Piecework

From the second floor of this old structure, Zapata surely must have looked out over this same valley. Like so much of Morelos, it was part of the original 25,000-square-mile land grant that was awarded to Hernán Cortés after the conquest of Mexico in 1521. After Cortés died, the land fell to others, speculators and adventurers, most of them iron-willed exploiters, some actually men of decency and taste. The conqueror’s son, Martín, lived in Tepoztlán for years after his father died and is said to have had a private chapel built so that he would not have to leave home to hear Mass. Other families stayed for many generations. During the long, peaceful centuries of New Spain, in a place of fine climate and great natural beauty, they had no reason to leave.

At its lower altitudes the valley was planted with sugar cane imported from Cuba. In the early years of New Spain, many Indians died of European diseases to which they were not immune. The Spaniards then imported black slaves, whose number in all of Mexico eventually rose in the mid-17th century to 150,000. But the Spaniards were always afraid of slave revolts because they would have been much more difficult to suppress on the mainland than in their island colonies in the Caribbean. Eventually they stopped importing Africans, and sent away the troublemakers. Those who remained were absorbed in the Mexican mestizaje. But they did leave traces of the old African religions in places like Tepoztlán.

The town is known today as one of the major centers in Mexico for brujos (witches) and curanderos (crudely, a kind of witch doctor). They are said to be capable of casting and removing spells, causing and curing illness, and helping with all the infinite complexities of love. Much of the witches’ lore remains secret, but is apparently a mixture of pre-Columbian belief, transformed Christianity, and aspects of Afro-Cuban religions. I asked several times if I could meet with one of the curanderos; as a foreigner I was refused with a polite blank look. But when I asked if the curanderos do, in fact, exist, one man laughed out loud. “Oh yes,” he said, “they exist. Yes. Yes.”

So, in spite of television, radio, newspapers; in spite of daily bus service to Cuernavaca and Mexico City and the arrival of city dwellers on weekends, the pre-Christian past remains powerful. Time is simply not measured here the way it is measured in, say, Miami. The town of Tepoztlán (like many of its neighbors in Morelos) has existed since about the time of Jesus, and was dominated by the Aztecs for a century before the arrival of Cortés. The zocalo, or main plaza, through which both Cortés and Zapata strolled is located on exactly the same spot as the pre-Conquest Aztec market, and today is still laid out on the same basic design. The great mounds of chiles, corn, beans, tomatoes, and chocolate; the great slabs of beef being cured by sun and flies; the ceramics and masks: All were sold in virtually the same way in Aztec times, under the same colorful arrangements of tents and poles.

Also surviving from the pre-Conquest days is the monument to Tepozteco on top of the mountain of the same name, rising a thousand abrupt feet above the village. This was built by the Aztecs on a familiar pyramid base to honor the god of drunkenness, the inventor of pulque, a white, slightly sweet brew made from the maguey plant. The old tales insist that when the Spaniards arrived, they hurled the idol off its pedestal into the valley below. But to the delight of the inhabitants, it did not break. The conquerors were forced to attack it with hammers and saws, breaking it into chips and dust. Today, the base of the old pyramid remains on top of the mountain, badly eroded, but with some of the ancient decorations still visible; you can reach it on a hiking trail. The view of the valley from the peak is glorious. But Tepozteco is more than a view. In September of each year, a fiesta honors the old idol, and much pulque is drunk by nominal Catholics, and many dances danced. Here, human beings hold on to sensible gods.