But the people at Inifap, the research division of Mexico's agriculture department Sagar weren't thrilled. I knew them, 60 km. south of Tamazulapam near Yanhuitlan, from the region and familiar with its problems. Yes indeed - one-third of the Mixteca Alta could be reforested. Theoretically. "But we would have to dig the holes, fence the trees and water them. People themselves will not do a thing". And rich Chilangos, Mexico City dwellers, might savour the zapote fruit, here they were pig feed and pushing new ideas might cause problems. "These here aren't the right people for experiments. We would have to be with them all the time and we just haven't got the manpower to do that... We don't even have a telephone....".
Certainly - with a paltry U$ 60 million, 0.5% of the federal budget, Inifap's 1600 technicians can't do much in a country four times the size of Spain. And the government does not want that either. An informed countryside would only cause trouble, demand credits, insurance, subsidies, fertilisers, seeds, and no distant bureaucrats crammed in Mexico City's dusty low-ceiling Sagar offices. Inifap exists to keep up an appearance, that is all.

THE MIRACLE TREE.
Walking back the dirtroad to Yanhuitlan's bleak lonely lights and decaying convent, the bluish hostile mountains ranges rising beyond in the evening sun, I considered that: people don't want trees, the government doesn't.. Just give up, back to my coffee and The News in downtown Havana restaurant, wouldn't that be much nicer? Right when that rattling ramshackle pickup emerged from the darkening Inifap valley: Boone Hallberg! Botanist, North American, "Bonny" they call him there. I had heard from him and his indigenous maize seed collection. Also, I had seen him. In colour, on the Impacto magazine front-page: "Gringo Bochornoso (troublesome) Terroriza Pueblo Entero". That was Ixtlán de Juarez (2300 m.) where he lived, still lives. Twice the villagers had locked him up in their local jail, a modest wooden cot then, for his ideas on water use and grazing rights of donkeys and mules they didn't like. Yes, those Inifap people did have a point.
Where I came from. "Holland!. Not many Dutchmen emigrating to Mexico these days I suppose?" Trees! Planting trees, turning Oaxaca into a paradise, un vergel, what he was trying to get across to his students of the Tecnológico de Oaxaca. And, pointing at a shrub: "that tree could save Mexico!" That was a carob, Ceratonia siliqua, and he had planted it there.

For fodder and food...
Later on he gave me a reprint from American Forest of 1960, "Californian Carob Crusade". The efforts of two US senior doctors, Coit and Rittenhouse, to lessen California's thirst by planting drought-resistant carobs, grown through the ages in Mediterranean countries as a livestock feed. The energy-packed, sugary chocolate flavoured pods (1) are fed raw or crushed to horses, mules and donkeys, and eaten off the ground by goats and sheep, as a pasture crop. Mixed with other feeds they serve for fattening calves and pigs.
Besides, they are for humans too. Spaniards survived on them in the civil war, Greeks in WW II, John the Baptist in the desert (the "wild honey" of the Bible) and the Talmud mentions them frequently - "a kav of carobs sufficed him from one Sabbath eve to another"(Taán. 24b). The ground bean meal, cacao-like, but much lower in fats and rich in minerals and vitamins, has traditionally been used for making bread, cookies, beverages and syrups, and, lately, in Anderson Clayton's Pronto gelatines. Tragasol, an industrial gum extracted from the seeds (2), is widely used in food- textile- and papermaking, in film emulsions, cosmetics and oil drilling, to name a few.

For soil, water, honey and wood...
Then there are the trees themselves: rooting 20 metres down and far, excellent soil binders, potential watersheds against mudslides (Paulina!) and windbreaks against dustbowls in Australian plains. Prospering on

limestone soils and residual water, while removing smog components (sulphur dioxide, ozone), groundwater contaminants and global heating enhancing carbon dioxide. Fire resistant and reporting from the stump or the leaders after being cut down by chainsaw at ground level.
The wood, too hard for tree borer insects, makes first-class fuel and timber, goats and sheep are fond of the foliage and, blossoming for months, carobs are ideal honey trees as well. On top of that, they are favourite ornamentals, shading African oasis, Californian avenues and tourists in the Portuguese Algarve.   

Like mesquites and most multi-purpose trees, they are slow in growing on wasteland with less than 500 mm. annual rains if uncared for, yielding an average 3, 35 and 130 kg. per tree after 7, 10, and 30 years respectively. But well-tended grafted trees bear much faster, and much more - not infrequently up to 500 kg. per tree. The Mixteca Alta, with 700 mm. rains annually seemed the right place. My carob crusade had begun.

LET'S WAIT AND SEE.
Carobs, invariably planted in odd spots and that way condemned to remain unassuming shrubs, had never made it in Oaxaca. Yet, the late Coplamar-Sagar nursery in Huahuapan (1650 m.) had seedlings, grown from seed of an unknown variety, once brought by an unknown agronomist. I planted two sample trees in our backyard in Tamazulapam (1980 m.), with cow-dung, river-sand, excavated limestone and watering. Seven more were sown around the Santa Rosa church in front. My wife's cousin, that year Santa Rosa's mayordomo, treasurer, convinced people to carve out the 1.50 m. plant holes. Once there, the trees had to look after themselves, nobody watering them.

Furthermore I got trees planted here and there in the village and nearby Tejupan, altogether some 30. Few people really wanted them, though: "we must see them first. How they grow".

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