Pluma Hidalgo:
The Pluma Hidalgo section began to grow quite large, so I decided to make it a post in itself.
In the original plan, Pluma was just going to be a coffee buying stop…get the goods and be on my way. But when I got there I was welcomed so warmly and the people were so insistent that I had to stay. The folks I stay with in Pluma are a family…the late father bestowed a pretty rich inheritance to his (now adult) kids. Each of the four manages their own ranch in the hills below the town and the mother (now the grandmother) presides over everything. All three sons live in the big house with their families and their mom and several other random family members. The one daughter lives an hour away on the coast with her husband. On of the daughters-in-law runs the family restaurant. When he saw me for the first time Chepe, the youngest son and the merry drinker of the family, gave me a big hug and bought me a beer. He couldn't believe that I'd returned. But indeed, it was his idea that I return in mid-December--before I left in September, he rumored a big party going down on 12 December.
I got there on the evening of the 9th…mere hours before the festivities commenced. The 12th is the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe…basically the virgin Mary, but this version showed up in Mexico and has since taken on a life all its own. And in Pluma Hidalgo she's a bigger deal because she happens to be the town's patron saint. This seemed to translate into a longer, more frenzied, more colorful celebration.
As per the September rumor, the morning after I arrived all hell broke lose (don't tell them I used that particular turn of phrase). Fireworks filled the sky and live bands busted out Mexican classics as I followed a grinning old man named Pedro several miles down the mountain for a tour of one of the family coffee ranches. An hour of hiking later he said "Aquí está el rancho!" ("here is the ranch"…really more like "this is the ranch" in English) The tour mostly consisted of him showing me the process and looking back at me like a dog who has killed a mouse and wants to show you what he has done, smiling ear-to-ear and cocking his head to one side. "Aquí está el rancho!" he said again. A few minutes later he was surveying the place and, with a profound nod of his head he said "Aquí está el rancho." On about the twentieth "Aquí está el rancho," I politely made my exit.
When I stumbled up onto the main plaza, it had been transformed into festival mode--a collection of tarps held over vendors' booths by a network of cheap cord and rope, bands setting up their equipment in every nook and cranny, and six pick-ups being decked out for the evening's parade. I went to get the guidance of my nine-year-old friend José Maria as to what was going on. I met José in his family store last time I was in Pluma. We made paper airplanes for a while and I impressed him by telling him I have a friend who is a pilot. When I returned, he was happy to see me and questions poured from his brain like a fire hose. Not things like "where did you go" and "where are you from" (the normal, everyday questions), but things like "what is snow like?" and "what did you feel like the first time you flew in a plane?"
In the evening, the parade started. In the back of each truck, local kids recreated scenes from the story of the virgin of Guadalupe and half the town followed behind as they rolled one way down the main street, doubled back out to the edge of town, and returned again in the plaza. It all felt terribly cultural…like one of those movies they show in an anthropology class…long, drawn out, with music and colorful ribbons and mothers carrying babies with mustaches painted on them. During the walk, I attracted a fairly large following of the Pluma kids, all asking me crazy questions and showing me their airsoft guns (which is kind of a big cultural thing there for some reason--reminded me of the good old days in and about Haw Creek).
I was hanging out with the kids and watching a cool dance in the plaza (cool because the dancers throw candy at you) when "los negros" arrived. The four black guys, three from the states and one from Mexico City, had come into town for the basketball tourney that was to be held the next day and all the boys wanted to go meet them so we went and camped outside their hotel. "Todos los negros en los estados unidos son malos, verdad?" (all the black people in the US are bad (or evil), right?) asked José, as earnest as could be. I had to laugh at the blatant political incorrectness of the question, but then I explained that what you see in the movies and hear from ignorant, possibly racist Mexicans is not true. They were surprised to hear that I had black friends who were really cool and weren't gangsters. My daily contribution to global human rights complete, I went to greet the jugadores de basquetból.
When they found out I was from the states, they were really happy to see me and invited me to dinner. Over a scrumptious mix of rice, hotdogs, and eggs I learned about life on the Mexican basketball circuit…not an easy one. Two of the guys had just arrived a month before. Larry from Oakland, a top recruit in the bay area who got in trouble with the law before graduation, voiced his distaste for the Mexican diet saying "I want some Mac and Cheese!" They invited the pack of boys in as well, but José Maria was the only one who ate anything. This vexed old Larry. "I like to see kids eat. That's my heart."
I arrived again at the town square in time to see the beginning of the yearly dance where a bunch of boys and men dress in drag (complete with large, strategically-placed balloons) and Halloween masks and break it down, much to the enjoyment of the general populous. Chepe waved me over and paid for me to don what I think they were calling a mono…or something like that. It's basically a huge man suit…maybe ten feet tall. You kind of get harnessed in and the pants come up to your neck, then they put the top part of the giant man on and you just dance around, the arms flopping at the sides. It was more than a little surreal, peeping out of the porthole (about where the belt buckle would be), seeing throngs of grotesque-faced, scantily-clad, fake-women going nuts on all sides to the pounding beat of a Banda roll, with fireworks lighting up the night and startling all the babies and grandmothers sitting around watching.
In time, I was extracted from the giant and the sweat I'd worked up began to chill in the crisp night air. Donning my trusty sweater, I went to check out the basketball court which they were renovating in anticipation of the tournament and talked to my friend Paco who was busy coordinating it all. Then I went to bed…but not to sleep, due to the other-worldly snoring of the guy in the next room.
The next day held more fiesta, the black guys dominating at basketball, a little more hiking around (this time up instead of down), and a huge dance party on the bball court (which was prohibitively expensive for me) which lasted, no joke, from 9pm until 6:30am. It was cool because the fireworks (also going until 6:30) woke both the snoring man and me, but I got to sleep before he did. This made for a restful night's sleep, despite the two pointy springs that poked up through the mattress.
On the 12th, the actual day of celebration, things were already winding down. In the early afternoon, I said my goodbyes, packed up my coffee, and boarded a delightfully futuristic mini-bus for Oaxaca.
