It is said that once upon a time in
the sixteenth century Carlos king of old Spain
finally agreed to see his unhappy conqueror
of Mexico, Hernán Cortés. His majesty asked
the conquistador to tell him - What is Mejico like?
Cortés took a piece of parchment paper, crumpled
it in his hand, put it down before the king.
- That, sire, is very like your New Spain; many
mountains and valleys throughout all the land. -
So it is. Ranges of mountains created
Mesoamerica and will shape its life for eons
yet to come. The great Mother Mountains of
the East, West, and South : Sierra Madre
Oriental, Sierra Madre Occidental, y la
Sierra Madre del Sur, embrace their portions of
the land we call central México, where the
backbones, shoulders, and arms of this world
harvest rain from the sky and filter that
precious water down through their hillside
skin of forest flesh toward the valleys far below.
In the nation's southeast extreme beyond Oaxaca
and the narrow isthmus of Tehuantepec, a
fourth range, la Sierra Madre de Chiapas,
reaches through Maya lands toward
Guatemala and Central America.
In the far north, between Texas and
California, huge desert basins stretch across
the curve of earth between the Mothers
of the East and West - arrid basin plains
so wide you cannot see the mountains on
either side - only lone peaks and ranges
like stepping stones across the dry expanse.
As you move south again toward Bajío and
Altiplano zones, the valleys and plains of
Mexico cradle colonial cities and ancient ruins
set like turistic chalchiuitl before a line of
towering volcanoes that march across
Mesoamerica from Colima to Veracruz.
In some places the Sierra Madres are fierce
and jagged bitches, wilderness that these merely
florid words cannot adequately portray, where
some of the most savage and beautiful scenery
on our planet waits for you; canyon gorges and
mountain heights who dare the visitor to explore.
In other zones the hills, not so ragged or tall,
but still challengingly dense, beckon with twisting
arroyo canyons and hidden pueblos, valleys
where sudden, precious balnearios appear - river
bathing spots - of hot or warm curative water.
It is precisely in some of these canyons and
mountains that many surviving Indian cultures
like Cora, Huichol, Raramuri, Nahua, Otomi,
Huaxteca, Zapotec, Maya, and many others
still live among Spanish speaking ranchero
neighbors who all look down toward the
gigantic cities in distant valleys seductively
calling the country people away from the
mountain, down into those vast metropoli
of post-modern consumption and greed.
