs Director in El Paso, stated a Mennonite network emerged long ago. What began with marijuana expanded into cocaine smuggling. When customs officials at the U.S. border looked into a car and saw Mennonites, he explained, officials waved them through. Mennonites were a common sight at the border and frequent travelers from Mexico to Canada because many Canadians from Manitoba and Ontario have Mennonite family members in Mexico. 

Mennonite Man with Cheese Wheel

Though the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) issued a statement decades ago that only a few members of the Mennonite community had links to violent cartels, facts proved them wrong. In the 1990s not all Mennonite families owned land; they fell on hard times. At the same time the tenets of their faith drew questions from a younger generation raised in Mexico where there was no legal age restriction to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Vices began to creep in. It wasn't uncommon, an ABC newscaster reported, to see young Mennonite teens drinking Corona and smoking cigarettes after a Sunday church service once their parents left the church parking lot.

Reports started to trickle in: a Mennonite man was accused of smuggling 16 kilos of coke across the U.S.-Canadian border in 2012. Jacob Dyck faced charges of conspiracy to import $2 million of cocaine and possession for purpose of trafficking.

Then along came the Canadian TV drama Pure, earning a place in Canadian pop culture about Mennonites connected to the cartels. But DEA agents were still trying to get their heads around it, tsk-tsking the outrageous idea that Mennonites had a corrupt streak. DEA Agent Jim Schrant was quoted as saying a "large scale marijuana and cocaine distribution group run by Mennonites with cartel connections seemed bonkers." 

Though Schrant was aware that a huge drug distribution group was operating in Mexico and shipping large quantities into the U.S. he believed it was being run by individuals only. Then along came the story of Grassy Lake, Alberta, a rural town of 649 souls where 80 percent of residents were Mennonites. In time the DEA got wise and outed the town as the distribution hub for an international weed and coke smuggling operation linked to the Juarez Cartel.

31-Hour Drive from Mexico to Canada

A widely publicized case against Abraham Friesen-Rempel, 2014, had the DEA intercepting 32,500 phone calls believed to be linked to Juarez Cartel drug activity. Although Friesen-Rempel played only a minor role as driver, he'd delivered 1575 pounds of pot for the cartels. Convicted of smuggling drugs, he received a 15-month federal sentence. And so on, and so forth.

It's believed that the cartels lean on the Mennonites because they share a common bond of anti-government sentiment. Staunchly private, the Mennonites shun government interaction and their fierce sense of privacy aligns them with the philosophy of the cartels. Also, for decades they never got a second look at the border. The perfect cover for illicit border crossings. 

So now, though the drug implications are tamped way down, the government is extremely dissatisfied with the deforestation done by their farming tech-niques. Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez is pressuring them to shift to more sustainable practices. The government plans to phase out glysophate by 2024 which would lower harvest yields and their incomes.

"That's a consequence all farmers, Mennonites and locals, might have to pay to save the environment," said Campeche's Secretary of Environment Sandra Laffon.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

MASTER POTTER JUAN QUEZADA CELADO, 81, DIES IN MATA ORTIZ, MEXICO

 

Juan Quezada Celado in Mata Ortiz

Juan Quezada Celado died at his ranch in Mata Ortiz, northern Chihuahua, on December 1. The master artisan, famous for resurrecting a pottery style known as Mata Ortiz, was 81.

I became aware of Mata Ortiz pottery and its founder, Juan Quezada Celado, quite by accident after meeting Santa Barbara potter Rebecca Russell at a tai chi class last year. Somehow we started talking about Mexico. She told me her pottery work drew her there and she'd traveled to northern Chihuahua to study with Juan Quezada who'd developed a style known as Mata Ortiz. 

I'd lived in Mexico for 17 years and hadn't heard of it. The most common pottery style in Quintana Roo, my stomping grounds, came from Puebla, the Talavera style, characterized by bright colors and diverse patterns with a high glaze finish. Talavera was widely marketed in QRoo, the Yucatan, and throughout Mexico. 

Rebecca showed me her business card with a photo of the Mata Ortiz style. It was like nothing I'd seen before, very elegant, different. She spoke with great respect of Quezada and I later researched both the artist and Mata Ortiz pottery.

Juan Quezada's life story reads like a fairytale. It's the story of a poor woodcutter who transformed himself into one of the most famous artists in Mexico. It's also a tale of a dusty Mexican village that learned how to fashion dirt into clay, transforming it into something beautiful. 

A young Juan Quezada had been forced to quit school to help his family survive. He picked firewood in the surrounding area where a sophisticated pre-Columbian culture had once thrived around the city of Paquime (also called Casas Grandes). It dominated the region for 300 years around 1200 AD and had been famous for ceramics featuring geometric designs in red, black, yellow, and brown which were traded throughout North America.

The boy found ancient pottery fragments as he worked. He even found shards in his own backyard—both Casas Grandes style and an older style still, Mimes, that dated from 200 AD, characterized by bold black on white zoomorphic designs. With his burro, he eventually went farther into the mountains collecting firewood and picking up bright shards along the way.

Though no one seemed to know about the people who made the pottery, everyone knew of the ruins 15 miles north, Paquimé, the center of the Casas Grandes culture. The mounds on the plains were the remains of the outlying communities that spread for miles around the site. At dusk by the light of his campfire, he'd examine his daily collection of shards, trying to figure out how they had been made. At home he dug clay from the arroyos, soaked it, and tried to make pots. They all cracked. Eventually Juan studied the broken pieces and realized that mixing in a little sand would prevent the cracking. His interest led him to the study of the pre-Hispanic pottery of the ancient cultures so close to his village. In time, he figured out how to make round bottoms similar to the prehistoric pots by making a mold after finding some in the outlying mounds. 

Gradually he mastered the process. As a young man, without any instruction, he was making and decorating credible pots for his own pleasure. He had re-created the entire ceramic technology from clay preparation to firing, using only shards to guide him, without help from ceramicists or specialists. But now married, he needed a variety of jobs to keep food on the table for his family—from working as a cowboy to railroad worker, leaving less time to make pottery.

But pottery still enticed him. In 1974 he decided to concentrate on making pots. He could sell enough with local traders to risk leaving his job on the railroad; earnings from the sale of just one pot would outdo what he'd earn on repairing rail tracks. His modest success attracted the interest of his siblings and he began to teach them what he'd learned. He became known as the self-taught interpreter of Casas Grandes pottery, sometimes called New Casas Grandes or Mata Ortiz after the village where it originated. 

Initial attempts to sell the pots in his area on a large scale failed, but he had success with border merchants, where his pottery was discovered by an anthropologist, Spencer MacCallum, who tracked Quezada down and helped him break into the larger US market. 

What started with the meeting of Quezada and MacCallum led to MacCallum's promotion of the pottery style across the border. He showed Quezada's pieces to museum curators, universities, and gallery owners. MacCallum's salesmanship and perseverance cemented the interest in these important markets which were essential to the potter's survival. An exhibition at the Museum of Man in San Diego, 1997, helped establish Mata Ortiz pottery as a legitimate art movement and helped it to gain momentum. After a slow start in the marketplace, gradual acceptance gave way to a full-flowering of Mata Ortiz styles and skills, a development that even the most ardent admirers had failed to predict.

Today over 350 Mata Ortiz families earn all or part of their income from pottery, thanks to Quezada. The finely painted ceramicware can rival any handmade pottery in the world. Quezada single-handedly resurrected the style and ancient techniques of his ancestors' pottery.

Quezada's work has been displayed in museums in numerous countries and in 1999 he was awarded the prize of Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in Mexico. Books have been written about him and his style and techniques are well known throughout the world of pottery and beyond. His talent and influence will not be forgotten and his Mata Ortiz pottery style will continue to garner accolades throughout the world. Juan's pottery now sells for thousands of dollars and has found homes with numerous Mexican dignitaries, a Pope, a former US Supreme Court justice, and a former US First Lady. Tourists and art dealers make the trek to Northern Chihuahua in search of his pottery. More important still, Juan Quezada Celado gave his family a skill and art form that ensures a level of economic freedom for not only themselves but for generations to come. 

"He taught us all," said Quezada's youngest sister, Lydia, in a 2020 Washington Post article. "He's a talented teacher." RIP Juan Quezada Celado.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

COPPER CANYON'S RECLUSIVE ENDURANCE RUNNERS—THE TARAHUMARA—FACE PRESSURE WHEN CONFRONTED BY MEXICO'S UNDERWORLD

 

Run like the wind. We've all heard the phrase, but perhaps those who best embody it are the Tarahumara Indian tribe of Urique, in Mexico's Copper Canyon.

Originally inhabitants of Chihuahua, the Taramuhara have lived five hundred years in the Copper Canyon region in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, retreating from their original home in central Mexico when Cortés and his Spanish invaders arrived. Not willing to wait around for trouble, the Taramuhara beat feet, literally, and ran as fast and as far away from danger as they could. This took them to the remote and difficult to access area now known as the Copper Canyon or Canyons in northwestern Mexico.

RARÁMURI

In their native language, they call themselves the Rarámuri, the light-footed ones. Their unique physical abilities were largely unknown to the outside world until 2009 when the book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen, made them famous. In remote communities where there are no roads, horses or burros, the only mode of transport was by foot, thus they ran everywhere.

Author Christopher McDougall wrote, "When it comes to running ultra-distances, nothing can beat a Tarahumara runner—not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner." In his book, he describes a Tarahumara champion who once ran 435 miles and another who won a 100-mile ultramarathon in Leadville, Colorado, with casual ease.

Said fellow Leadville veteran Henry Dupre to "The New York Times," They run so beautifully that they seem to move with the ground. Like a cloud or fog moving across mountains."

Dupre also tagged the Taramuhara as "the kindest, happiest people on the planet," and "benign Bodhisattvas." 

DEFYING CONVENTION

Intriguing, no? Being among one of the world's most primitive Indians and among the world's best long distance runners, they defy convention. First of all, they prefer to run barefoot. In races, however, they are known to wear simple huaraches which they assemble from used tires that they bind together onto their feet with one long strap of leather. 

2006 estimates put their population between 50,000 and 70,000. Most still practice a traditional lifestyle, including inhabiting natural shelters like caves or cliff overhangs. Their diet is corn, beans, and squash, but they still do nomadic grazing of goats, sheep, and cattle. Almost all Rarámuri migrate from one place to another during the course of a year. 

SPANISH INVASION

Even though they initially escaped the Spanish invaders, by the 17th century, the temptation of gold and metals goaded the Spanish into establishing mines in the fierce country of the Tarahumara, making occasional slave raids to obtain mine workers. The Jesuits followed on their heels, expanded their missionary work, and founded a mission at the southern end of the Tarahumara territory. By 1648, the tribe had had enough and waged war against the invaders, destroying one of their missions. After this attack, they split into two groups. The northern group waged war against the Spanish but were defeated while the Jesuits, in the south, reported the Tarahumara were extremely resistant to evangelize. Their tenacity worked and by the mid 1700s most missions in their region ceased to operate. 

THE LEADVILLE TRAVEL ULTRAMARATHON

Fast forward. McDougall's book shone a spotlight on the Rarámuri with the1993 Colorado race, the Leadville Travel ultramarathon—attended by a worldwide crowd—set the stage for the Tarahumara's first act in 300 years. The Leadville ultra forces racers to run and climb one hundred miles over scrabbly trails and snowy peaks in Colorado's Rockies. It's closer to mountaineering than marathoning, says McDougall, and it continues all day and into the night. Runners grind along at 15 minutes a mile as they head towards Hope's Pass, a 12,600 foot peak. 

In "Runner's World," McDougall wrote, "Along with Polar-fleeced top guns at the starting line were a half dozen middle-aged guys in togas, smoking butts, and shooting the breeze, deciding if they should wear new Rockport cross-trainers they'd been given or their homemade sandals from scavenged tires from a nearby junkyard." 

According to McDougall, most opted for the sandals. And, he continues, they weren't stretching or warming up or showing the faintest sign they were about to start one of the most grueling ultramarathons in the world. In fact, most, he said, were nursing hangovers. 

MYSTERIOUS LEGEND

Their curious appearance matched the mysterious legend—they defy every known rule of physical conditioning and still speed along for hundreds of mile. The Tarahumara didn't work out, or stretch, or protect their feet. They chain-smoked fierce black tobacco, ate a ton of carbs and barely any meat, and chugged so much cactus moonshine that they were either drunk or hung over,  it's estimated, one-third of the year—one on their backs for every two on their feet—as explained by Dick and Mary Lutz in their book, The Running Indians. 

"Drunkeness is a matter of pride, not shame," wrote Dick and Mary Lutz. "And yet," the Lutzes insist, "There is no doubt they are the best runners in the world."

Running With the Ramámuri

SURPRISING THE SCIENTISTS

Leadville would test the Lutzes' claim, and once the starting gun sounded at 4.am., a sea of taller heads quickly swallowed the native runners who faded into the middle of the pack behind the world's most scientifically trained ultra runners. But as the sun rose and the course began the climb to Hope's Pass peak, the Tarahumara began to ease forward.

Not only were the Tarahumara gaining but they seemed to be getting stronger, said Joe Vigil, legendary American track coach who was at the ultra Leadville.

"They had such a sense of joy," Vigil would later say. And they had reason to be happy. At the finish line with a time of 20:03:33, 55-year old Victoriano Churro, farmer and oldest Tarahumara attendee, won the race at 20:03:33, followed by Cemido Charcarito in second, and Manuel Luna in fifth. The three Tarahumara were still bouncing along on their toes as they crossed the line. A year later, another Tarahumara runner won, Juan Herrera, finishing at 17:30:42.

Victoriano Churro, Winner Leadville 1993

VANISHED

Then, they vanished from the ultra running scene in the mid-90s, retreating to their canyon bottom homes and taking their miraculous distance running secrets with them. But one runner, the Caballo Blanco (White Horse), set out after them. The mysterious Blanco went to the Copper Canyons years ago to live among the Tarahumara. 

Blanco spoke with McDougall. "They eat beans, they drink a home-brewed corn beer which takes four pints to get you drunk, and they use it as a beer-based economy instead of cash. It can lead to good amounts of inebriation but they are also extremely hard workers.

"The Tarahumara," he continued, "just farm and party and run for fun, all the while staying in remarkable condition."

In 1971, physiologist Dale Groom ran cardiovascular tests on the adults and children, and concluded, as he'd write in "American Heart Journal," that probably not since the days of the ancient Spartans has a people achieved such a high state of physical conditioning. 

VITAL STATISTICS

Groom checked the pulse and blood pressure of Tarahumara runners during a five-hour race and found their blood pressure went down while running, and their average heart rate—in the midst of banging out eight-minute miles—was only 130 beats per minute. But what most impressed him was something that didn't register on his instruments: After running 50 miles, the Tarahumara didn't even look beat. They stood around and chatted while Groom pumped the diastolic cuff. 

Joe Vigil coached 19 national collegiate championship teams. Three advanced degrees hang on his office wall. He said nothing he's ever seen on the track or in physiology books left him prepared for what he witnessed at Leadville in 1993. The harder the Tarahumara fought their way through the Rockies, the more rapturous they became. Glee and determination are usually antithetical emotions, he said, yet the Tarahumara were brimming with both at once. It's as as if running to the death made them feel move alive. "It was quite remarkable," he commented. 

Heart disease, high blood pressure, and lethal cholesterol are virtually unknown among the Tarahumara, Vigil would later learn. So are crime, child abuse, and domestic violence. 

MAKING INROADS

In 1994, Caballo Blanco gave up his real name: Micah True. He was a gringo, though for a long while no one could pin a nationality on him. He said he'd had his own encounter with the Tarahumara at Leadville. He'd heard about their incredible performance the year before and wanted to see them in action for himself. But instead of competing, he offered himself as a guide. He teamed up with a Tarahumra runner over the back half of the course, he says, and "we spent the next ten hours together. Even though we didn't speak the same language, somehow we could joke and communicate."

Caballo Blanco aka Micah True (Runner's World)

After the race, he was as obsessed as Vigil with learning the Tarahumara secrets, and since nothing anchored True to his home in Colorado but an old Chevy pick-up and a one-man landscaping business, he could just hang out. But the tricky part, he learned, would be gaining access. The Tarahumara, for very good reason, refer to most outsiders as "white devils." They may let researchers monitor their hearts, but not look into them.

"I  did have one thing working for me," True aka Caballo Blanco said. "When you act out of love, good things happen. It's a law."

A NEW KIND OF RACE

The next part of this story is of a different kind of race—that of hauling a 50-pound backpack of marijuana across the border into the New Mexico desert.

With its remote location and few viable roads, the Copper Canyons have become an attractive hideout and throughway to the border for cartels. The best seller, Born to Run, had a staggering impact on the amateur-running world and its fame gave a painful twist to a formerly uplifting tale.

Copper Canyon (From WorldNomads.com)

Drug traffickers took notice and now exploit the very Tarahumara trait—endurance—that has been crucial to their survival. Cartel operatives enlist impoverished Tarahumara Indians to make a grueling odyssey running drugs by foot across the border into the U.S. 

UNLIKELY JOURNEY

Camillo Villegas-Cruz, 21, is languishing in a U.S. federal prison in California on the edge of the Mojave Desert. His unlikely journey from young athlete to drug mule shows a young man from a little-known tribe as just one of many being used by the cartels. The Taramuhara, catapulted into the limelight by a runaway best seller, are being ground down by forces out of their control, including Mexico's all-consuming drug war, a disastrous economy, and an unrelenting 70-year drought.

American defense lawyers on the southwest border say Tarahumara drug runners are a growing segment on their court-appointed clients. According to "Newsweek," Ken Del Valle, a defense attorney in El Paso, says he's represented more than a dozen of the tribe since 2007, all in similar backpacking cases. Statistics are impossible to come by as law enforcement doesn't differentiate between Indians and other Mexicans, but Del Valle says it is precisely the Tarahumara's aptitude for endurance running that makes them so heavily recruited. 

HARSH LANDSCAPE

But even in the best of times, many Tarahumara live on the edge, eeking out just enough to survive. Now farmers can't get most food crops to grow, and last winter an usual cold spell killed off much of what they did plant. That left them desperate—easy prey for wealthy drug barons looking for mules. 

Mexico's Copper Canyon Region

"It's tragic and disgraceful," says McDougall in a "Runner's World" article. "This is a culture that has tried its best to stay out of this mess, the messes of the world, and now the messes have come and found them."

"I can't even weigh the cultural impact of what the drug industry is doing to the Tarahumara," says Randy Gingrich, an American based in the city of Chihuahua for 20 years. He spends much of his time in the Sierra Madre and his NGO, Tierra Nativa, battles threats to the Tarahumara and other Indian tribes that come from miners, loggers, drug dealers, and the occasional tourist scheme.  He related that one former drug baron forcibly evicted Tarahumara from their ancestral homeland so he could build a giant Astroturf ski slope overlooking the 6,000 foot Sinfrorosa Canyon. The project fell through when the trafficker died in a plane crash.

But this is just one single situation in the manipulation of the Tarahumara that was dismantled by an act of fate. The drug trafficking will not stop. And unless the rains come and the economy recovers, young runners will continue to be coerced into tragic positions that may well lead to years in prison north of the border.

An unfitting end for a race that has tried to avoid the temptations of society, and live a life in peace. 

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST CHECK OUT—Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy is on Amazon.

 

MEXICO'S MYSTERY OF PAQUIMÉ—THE WORLD HERITAGE SITE RUINS IN NORTHERN CHIHUAHUA

Paquimé Building Complex (By DesertUSA)

Paquimé, also known as Casas Grandes, an archeological zone in northern Mexico's dusty terrain, stood at an intersection—where the Puebloan people from the north and the Mesoamerican peoples from the south and southwest met. It's the largest archeological zone representing the peoples and cultures of the Chihuahua Desert. To date, only half the site has been excavated. As new technologies have been introduced, multiple theories about it have evolved, and it's become somewhat of a mystery that has yet to be solved.

Paquimé Site (By Viator.com)

Declared a World Heritage site in 1997, leading archeologists theorize that the northern Chihuahua site was occupied for thousands of years after finding crude stone hammers and scrapers commonly used by hunter-gatherers before agriculture began. Fortified hilltop terraces or cerros de trincheras were used as home and farming sites from as early as 1000 BC to 500 AD.

But when southwestern archeolgists gather at conferences to discuss Paquimé, the more they try to unravel its mysteries, the less clear their findings become.

PIT HOUSES

Early on, partially underground pit houses were constructed, eventually leading to one-story adobe homes and finally multi-story pueblos as in the Four Corners area in the US southwest. Though slow to start, its real development evolved between 700, and in 1300 AD, it emerged from shadowy origins and became the most culturally complex settlement in northern Mexico, the southwest, and the great Mesoamerican cultures of southern Mexico and Central America. It reached its height in the 14th and 15th centuries, when it served as a cultural beacon for pre-historic peoples within a 30,000 square mile area. 

Pit House (From Worldhistory.org)

Then, around a century before the arrival of the Spanish who first spoke of it in 1560, things seemed to fall apart.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

Established on the west bank of the Casas Grandes River, the people who lived there raised several clusters of multi-story terraced buildings and a number of religious monuments. This was shortly after a 1340 fire that destroyed Paquimé. Did it rise from the ashes? Apparently so. Excavated buildings had mud-adobe walls and were smoothed in the suavé technique, including curved corners. Collectively, the buildings housed around 1600 rooms and the largest building covered nearly an acre. 

Chihuahua Desert 

With this in mind, Paquimé marked an epoch in the development of human settlement in a vast region of Mexico and illustrated an outstanding example of the organization of space in architecture.

The site bears testimony to an important element in the cultural evolution of North America and in particular to pre-Hispanic commercial and cultural institutions. People began to congregate in small nearby settlements to take advantage of the wide fertile Paquimé valley with its rivers, raw materials, and the practicality of its major trade route between north and south. Because of its location, merchant traders became an important component of the city. 

Scarlet Macaw

The people of Paquimé raised corn, beans, squash. They hunted buffalo, antelope, and deer, harvested agave, nuts, prickly pear cactus, and wild plants. They raised and domesticated scarlet macaws, an oddity being so far from any type of jungle. But macaws were a necessary item for rituals and there is evidence Paquimé was the source for the macaw trade and likely controlled macaw production and distribution. Along with their agricultural leanings, they created high quality ceramics (Mata Ortiz pottery is very popular), wove textiles, created exquisite jewelry, and apparently well maintained their inspired trade network.

Mata Ortiz Pottery

Though the natives knew no written language, by relying on artifacts, archeologists have pieced together this much of the Paquimé story. At its height, several thousand people lived there and from archeological findings, they were deeply spiritual and that influence spread across the hundreds of pueblos that lay within their cultural sphere.

Evidence also showed the complexity of an infrastructure complete with underground drain systems, reservoirs, channels for water to reach homes, and a sewage system. After the 1340 fire, Paquimé was rebuilt and archeologists believe this disaster may have spurred on the golden age that was to come, bringing with it Mesoamerican ball courts, stone-faced platforms, effigy mounds, and a market area.

CULTURAL CROSSROADS

But who exactly energized Paquimé in the 13th century, building it into a cultural crossroads? Some archeologists believe the Mesoamerican missionary traders had a hand in it while others suggest elite groups migrated to the area in the wake of failing pueblo cultures from more distant areas. And others credit Puebloan people of southwestern New Mexico. What no one can agree on was its essence—was it primarily a manufacturing and trade center, which could have certainly been the case with its skilled artisans and wealth of raw materials. Or was it merely a consumer of imported exotic goods due to a location that attracted traders with extravagant lifestyles? And then there's the question of the religious aspect—it may have been a draw for those searching for meaning, a staple supplied by the spiritual aspect of Paquimé, as evidenced by the number of religious artifacts found in various excavations. 

Effigy Vessel from Paquimé Used for Rituals

Archeologists believe the area of Paquimé itself was relatively small, but its network reached far, far away as evidenced by the extensive commercial networks that had been forged with Mesoamerica, including finds of bead making, copper bells, copper armlets, copper ceremonial axes, Pacific Coast seashells, spindle whorls, ceramic drums, and ceramic shards. In my previous blog on Mata Ortiz pottery, those shard fragments instigated the widely popular and distinctive ceramic pottery known and lauded today as Mata Ortiz, with a white reddish surface featuring elongated sharp-edged designs, and named after a present day town that lies within the Paquimé area. Paquimé products were no doubt distributed in the extensive trade network that stretched throughout northern Mexico and as far north as present-day Arizona and New Mexico.

RELGION

Not to be forgotten was the messianic draw of religion. Even at the far reaches of Paquimé territory, the prehistoric people felt the mystic winds of Mesoamerican religious beliefs and rituals. Numerous icons found in excavations validated Paquimé's religious status. Across the region touched by its base, Puebloan peoples created a gallery of religious art and connections to the spirit world, including plumed or horned serpent-like Quetzalcoatl figures, strange Tlaloc figures, step-sided rain pyramids, zigzag lightning symbols, and sacred macaws. Also in excavations, the presence of large numbers of monumental ritual architecture, which show patterns of social integration, suggest Paquimé was a religious center.

COLLAPSE

Scholars postulate the fall of Paquimé began in the 15th century possibly due to a warlike Mesoamerican empire, Tarascans, that cut through their trade routes. While commerce dwindled, a drought tip-toed in. Also possible could have been that cultural alliances in the US southwest and northern Mexico may have realigned or fallen apart, thus depleting the influence that Paquimé once wielded. Also there was the possibility of nomadic warriors from the north, who could have sacked the city, bringing an end to a two hundred year cultural phenomenon in the northern Mexico desert land.

Yet in spite of the vast evidence of this highly advanced civilization in northern Mexico, why has it not received more acclaim? From Expedition Magazine of the Penn Museum, an article by Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen states, "The image of the prehistoric southwest as a place where small kin groups lived in pastoral settings, unfettered by the trappings of "civilization," all generations part on an endless, unchanging, and millennia-long cultural tradition is common. However Casas Grandes, or Paquimé, was one of the largest and most influential communities of its day in the North American Southwest, covering 36 hectares and had over 2000 rooms, many ritual structures, a sophisticated water system and an accumulation of extravagant wealth, and evidence of mass production of goods."

Early Dig at Paquimé

Though their thoughts were never recorded because they had no written language, their deeds speak for themselves in the visible remains of massive multi-story adobe constructions along with artistic fragments of the innovative workings of an advanced society that held reign over an immense portion of the northern Chihuahua desert in the 14th and 15th centuries.

PAQUIMÉ CULTURAL CENTER

Located on the site is Paquimé Cultural Center showing the evolution of the site and the excavations that helped recognize it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My Mata Ortiz blog is here: https://jeaninekitchel.blogspot.com/2022/04/how-thrift-shop-find-revived-nearly.html

Paquimé Cultural Center

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.

HOW A THRIFT SHOP FIND REVIVED THE NEARLY FORGOTTEN MATA ORTIZ POTTERY OF MEXICO

 

Mata Ortiz Pot (by Stanford Magazine)

Three pots found in a thrift shop just north of the Mexican border in 1976 in Deming, New Mexico, by Spencer MacCallum proved to be the breakout moment for a unique pottery style known as Mata Ortiz.

In the dusty terrain of northern Chihuahua, the discovery of Mogollon pottery shards from a little-known archeological site, Casa Grandes or Paquimé, gave birth to the unique line. (Mogollon is an archaeological culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico, Arizona, Northern Sonora, and Chihuahua). Named after the modern town of Mata Ortiz, the style was generated by Juan Quezada Celado. 

PAQUIMÉ

Mogollon-Mimbres Pottery

A sophisticated, pre-Columbian culture had revolved around Paquimé dominating the region from approximately 1200 to 1500 AD. Its multi-story ruins could rival those of Chaco Canyon National Park in northwestern New Mexico. Paquimé was famous for ceramics that featured geometric designs in red, black, yellow, and brown, which were traded throughout North America.

A young Juan Quezada, who had been forced to quit school after only two years of formal education to help his family survive, picked firewood in the surrounding areas and found ancient pottery fragments as he worked. The boy found shards even in his own back yard—both the Casas Grandes style and an older style still, Mimbres, characterized by bold black on white zoomorphic designs. (The Mimbres culture flourished from 200 to 500 AD). With his burro he eventually went farther into the mountains collecting firewood, picking up bright shards along the way. 

Paquimé's Massive Roomed Walls (By D. Phillips) 

Though no one knew about the people who made the pottery, everyone knew of the ruins 15 miles north, Paquimé, the center of the Casas Grandes culture. The mounds on the plains were the remains of the outlying communities that spread for miles around the site. At dusk by the light of his campfire, he'd examine his daily collection of shards, trying to figure out how they had been made. At home he dug clay from the arroyos, soaked it, and tried to make pots. They all cracked. Eventually Juan studied the broken pieces and realized that mixing in a little sand would prevent the cracking. His interest led him to the study of the pre-Hispanic pottery of the Mimbres and Casas Grandes cultures. In time, he figured out how to make round bottoms similar to the prehistoric pots by making a mold after finding some in the outlying mounds. 

LEARNING THE ROPES

Gradually he mastered the process. As a young man, without any instruction, he was making and decorating credible pots for his own pleasure. He had re-created the entire ceramic technology from clay preparation to firing, using only shards to guide him. Without help from ceramicists or specialists, he had worked out how the pots were made. But now, as a young married man, he needed to have a variety of jobs to keep food on the table for his family—from working as a cowboy to railroad worker, leaving less time to work with clay.

Mata Ortiz (By TravelThruHistory)

But pottery still enticed him. In 1974 he decided to concentrate on making pots. He could sell enough with local traders to risk leaving his job on the railroad; earnings from the sale of just one pot would outdo what he'd earn on repairing rail tracks. His modest success attracted the interest of his siblings and he began to teach them what he'd learned. He became known as the self-taught interpreter of Casas Grandes pottery, sometimes called New Casas Grandes or Mata Ortiz after the village where it originated. Now around 350 families from his small village produce this thin-walled, finely painted ceramic ware that can rival any handmade pottery in the world. Quezada had resurrected the style and ancient techniques of his ancestors' pottery.

Quezada's Family Gallery in Mata Ortiz

In the process, he rescued a village on the cusp of obscurity and put it on a trajectory that has created a thriving pottery district known for production of this original, contemporary folk pottery. Though there was enough evidence from the ancient shards to intuit the spirit of the long lost native aesthetics of a formerly active pottery production center for trade in the 13th and 14th centuries, most of the potters in Mata Ortiz were young and not beholden to historical styles. They created something similar but new—a post modern adaptation of the traditional pottery.

Spencer MacCallum and Juan Quezada, 1976 

COURTING SUCCESS

Though Juan's initial attempts to sell his pots locally failed, he came to have success with border merchants who sold the pots on the US side where MacCallum discovered them in the thrift shop. An anthropologist and art collector, MacCallum tracked Quezada down and helped him break into the larger US market.

 

ENTER WALT PARKS                                                                                                                    

Another stroke of luck for Quezada and Mata Ortiz pottery came through Walt Parks, a financial analyst with a Stanford MBA and a love of pottery, who created an artistic and economic miracle in Mata Ortiz by peddling its pots. He'd met Juan in Palm Springs in 1984 where the potter was teaching a class at an art center. Between that first meeting and 2001, Parks took over 50 trips to Mata Ortiz. In 1993 he authored a book titled The Miracle of Mata Ortiz: Juan Quezada and the Potters of Northern Chihuahua. 

Parks called Mata Ortiz before Juan Quezada's pottery renaissance a village with a past but no future. Along with Juan, the former analyst nurtured its growth, bringing the villagers' pots to the US where he arranged exhibitions, classes and acted as an unpaid translator and advisor. When asked why, he responded, "If you'd had a chance to work with Pablo Picasso in a new art movement, wouldn't you have done it too?"

Now, thanks to a couple lucky breaks and the yearnings and talent of a young boy to re-create the beauty he found in ancient pottery shards as he picked firewood in the rugged state of Chihuahua, homeland to the Tarahumara and Apache Indians as well as Spanish, Chinese and Mormon immigrants, Juan Quezada, once a poor woodcutter, has become the Picasso of Mexican ceramics.

PREMIO NACIONAL DE LOS ARTES

Said Spencer MacCallum, Quezada has received the Premio Nacional de los Artes, the highest honor Mexico gives to living artists. "Quezada's life is like a fairy tale. And it doesn't hurt a fairy tale to be true, does it?"

One of Quezada's foremost potters, Jorge Quintana, said, "We owe it to Juan; he's the teacher. Without Juan, Mata Ortiz would have perished like all the other desert towns that relied on the timber industry."

Which is why the people in the area sing corridos—ballads—in honor of Quezada. "All Chihuahua wants to give you thanks," one song says. "To our great teacher, our friend, Juan Quezada."

Juan Quezada is 81 years old and father of eight children. He lives a rural life, having moved from the town of Mata Ortiz to a ranch nearby that overlooks the banks of the Palangalas River. He named the ranch Rancho Barro Blanco (White Clay Ranch) in honor of the pottery. 

Juan Quezada in Mata Ortiz

CALIFORNIA CONNECTION

In Santa Barbara, California, 10 West Gallery, an artist-owned cooperative founded by Jan Ziegler, sells Mata Ortiz pottery. The gallery owner makes regular trips south of the border to obtain new inventory and will have new pots this fall. The gallery is located at 10 West Anapamu Street.

10 West Gallery Mata Ortiz Pottery

10 West Gallery Mata Ortiz Pottery 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.