El Gachupin May 16, 2023
We are in a van filled with therapists of decidedly mixed credentials. The greying biracial hypnotherapist from New York has been able to maintain her career on-line since the pandemic, renting a home just outside the city, near Huayapam, and her retired British husband and teenage son have no plans to leave Oaxaca soon—it beats the last place they lived, Iraq. She is talking so much on the van about herself that I cannot imagine her being able to hypnotize me, or anybody else, but I am no professional, and she informs me she is.
The other mind-treaters sitting behind us are younger and use words like “new” and “alternative,” but their resumes, as tediously stated, do not inspire confidence. For both of them, one from San Jose and one from Ohio, qualifications seem to rest on the sheer number of different therapeutic techniques each employs. “This one is trending,” says one, with puffy lips like a botox spill. And this whole amorphous practice apparently plays out over computer screens, far from their patients (they call them clients), shielded from the scrutiny that a small van provides.
Tehuacan, in the State of Puebla, is the closest city from here. Closer still is Huautla, Oaxaca, home of Maria Sabina, the medicine woman. Climbing more than 2000 feet to a summit sprinkled with stands of long-needle white pines, the conversations subside. Everyone is carsick on the twisting road, and this driver is determined to make it to our destination in two hours. We are traveling with Angel’s hiking group to a river for some swimming and exploring, which at this moment flows 3000-feet directly below us. The hypnotherapist pleads for a bathroom stop, but the plea proves too subliminal for the focused driver.
We fly by little hillside villages with names like Tlazoyatepec and Techxtlahuaca, none with services, although one does have a roadside rodeo attended by maybe a hundred people. This may represent the entire population of the area, but maybe for one shack in San Jose El Chilar, located just above the floodplain of the nameless muddy river. Here those who are not nauseous chow on fresh memelas con queso with salsa rojo. For others, it is crackers and water. For the driver and the tattooed motorcycle gal from Atlanta, it is time for the first beer of the morning. From here out, she will erupt frequently with a piercing ha-ha laugh that cuts like an icepick.
Waist-deep in the river with beers and a flask of mescal furnished by Angel, the settling expats talk about the housing shortage, difficult dating scene, and, of course, mysticism:
“I went and saw this one witch,” says the motorcycle gal, “and she told me not to come to this river today.” She finishes “Bruja” with a shrieking guffaw. When others remark that this sounds like the opening premise for some cheap thriller, Angel swims to the other bank to investigate a virgin shrine. The flowers are still fresh. “Someone died here only a few days ago,” he says. “Maybe it is an omen.” Afternoon rains have been heavy lately and have sent new muddy flows and debris into the river channel. Maybe there was indeed a recent flooding tragedy.
This river bottom is quite tropical. Iguanas climb trees, and green motmots with pendulous blue tails hang from branches extending over the river, to the backdrop of organ-pipe cactus on the eroding cliffs of red shale. Here feels like a desert riparian oasis.
Among the many species are the magnificent Ahuehuete trees, or Montezuma Cyprus, the greatest of which grows in El Tule, closer to the city. At one time, this landmark tree was long considered the oldest in the world, even 200 years ago by the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, although later it was found to be only about 1500 years old. However, El Tule is still believed to have the greatest circumference. The specimens along this river, with huge trunks resembling a fusion of pulsing tendrils, certainly hint at the spooky grandeur of the melodically sounding Ahuehuete (A-wáy-way-tay). The witches were wrong about not coming here.
Late in the afternoon, as we hike back to the van, Angel and the driver pause to fill their backpacks with kilos of ripe fragrant mangos, which cover the ground beneath the shaded birdsong canopies. This floodplain is exceedingly fertile: guanábana, papaya, and especially giant mango trees. Indeed, it is a seriously neglected fruit orchard—the different mango types in just this one grove include obo, criollo, and píña—and the locals evidently encourage stray pickers, apparently because they are all at the rodeo. The hungry therapists are coming to realize their only hope for dinner tonight is mango y mango.