This is more a documentation than an interesting story. Since almost no one reads this blog, it is a convenient place for me to record important events that I can later refer to.
I am checking my little alfalfa field with my new worker,
Ray. He hears a noise, further towards
the back of the land at the top of the embankment, where the path leads down to
my well. What he discovers is stunning.
Water is gushing out of the hose that brings water from the
well up a 30-foot embankment to the main storage tank that supplies the entire hectare
(about 2 ½ acres) with water.
There is no doubt that this is an act of vandalism by my
neighbor to the north, Juanito. The well
is on public land. Prior to the purchase
of this hectare by the Buddhist NGO, for purposes of creating a retreat center,
in 2008, no one has used this well. It
is likely that it had been abandoned, because it was below flood level until
the NGO built up the sides to above the flood level.
Water is tightly regulated by the Mexican government. The government must issue a permit before a
well can be dug, and no new permits are currently being issued.
There was a complaint made about me and my horses
recently. They have been hanging out on
the wide riverbed, public land protected by Federal laws. The winter flood has produced green
vegetation, whereas the higher ground of the ranch is dry. They love the open
meadow and the pond. Anticipating the antagonism of my neighbor, I have been
trying for weeks to get from the ConAgua office here in town the information on
the state of the permit for this well, which is in the same meadow. It was dug
at least one generation ago, meaning the records are not digitalized, but can
only be found in the dusty record books archived in the office. No one is interested in wasting their time
going back through those old books, but me.
Unfortunately, I am still without a car.
My Toyota, which rolled over on the highway near my house on January 12,
still has not been repaired by the autobody shop ten weeks later. I had revived an old car stored on the
property, but it is now out of service.
It needs four new tires, an expense I deem not defensible.
It was Juanito’s ancestors who dug the well, presumably. When the family lived on the property it is
possible that they used the well, but the crumbled adobe house that fronts on
the dirt road attests to the abandoned state of all things Terrazas. Juanito himself lives in town, and only comes
occasionally to water the little family-owned plot of land where he cultivates
peas, and to fill the tub with water for the young and abandoned horse he
recently bought for future plowing.
What is at the base of this act of vandalism? I have learned that this man, poorly
educated, set in his ways, and avoided by most people who can because of his
known anger and pettiness, is to be treated with kid gloves and only when
absolutely necessary. If I see him on
the land I wave, and pass a greeting.
Never would I stop to have a chat with him. As for water for his crops, he has his own
well and pump, in his field high above the riverbed embankment.
When this failed retreat center was abandoned, Juanito was
given permission to farm the land in exchange for watching over it. He relied on rainfall for the irrigation of
it. There is a rickety little gate he
used to pass through. In time, we both
stop using that gate. Just on my side of
the gate, a foot away there is a water spigot.
I put a dual faucet on it, because he wanted to have a hose connected to
it. In time this became problematic,
when he would leave the water on and I would find myself without water, the
central tank drained. Occasionally I
would unwittingly do this to myself. I
might turn the water on to irrigate the little peach orchard, and forget to
turn it off. I would know, the next
morning, because I would open my kitchen tap and nothing would come out. Then I would have to check all 8 of the
garden faucets, and turn off the forgotten one.
After a while it seemed absurd, to extend this courtesy to
someone who does not want to be a good neighbor. It annoyed me a little, but I didn’t want to
irritate this boil on my butt.
One day I discovered that water was gushing out of that very
same shared spigot. During the night, a
horse had kicked the pipe at its base and fractured it. I had to turn off the water at the central
valve, to stop the flooding of the corral.
It took a few days to finally get to the store and buy the necessary
parts. Over the course of a couple of
days, we cut the broken pipe, glued the new one on, and once the glue was dry,
opened the water again. I had instructed
the worker to simply cut the offending piece and put a collar on it, keeping
the same pipe and dual faucets. However,
he misunderstood and removed the old pipe completely. Juanito’s hose could not simply be unscrewed,
because he had fastened it to the spigot with a stretched piece of tire
rubber. I had to slice through it with a
razor blade in order to remove the faucet.
I finally replaced the faucet with a single spigot I had on hand. The old dual faucet had lost its handle, and
was difficult to use.
Could that have been the precipitating event that led to
this act of vandalism? Not only had he
cut open my main water hose, he also barred the gate that leads down to my
well. He drove a mighty tree trunk into
the muddy ground on the far side of the gate, preventing it from opening. In recent days he had been scaring my horses,
chasing them out of the meadow. Then he fastened the gate closed with barbed
wire. This is the gate leading to my well. I would cut through the wire, and he
would bind it shut again. The first time he barred the path with poles, they
were light enough for me to remove. I try not to be provoked by his
shenanigans, but this one was a bit far.
I had Ray dig out the huge tree trunk, and carry it to the front of the
property where we then placed it in his pea plot. Yes, it crushed a few plants, but did not
damage their roots. Tempting though it
was to apply hillbilly justice and, in the dark of night, tear up the plants in
his little garden, I cannot bring myself to carry out such an act of vandalism.
Ray fixed the hose, and water was restored to the
ranch. In the afternoon Juan showed up,
and signaled that he wanted me to come outside and talk. I was sitting in front of the TV,
relaxing. He would not go away. Finally, I went to my sliding glass door and,
in an irritated voice, reminded him and his son that I had found my water line
cut and my access to my well blocked. I
shut the door and went back to my chair.
I could see no grounds for a conversation, that would likely have him
justifying his vicious acts. It would
not have been a two-way, rational conversation.
That evening, before Ray left to return home, he called me
to look at the gate, the same place where we had found the morning’s act of
vandalism. Now what we found was my well pump, its motor
with wires cut, and the gate blocked not only with a tree trunk but also with
barbed wire. I was outraged at the
unprovoked vandalism. This man has no
fear of the law. I was within my rights
to call the police, and report that my water supply had been maliciously cut
off.
It is useful, in the telling of the tale, to go back a week
or two in time. This man had registered
a complaint with the village elected official.
It is winter, meaning that the ground is dry and bare. The horses have nothing to graze on. I feed them oat hay, and the occasional
malted barley grain mix, but it is not a sufficiently balanced diet for
them. It is also boring for them to
spend the day in the dry dusty corral.
Therefore, I have been letting them go down to the riverbed, where the
well is. It is shady there, and
green. It has been flooded by river
overflow for November and December, and so had some green growth for the horses
to enjoy. There are a number of springs
down there, too, which feed little pools.
The horses loved it, and could spend eight hours a day there with no
complaint.
The riverbed is officially public land, owned by the
government, and may not be privatized by fences impeding public access. That, at least, is the law.
Local custom has its own interpretation of public land
use. Certain farmers believe that the
public land contiguous to their private land is for their exclusive private
use.
Juanito went to the local representative and registered a
complaint, because my horses were grazing on ‘his’ land.
The public land contiguous to my private land has been
confiscated by my neighbor to the south.
He has no use for this land except for a few months in the summer, when
he brings about ten beef cattle to his land to graze. Being unused, it is thick with both old trees
and young trees. The horses, being prey animals, are skittish at any sound. They
need an open space, a wide horizon of visibility. There is plenty of room on his elevated hectare
for that small a herd, plus a water supply brought by a public pump. The pump is turned on by request from a
farmer, who pays for the water pumped to irrigate his field. There is a tank of water always present in
this installation, available to the cows.
Nice setup. However, this
neighbor has also confiscated the public land adjacent to his own private land (at
least another hectare) as well as mine.
I had talked to him once about it, asking him to give me access to my
land, and he flat out refused, no discussion.
Now, as it turns out, he has just been elected to the three-year
stint as the local authority in our little village. And so it was to him that Juanito complained. This neighbor cum official came to me with
this complaint. He admitted that Juanito
had no documentation proving that he had an exclusive right to this land. I was only vaguely conscious that the
riverbed was public land, but I did not know the specific boundaries of this
land nor the laws governing it. However,
when I realized that for two months the land just below the embankment,
including around my well, was flooded, it began to dawn on me that this all was
indeed federal flood zone.
I was puzzled by Beto, my neighbor to the south, coming to
me with this complaint. I struggled to
come up with a reason why my horses there would bother Juanito. He agreed that it was public land, but that
Juanito was just being a bad neighbor.
So I said to him, I said, Well then, Beto, how about you being a good
neighbor and letting me put my horses on my own part of the public land. Oh, no, he says. Absolutely not. He had documentation proving he had exclusive
right to use that land, he proclaimed.
We would meet again next week, Tuesday or Wednesday, and he would show
me the documentation. The week came and
went, and I did not hear from him again.
When it came down to the showdown, of course this proved to be a spurious
claim, a bold bluff.
My dear friend in Canatlan, Lupita, heard my concern that I
was in dispute with my neighbors over use of public land. She, who knows everyone in Canatlan, reported
this to the local ‘sydicato’. Being
ignorant as I am of the local government structure, I am still hazy on the role
of this person. In the land of hillbilly
justice, it appears that it is a full-time job to keep the peace between the
various Hatfields and McCoys. I don’t know how to translate his title, but he
is not police and not a lawyer. He has
an office in the municipal building, and Lupita found him easily. This was on Friday.
On Monday morning I got a call from a pleasant masculine
voice, telling me that he was coming to visit me. I was just heading to Canatlan myself, and
had to turn around and return to Pozole.
We met in the village, and I led him to the ranch.
He explained that there had been some dispute about land,
and wanted to see for himself what was at issue. We walked down the embankment, and before he
got halfway down the 30 feet he exclaimed about all the illegal fencing he was
seeing. We walked to the river bank, and
his assistant took photos. It was a
short visit. Manuel was still working
for me at the time, and was well-versed on the situation. He was able to more fully explain matters
where my Spanish failed me. Now fully
informed, he went back to his office and his busy schedule.
A week had passed since Beto failed to show me his
documentation. The syndicato called me
and informed me of a meeting the next day, at my ranch, with my neighbors. My dear friend Phillip, a Mexican-American,
joined the team as my interpreter. He
met the group in Pozole and had a pre-meeting with them. The meeting was already begun by the time
they arrived at my place. The syndicato
and his assistant had brought along the judge (I would call her an ombudsman, a
mediator) and her assistant. My two
neighbors showed up; it was quite a little crowd, standing there in the shade
of my storehouse. The absurd facts came
out. The law says that there can be no
private structures on public lands, like fences, so both Beto and Juanito are
in the wrong. Nevertheless, the two
neighbors felt like I should contain my horses, and not allow them in their
fenced area. Beto was then asked to
produce evidence that he had claim over the riverbank contiguous to my
property. What he came up with was a permit
from ConAgua giving him permission to use the water in a pool that was actually
within my property line. Of course, this
cannot justify his fencing of my area.
Nor does it give him exclusive rights to use that public water. Another part of the law says that no one can
graze on the public land animals that are for commercial use. Since his cattle are not milk cows, it is
evident that he is raising them to sell them.
But, as I say, local justice here outweighs federal law.
In the end, the official report of this meeting is that Beto
gives me permission to open up the fencing and allow my horses onto my
area. However, I must build a fence on
the south side of this stretch, to keep them wandering over to his area. He also graciously agreed that I could share
the public pool. My last request, which
I do not believe got put into the final report, was that he construct a fence
separating his land from the public land.
It took a week for me to gather up the necessary resources
to build that fence. That was a
harrowing week. The horses felt confined
and insecure in my section of the riverbank, since it was overgrown with
trees. They would invariably wind up
climbing the embankment to Beto’s field, where the horses’ view of the horizon
was unobstructed. Horses are prey
animals. They want to be able to see a predator
coming well before they are attacked.
When they are on my public land, they must rely on their ears more than
their eyes, and so are easily spooked by sounds. One day I was sitting down there with
them. I turned on an audiobook. The horses heard the strange voices, and
started stampeding to the embankment to escape.
I called to them, and they realized they were safe.
That whole week was a nail biter. At first I would continue to let the horses
go down to their spot by the well. I sat
with them there. Juanito was pacing
above the embankment, seeing the horses and working up his wrath. Then he spotted me. Before he could explode, I told him I had not
yet managed to open a passage through Beto’ wire, I needed another day or
two. He held up two fingers. Two days, that was all he would allow
me. I finally found wire cutters that
worked, and cut through a span of wire on my own land. The embankment there is crumbling. It is scary trying to go down, the earth
sliding beneath my feet. Thankfully,
horses are more sure-footed than me, but I still worried they could twist an
ankle.
When they would go up onto Beto’s land I felt nervous. I expected a call at any time, chastising me
again for letting my horses run wild. I
climbed through the wire fencing, went to the horses, clipped a rope on them
and tried to lead them back down and to our own space. I would lead them to the embankment and urge
them to go down. It was too steep for me
to climb easily, and so I could not lead them.
Sometimes they would go, sometimes they would balk and run off. Eventually they showed me their preferred
path. At the south point furthest from
my land, the embankment smoothed out to a mild slope. Problem was, the horses could see their
corral to the north, so close across the fence, and did not want to be led away
in the opposite direction. I thought
horses were so smart, but they could not learn that to get home, they had to
walk away. That week I spent hours
chasing after the horses. One day I just
let the horses go down to their preferred spot, below Juanito’s land. After a short time I returned Cinderella to
her corral, but Patas was not
cooperating. Soon enough I saw him in
Juanito’s fallow field! I went after
him, but the gate separating the field from the riverbank was still
closed. How had the horse gotten into
the field? As it turns out, Juanito has
neglected his fencing maintenance, and so the horse climbed a steep embankment
and walked across the wire lying on the ground.
He left his mark a time or two before I could get him back down the
embankment and over to his corral. The
next day I saw Juanito and his adult son standing over a lump of manure, heads
down, hands on their hips, heads shaking.
Oh, how they would extract justice for this outrage.
Then came the horse busting a pipe. Then began the acts of vandalism.
I received the third call from my new friend, the Syndicato. I would learn later that Juanito made a
number of harassing calls. I heard from
Jhampa in Torreon, the founder of Luz de Compasion, telling me that my horses
were disturbing Juanito.
The evening that I found myself without water, due to the
removal of the well pump, I was filled with fear and rage. I contacted my lawyer, in Durango. He had told me that it was important to keep
peace with my neighbors, in order for his legal efforts, to get the land deed
put in my name, to succeed. His response
was compassionate. He contacted the
judge and informed her that he would be at the meeting with Juanito the next
day.
The usual suspects were present. My lawyer was my translator this day, since
he was raised in Canada before returning to Mexico to join his father’s law
firm. Beto was in California, visiting
family, but his local alternate was present, a Mr. Quiñones. We expected Juanito to join us. While waiting for Juanito to show up, my
lawyer made a masterful defense of my position.
It buoyed my spirits, lifting me from fear and anxiety. When Juanito did not turn up, the group
divided into two. They would go back to
the municipal offices and write up a report, while my Lawyer and I would go
looking for Juanito. First we went to
his cousin’s house in Pozole. Me and my
lawyer walking into her living room put the fear of God in her. She suddenly didn’t know any phone numbers;
she gave a description of how to find his house. It is not unusual that there is no street
name or number. Not knowing the town of
Canatlan that well, we wandered in Gustavo’s car for a while. Lupita called me and asked how the meeting
had gone. I told her, and said we were
looking for Juanito’s home. She said
she’d call me back. Five minutes later
she called, and gave us exact directions on how to find his house. She was at the weekly flea market, and was
able to quickly round up the information.
The lawyer went into the house. I guess he talked with Anna, Juanito’s
wife. At any rate, he learned that
Juanito had a job in Tepehuanes, and came home in ten-day intervals.
Power politics has more sway than the law in this
culture. I am determined that if that
menacing neighbor commits any further acts of vandalism, I will indeed call the
local police. This is like the power of
a candle verses a 100-watt bulb, but it is a statement nevertheless.
Gustavo told me a story that raised more questions in my
mind than gave answers. His father’s
firm is handling the case of Martha’s murder at the hands of her brother and
sister-in-law. This is how I met the
firm in the first place; I was the one to find Martha’s body on the road near
my house, a year and a half ago. He said
that they had nearly gotten Gloria released, but Memo was going to be locked up
for a long time. Days before the
expected release, ‘organized crime’ stepped in and took over the case. Because of this Gloria’s release would be
delayed a week or two, but she would soon be released.
What? Organized crime
can come in and take over a legal case?
There is no need-to-know on my behalf, but I do hope that one day I can
sit with Gustavo and learn about this world.
I know that Mexico does not have a functioning government, that it is
hopelessly corrupt. Having lived in so
many other countries, experiencing to some extent other governmental
structures, I am very curious to know more about the country I am living in
now. It is frustrating to see all the
potential around me, and the severe disfunction on all levels.
The vandalism continues.
A new tree trunk is put down in the soft earth, softened by the gushing
water from the cut supply hose. I have
stopped employing a worker, due to the expense, so I am left to my own devices
to restore water. It takes many hours,
spread over two days, to remover the heavy and deep tree trunk. The hose, now shortened, requires me to cut a
piece to patch into the gap. The hose is
very thick, I cannot find anything on hand to cut it. I walk over to my neighbors, and ask to borrow
something for cutting it. He lends me a
saw. I have everything else on hand, the
two connectors, the cinch rings, the tape.
I manage to put a tight patch on the line. Now I bury it, and haul gravel and pebbles to
cover it, and a few bricks on top. There
remains only for me to lift out this very heavy trunk, and fill the deep
hole. The temperature is around 90
degrees, at noon. I did not think I
could lift the trunk, it is very heavy.
I persisted in digging and tugging, digging and pulling, until at last
it was free. I hauled it onto my land,
some feet away from the gate. It
would be useful as a fence post. There is still more digging to be done to
fill in the gaping hole. It is a trap, I
could fall into it while trying to get
to my well, so I needed to fill it and finish burying my hose. But my heart is racing, I am becoming
dizzy. At last I have to stop. I sit down in the shade for a few minutes,
until my head stops spinning. I gath4er
my strength to walk back to the house, but my legs are shaking, I feel like I
will pass out. I sink into my recliner,
and cannot move for the rest of the afternoon, as I recover. I am hungry, but without a car my food supply
is low, and my energy to cook is on empty.
At least, I am pleased that I did not give up and managed to repair the
damage caused by the neighbor’s vandalism.
That evening I go back to try to finish filling the hole,
and discover that there is a new post put in place barring my gate. I see mud from recent water flowing, hinting
that they have somehow accessed my buried hose and opened it. They even came onto m land and hauled off the
big tree trunk I had removed, which I thought I could salvage as a fence
post. I went back to the house and
called Lupita. I would borrow her car
tomorrow and make a report to the police.
Enough with turning the other cheek.
