It was eleven o’clock at night. My husband and I were walking along a dirt road. There wasn’t a car in sight. Suddenly, in front of us, a large illuminated building loomed. We walked inside and quickly figured out we were the only gringos in a huge nightclub. Someone asked us a few questions, and the next thing we knew, we were hauled onto the stage, facing a crowd of 800 people and a barrage of spotlights. A microphone was stuck into my face.
“Uh . . . hi, there, ” I said. ” I write travel pieces that are published in America.”
The entire crowd screamed back at me: “WELCOME TO CASAS GRANDES! WE LOVE AMERICA!”
And then, they actually cheered.
Nuevo (New) Casas Grandes, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, has to be one of the friendliest places on Earth. Within twenty-four hours we were invited to a Chihuahua-style wedding, a young girl’s quincinera (or 15th birthday party), and we were treated to lip-smacking chicken burritos in mole sauce at Mechy’s, the best fast food stand in town.
If you’re tired of the stress and mess of city life, get in your car and drive on down. It’s an easy haul — only about three hours from the border crossings at El Paso/Juarez or Columbus, N.M. You pass through verdant fields with bright red chilies and arrive at the main street in town, where hotels run around $35 a night and it’s hard to spend more than $5 or $l0 on a meal. The area is so untouristy and undiscovered that the Mexico guide books can’t even agree on how to spell Casas Grandes, although an “s” at the end of both words is grammatically correct.
In Old Casas Grandes, a 10-minute drive from the new city, we entered a photographer’s dream. Wind-blown, sculptural, evocative Paquime is considered the largest and most important archeological ruin in all of Northern Mexico. The earliest habitations were pit houses from around 700 A.D. The peak of the civilization was in the 12th Century, and then, for an unknown reason, it went into decline and was abandoned in the 14th Century.
Beautiful Paquime rises out of the desert, like the ghost town of a sophisticated indigenous culture. The low walls of the earth-toned village are made of rammed earth, and the ruins of houses, granaries and storage areas surrounded us as we walked along the gravel path.
Amazingly, we had the site virtually to ourselves — except for a woman and the three American tourists she was guiding. We tagged along as they stopped in front of one of the most celebrated features of ancient Paquime, a series of rectangular macaw cages made out of rammed earth. The birds were probably raised for ritual purposes or for commerce and were most likely acquired through trade from tribes in South America. The daunting problem for the people of Paquime was that they lived in a desert environment and macaws are tropical birds. Their ingenious solution was to actually create a livable climate in order for the birds to survive.
The friendly guide explained that the water came into the cages from different sides, and hot rocks were placed in the water system to create steam. The Paquime also covered the cages with woven mats to keep in the moisture and create a humid environment for the birds.
After we and our imaginations finished wandering through the ruins, we visited the adjacent Paquime museum. Through slides, videos and dioramas, we learned that Paquime was part of a vast, ancient network of Indian clans and tribes that extended from South America to the southwest of North America, trading and exchanging craft, culture and ceremony with each other.
The following day, we meet a young local travel agent named Olivia Ollivier Rico, and we told her how fascinated we were by the Paquime culture. She asked if we would like to go to an ancient riverbed, Arroyo de los Monos, to see petroglyphs. Sure, we said, why not? Olivia neglected to tell us that it’s a difficult trip over very rough terrain. Our poor dainty car wished it were a macho four-wheel drive as we climbed over stones, rocks and then boulders, in the process picking up a number of dings and dents. Our muffler groaned and rattled until, finally, we arrived at the petroglyphs.
On the stone cliff faces, ancient people had pecked out animals, spirals, snakes and human forms. We stood there, in the quiet of the arroyo, moved by the mysterious etchings. Were they clan markings? Did they indicate where there was water? Did they celebrate a hunt? The Paquime are gone, and we will never know.
When we got back to town, we deposited our ailing car in a local body shop. There was no receipt, no business card, nada. We handed over our car keys and prayed. The following afternoon, the body of our car had been painted, hammered, bolted and perfectly repaired. The tab — believe it or not — came to only $50.
Olivia took us under her wing. Once the car was fixed, we drove to the town of Old Casas Grandes, not far from the Paquime ruins. We wandered past quaint stucco galleries and shops and a house where legend has it that the revolutionary Pancho Villa lived.
Sotol is imbibed by locals as a medicine for rheumatism and arthritis. A live rattlesnake is put into Sotol, and it takes a grueling 10 to 12 hours for the animal to die. After 24 hours, the snake is removed, cleaned, then placed back in a closed container of Sotol for about 8 months. Then it’s ready for drinking.
A few minutes away from the Sotol shop is another kind of healing. Olivia took us to a local curandera (medicine woman) named Maria Rivera . She offered us a limpia (energetic cleansing)and assured us she practices blanca (white) magic and not the other kind.
Maria prayed before she did a healing on me. She moved eggs and lemons around and over my body and then cracked the eggs in a glass jar to get a reading. According to the cloudiness of the eggs and how much glop floated around in the jar, Maria was able to do a diagnostic workup on me. She said I was OK, except for my belly. Then she blessed me and did an energetic cleansing of all my body parts.
She finished the session by “injecting” me with her fingers. She said I might feel warm liquid coursing through my body. I didn’t, but I did actually feel cleaner and lighter.
That night, Olivia got us an invitation to the opening of Las Guacamayas art gallery in Old Casas Grandes. It was a big local event. The gallery is constructed in the style of ancient Paquime dwellings — with rammed earth and wooden overhead beams called vigas — exactly the way the people of Paquime used to live.
On display were the most amazing pieces of pottery — masterworks of art from the legendary nearby village of Mata Ortiz. We decided to go there the next day, but Olivia was busy so, around 9 a.m., we strolled into a hotel on the main street, asked the receptionist if there were any English-speaking guides around, and gentle Juan came out of a back room and greeted us. Apparently, this is a perfectly legitimate way to hire a guide: just ask at any hotel.
As we left Casas Grandes, we drove through dusty desert that blew in through the window of our car. I was just about to close the window when I saw — was it a mirage? — a huge, old, pink-orange stone hacienda rising from the sand. I asked Juan about it, and he smiled and hit the brakes. It turns out that Hacienda San Diego is dripping with history and romance and is a favorite local site on the way to Mata Ortiz.
According to Juan, Hacienda San Diego used to be a luxury house for a wealthy man named Don Luis, known throughout northern Mexico. He built the hacienda in the late l800s and early l900s, and you can still see the living quarters for the workers, the hacienda storage area and a private church. Little did Don Luis expect that his hacienda and grounds would be taken from him and occupied by none other than Pancho Villa during the Mexican revolution.
The hacienda was fascinating, but we were anxious to see more of that magical pottery. We drove through fairly barren terrain as tumbleweed streaked in front of our car. After another half hour, Juan stopped in a small village with low concrete and adobe houses and dirt streets.
A few giggling children, wearing plastic party masks, played hide-and-seek in a front yard. Other than the kids and a melodious ice-cream truck, there was no sign of life.
We left our car, and Juan led us through the town. The houses are joined together, and almost every door has a hand-lettered sign that announces pottery for sale. I selected one door at random and knocked. A plump housewife wiped her hands on her apron and called to her husband. He came out of a back room in their small house, a tall man with gray hair. He beckoned us to follow him outside into a large backyard. There, he leaned down and picked up a few pieces of his pottery, which glimmered in the afternoon sun.
Although Mata Ortiz was first known for its distinctive black-on-black ceramics, this is not what the artist was showing us. He held out a black pot with green and red designs. Mata Ortiz has definitely gone polychrome and polymorphic. The potter held up a piece shaped like a lizard, and another that was a ceramic turtle. The large yard was shared by several potters, and each had his own kiln.
Other artists wandered out of their houses to socialize and show us their pots. The atmosphere was refreshingly non-competitive. In a town of 2,500 inhabitants, about one-tenth earn their living as potters. They share yards and kilns and openly admire each others’ work. No one seems to be insulted if you don’t buy. They even accommodate their American visitors by listing all prices in dollars rather than pesos.
The pieces start as low as $5, and for $20 or $30 you can buy a slice of ceramic heaven that would be ten times as expensive north of the border. The pots are wildly imaginative, coming in a great variety of colors, shapes and forms. Some look like animals, some are abstract, and some are just glorious rounded pots, their surfaces as thin as eggshells.
The highlight of our trip to Mata Ortiz was a visit to the home of Juan Quezada. Back in the days when there was no viable economy and the village was dying, he found a piece of an ancient Paquime pot and got the idea to re-create the lost ceramic art form. From this humble start, he pioneered the Paquime pottery revival that we see today. Once he taught himself, Quezada passed his knowledge along to his family and neighbors in Mata Ortiz.
Quezada is an animated, attractive man with sparkling eyes and a full head of gray hair. He spoke to us in Spanish, explaining what happened, many years ago, after he found that first ancient potsherd in the mountains. Juan translated:
” I got the idea to make a similar piece to what I had found. . . . It wasn’t easy. . . . People didn’t know how to do this any more. . . . It was slow and laborious learning. . . . I tried to give them to friends and family. . . . No one was interested. . . no one cared.”
He kept perfecting his pottery techniques, and his persistence finally paid off. A collector saw a photo of his work and came to Mexico to track him down. By some miracle, the man found Quezada, took a number of his pieces to museums, and the rest is ceramic history.
Quezada’s living room is lined with glass cases, all full of his pottery and the work of his siblings, children, nieces and nephews. An adjacent dining room has pots covering a huge table, and they spill over into nooks and crannies in the walls. Quezada’s work is painstaking and detailed. His pieces are all commissioned now.
But Quezada has not lost his passion for teaching. He even invites foreigners to study with him, as long as there’s a group of at least a dozen. He takes them out into the countryside so they have a total experience of the land, the pottery techniques and all of nature.
Our host was very generous with his time, but after about two hours, his wife had dinner on the table and we could tell he was hungry. As Quezada got up from the sofa where he has been sitting, turned his back and walked toward the dining table, I felt as if I had been blessed to be in the presence of such a master artist. I wanted to say something to him to indicate how touched I was by his taking the time to speak to me. But when I opened my mouth, only three words come out. “Muchas gracias, senor.”
Quezada turned to look at me. He nodded and answered humbly and laconically, “Gracias a ustedes.”
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Local guide Olivia Ollivier Rico can be called at 011-52-169-4-32-24 or e-mailed at omor7@hotmail.com.
