Morning in Durango dawns bright and cool, a far cry from the
oppressive heat in the coastal city of Mázatlan, next destination on my
tentative itinerary. An alternative beckoned: a newly constructed highway,
cutting south through some of the most rugged terrain in the country. Not a
single gas station for 370 kilometers, from El Mezquital to Estación Ruiz.
Little could I conceive where this journey would bring me.
The road to El Mezquital is a typical rural Mexican highway.
Sections of smooth new tarmac alternated with pothole-ridden, decayed pavement.
Drivers sped heedlessly over potholes but slowed to a crawl for the dreaded
axle-wrecking topes located on the
outskirts of every village. The country outside of Durango is scrubby, too dry
and hot for pines—or perhaps they have been all cut down long ago. Not quite a
desert, but not quite a forest either. The hills begin closing on: El Mezquital
is nestled in a small, well-watered valley hard up against the rocky escarpment
of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Unbeknownst to me, the main highway makes a
hard V-turn; I continue straight through the clean and unpretentious town onto
a less traveled highway, heading straight for a high ridge. (In Mexico, any
paved road outside of a city is a highway.) Huge, self-aggrandizing signs every
few kilometers proclaim the Secretary of Communication and Transportation’s
pride in their beautiful new road. Running out of flatland, we switchback up
the ridge, scrub tress transforming into a beautiful and fragrant pine forest.
Large boulders, dislodged from carelessly blasted cuts, lay in the road, pushed
aside only far enough to clear one lane of traffic. At one point, a washout had
sent the downhill lane tumbling into a ravine. No signs, cones, or other
cautions existed to warn oncoming drivers. Monsoon season washouts are an
unavoidable fact of life in the Sierra.
On one of the switchbacks, two vaqueros on horseback drive a
herd of fat cattle down the highway with easy skill. They look like they could
be packing heat. There is no law in these mountains, a major corridor for drug
cultivation, processing, and transportation. This is a hard land, populated by
descendants of those few natives who escaped Spanish slavery in the uncharted
canyons and mesas of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Since then, this has remained
an escape from civilization, a home of last resort. The roads and high-tension
lines now linking many mountain communities to the outside world have brought
progress of the worst kind: after centuries of failed attempts by Spanish and
Mexican armies, the narcotraficantes have
completely conquered the mountains. Marauding military units raid operations,
hauling off hooded prisoners, burning product and reshuffling the local power
structure; such raids usually result in a spate of mind-boggling violence among
close-knit communities, as greed and ambitions clash. Of course, little of this
is visible to a casual visitor such as myself. What is immediately apparent is
the drastically changed attitude of the local people. The vaqueros’ blankly
challenging looks linger with gathering unease as I top out on the
ridgeline—3000 meters high, a raw chill in the air—and approach the sad logging
camp of Los Charcos.
The pavement ends here in this dusty and forlorn place.
Children cease playing to gaze at my truck as it bumps down the main street.
Well-dressed young men in ball caps offer challenging stares, like Clint
Eastwood in an old western. Heads swivel to catch my license plate. Every man
is lean, hungry, implacable. Yet order reigns; no one would dare attack a
strange unless ordered to do so. I feel as though I am treading a tightrope of
invulnerability, a sunburned gringo in a four wheel drive with Arizona plates,
unknown affiliation, unknown mission. My friendly waving is met with
uncomprehending stares. A stiff nod, face impassive, head jerked slightly
upward, is the proper macho way to greet a stranger here.
The town passes and the road urns into a hellishly bumpy
gully descending into a deep canyon. At the bottom, rocks are laid across a
rushing creek. Give it gas, don’t stop. Water splashes and sizzles on my
overheated brake pads. Upwards, the way harder, my truck creaking and bashing
over raw rocks, tires spinning and smoking and throwing back dust. I have
clearly taken a wrong turn, a lost gringo with no local map, no GPS, running
entirely on my compass, memory, and instincts. In Mexico, there are few roads
in use that cannot be navigated by a two wheel drive truck with bald tires and
a lead foot driver. I take heart in this fact; velocity will overcome any
obstacle on this road, in true macho fashion. There is no stopping or going
back for anything or anyone. Mercifully, the road reaches the ridgetop and
smooths out some. Tiny backwoods cornfields, ready for harvest, occupy
clearings hacked into the thin soil. Sturdy little log homes sport satellite
dishes and new trucks, products of the only prosperity ever experienced in this
land.
In one of the settlements, a roadside shanty sells gasoline.
I park on the road in front, get out, ask to buy gasoline. Two men watch me
wordlessly, faces unreadable. Deep breath; okay, let’s slow down a bit. I’m
just a typical impatient gringo, nobody’s chasing me. They relax, quote their
price—marginally more expensive than at the PEMEX in the big city. I buy twenty
liters. The man behind the counter passes a ten-liter water bottle full of
gasoline to his assistant, who pulls a hose from his pocket. I lift the jug
onto my roof as he primes the siphon and drains the bottle. We repeat the
process, then I pay for the gas and tip the assistant. They offer solemn
goodbyes.
The dirt road I am on ends at a paved highway near a tiny
crossroads village. There are no signs. An Indian girl is walking down the
village road, her baby slung across her back. Young—sixteen or so, with the
straight hair and finely formed face of her people. I ask her the way to Tepic;
she points right, speaking briefly and politely. Feeling that continued
velocity would be a wise choice, I head on down the viciously potholed highway,
the same one I lost back in El Mezquital.
Camp that night is in a copse of pines on the highway side,
invisible to passing traffic. I skulk through the trees at dusk, unwilling to
be seen from the highway this Saturday evening, drunk cocaine cowboys barreling
back and forth in their new trucks, narcocorridos
blaring, looking for something to destroy. The highway is fenced against
livestock, sturdy government five-strand barbwire, with concrete fenceposts.
Goats, pigs, and chickens are everywhere in town, but the only creatures I have
seen out here are lonely stray dogs, as lean and hungry-looking as the people.
Cold comes quickly with the night, here on the Tropic of Cancer, and sleep
comes fitfully; a bitterness rises at my isolation from the people, my
horrendously poor command of Spanish. The pinelands are familiar, and so is the
whoosh of passing cars, yet I am so far from my homeland. A shining success at
navigation, but a dismal failure at socialization.