Apoala and the Fleece Part II

Without warning, Apoala appeared, deep in its valley and green as a watering hole. In the dry season, the fertile valley looked like an oasis.

A line of trees curved across the floor of the valley. To the left was a quilt of tidy brown, green and sand-colored squares. We spotted a narrow dirt line slicing the valley. Having visited Apoala last year, we recognized the important landmarks: the yu’u, main street, Tony’s Store and the church. Deep scratches like pencil marks cross-hatched the slopes of the mountains. Far to the right, a U-shaped fold in the mountains promised entrance to untamed regions.

It was exactly 11:30 when we pulled up in front of the yu’u, registered and paid 50 pesos for our guide. A quick glance high to the right. The Devil's Cave still monitored the village.

Our guide was curled up asleep. He preferred to continue his nap. Abraham, a pleasant, self-contained young man who was finishing secondary school, agreed to be his substitute. He would work four months as a guide before being replaced by another student.

Our throats were as parched as the land we had just driven through. Just as the land asked for water, we asked for beers. We gave one to Abraham. He described our route while we slowly sipped the lukewarm liquid.

Our first stop was a cave. I waited outside and immersed myself in the sound of two gurgling springs. One spring flowed from a crevice near the cave; the other emerged far below the cave’s entrance. The water rushed away to feed the river, which also flowed through the village and irrigated the village crops.

Octavio and Abraham emerged from the cave, and Abraham concealed his battery-powered lantern behind a ledge. He would pick it up on the way back. We settled down to enjoy a spectacular hike through ravines, towering cliffs and high canyon walls.

Abraham narrated a story about a double-headed eagle. It had preyed on cattle in the village and then hid in a cave in the face of a cliff. Whenever the eagle ravaged the cattle, the villagers ran to the priest who was unable to help. One day a villager took matters into his own hands and shot and killed the eagle. From that day forth, there was peace (1).

We followed the shallow river as it ran between high walls. The water held the tint of reddish soil. Boulders interrupted its progress. Scrub and trees with twisty branches lined its banks. A few trees clung to the sides of the gorges. Everything looked bleached and petrified in the intense heat.

Back at the yu’u we collapsed in our rooms. Abraham disappeared to do whatever young men do in Apoala. We slept soundly, awoke and explored the village. Tony’s Store was closed. It had been newly white-washed. It looked solid and prosperous. A tree cross was planted in the ground in front of it.

“What are the tree crosses for?” I asked a villager. He shrugged. His companion stepped forward.

“They are for El Dia de la Cruz (The Day of the Cross) on May 3rd. May 3rd is a feast in the Mixteca. We plant new crosses and decorate them with colored paper and crepe paper flowers or redecorate crosses that we planted the previous year. It also is the day to honor architects and engineers, and we erect a tree cross on a building when it is finished.”

Before we could enter the church grounds, we had to pass beneath a backboard with a basketball hoop. The board was white with a double-headed eagle painted brick red in its center. We didn’t remember seeing it last year.

We stepped into the church, delighted that on this trip we had the leisure to enjoy its interior. We halted in astonishment. Another double-headed eagle! Where was it last year? It couldn’t have been there!

This double-headed eagle was painted on a panel of wood, which was mounted on a side wall at the rear of the church. The eagles were brick red with their crests, heads, bodies and wings detailed in a lighter red. The background was robin’s egg blue. In the space between the back of the eagles’ head was a white flower with a dark red center.

I stepped back in amazement. There was the Fleece, the Fleece I had sworn so long ago to discover with Jason. It hung from the base of a white fleece cross, placed within an oval formed in the conjoined backs of the eagles.

At one time the panel had sustained a vertical crack, but the two sections had been pieced together so that the edges formed an almost perfect match. The eagle on the left had sustained minor damage.

The bottom of the panel bore an inscription in white capital letters:
“Apoala. Noch. Oax. Enero 30 de 1981
Recuerdo a futuras generaciones.
Rest. Edeardo Zavaleta.” (2)

Still reeling from the excitement of discovering the Fleece, I approached the sanctuary. A chill ran down my back. There, on the floor beside the altar was a wheel with small bells attached to its spokes. A foot pedal protruded from one side. Whoever pumped the pedal would turn the wheel causing the bells to ring and send out vibrations into the surrounding atmosphere. Just like a Tibetan prayer wheel being spun round and round to send out the vibrations of the mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, inscribed on paper within the wheel.

My thoughts were whirling as I tried to comprehend the fact that two symbols connected to my childhood were here in this church. Impossible! I sat in a pew and tried to sort out the meaning, but I felt as if I had been hit over the head. I was shivering. I felt as if I had been knocked off balance. And then a voice spoke in my heart, “This is what you’ve been searching for.”

After I regained my composure, we stepped out into the fresh air. We crossed a bridge over the gurgling river. Cows lingered even though their owners urged them home. Trees with ripening fruit lined the river bank. At the end of the road a man accosted us. He had come from his field in order to demand four pesos. “You’re making money from me by taking pictures of my crops. That’s unfair.” He and Octavio exchanged forceful words, but in the end we paid.

“Hide your camera,” Octavio warned. “Don’t take any more photographs.”

We detoured down a side path. “Be careful,” Octavio cautioned. “The man may be watching.” His words echoed back from the mountains. No matter how softly we spoke, our words echoed back to us. It was eerie to realize the villagers could hear whatever we said. “Let’s return to the yu’u. If the villagers can hear us, so can the farmer.”

After dinner, we slept and awoke about 10 p.m. for groggy conversation, hot milk with powdered coffee and bread before turning in for the night. “There is no TV,” the attendant said. “One of the attendants destroyed it. She didn’t want to take care of it.”

The next morning I was out early. It was 7 a.m.; Octavio was asleep. Two women wearing rebozos and several men softly called, “Buenos dias.”

A janitor was sweeping the school yard. He leaned on his broom and shook my hand, “Buenos dias. Where are you from? I am so happy to meet you.”

Another man repeated the same courtesies but added, “Where is your husband? Is he at the yu’u?”

“No, he is back in the States.”

“I hope the next time you visit Apoala you will bring him with you. We would like to meet him and show him our beautiful village.”

At the end of the village where the river rushed to the right towards the canyons, I met a tiny wizened man who, at the end of his formalities, asked me for a peso. “Just a little peso,” he said, “not a big one.” To prove his sincerity, he made a circle with his thumb and index finger and held it up for me to see.

Octavio was still asleep when I returned to the yu’u. Soon, however, he joined me for powdered coffee stirred into hot milk and beef and tamales. We had just sat down to breakfast when Abraham hailed us through an open window. Swinging a leg over the sill, he leapt into the room with a thermos of home made mezcal. Octavio sampled it, but I declined. I had become violently ill. I went to my room, swallowed pills and slept while Abraham and Octavio hiked to the waterfall.

They woke me after an hour. Octavio’s blue and white striped shirt was soaked with perspiration. “Parts of the hike were difficult. But the falls are beautiful. They cascade over red cliffs to plummet into a pool. It would be good for swimming. The water is cold, clear and ice blue. I am happy. I got wonderful shots of the waterfall. Three good ones. Wait until you see them. You will like them.”

Abraham offered to take Octavio to the mouth of the Devil’s Cave, but Octavio declined. He was too tired to attempt the precipitous climb. Relieved, I went back to bed. I left Octavio tinkering with his car and adding oil from the container he had purchased in Nochixtlan.

I got up for the last time. The two women at the medical clinic next door consulted me about seeing the doctor who was in residence that day. “He will be happy to treat you,” they said.

“Muy amable (very kind),” I said weakly. “No gracias.”

They nodded gravely. “You will be better soon.”

The attendants at the yu’u brewed a pot of manzanilla (chamomile) tea. One cup of steaming tea perked me up, two cups revived me, and three restored me enough so that I stepped out to admire the clinic’s garden bursting with red amaryllis and white hollyhocks.

One of the women was going off duty. She walked two hours roundtrip every day from her home in the mountains to her volunteer job at the clinic. She explained that she had a year’s contract with the government. When it expired, the authorities would replace her with another volunteer and another contract. In her spare time, she wove palm frond hats.

We reached a mutual exchange. If we drove her home, she would sell us a straw hat. We both coveted a hat with its brim upturned to the crown and a circlet of loose palm fronds cascading from the edge of the brim.

“I sell a hat for 5 pesos,” she said, “but middlemen buy 12 hats for 18 pesos. They resell them in the City at a profit.”

We loaded our belongings into the car. High above the town, she signaled us to park. She raced down a hill. When she reappeared, she carried three hats with unfinished straw brims and a hat she had made for one of her daughters. We each bought a hat for 5 pesos. I didn’t have the heart to buy the one she had made for her little girl. I felt sure the little girl would be disappointed even if she understood the sale would benefit her family. Octavio gave her 20 extra pesos.

“No, no, you are too kind. I can’t accept.”

“For your children,” he said, with his most winning smile.

She relented. “Thank you. You are very kind. Here, though, you must take the third hat.”

We said good-by and strode away. Octavio wore two hats, one on top of the other, and I one. “Just like a king and queen,” he said.

The jouncing of the car upset my stomach. “You are white,” Octavio announced as he braked and helped me out. I felt as if I were going to die. The bumps seemed to have worsened since yesterday, and the heat was suffocating.

I was thankful when we arrived in Nochixtlan and found a restaurant. Octavio ordered soup with grated carrots and cabbage and a dish of meat and potatoes. He spoke with the owner. “Por favor, make the American my bad stomach remedy. She is not well.”

“How?”

“Combine the juice of two lemons, a bottle of mineral water and two alka seltzer tablets.”

The owner set the glass before me. He averted his eyes, but his smile conveyed sympathy.

Octavio instructed, “Drink this. I always take it before going to bed and again in the morning when I have a sick stomach.” I followed his advice, drank another bottle of mineral water and ate a few spoonfuls of cherry Jell-o. I felt better.

That night I meditated in my room. My thoughts embraced embrace the stories that the residents of Apoala might tell future generations. Perhaps with embellishments. The element of mystery was strong. A stranger appeared in the village and then departed never to be heard from. His house by the river was the only physical reminder that he had lived there. Perhaps with the advent of tourists the need for the stranger would disappear.

On our first trip we had learned about the Devil's Cave and the cave where a live double-headed eagle was discovered.

On the second trip, the Devil's Cave was a name without a story. The story about the disappearance of the children and the Devil had been transformed into a story about a live double-headed eagle carrying off cattle. The hero who had put an end to the Devil's machinations had been replaced by the hero who killed the eagle. The essence of the story remained; evil was done, and evil was overcome.

On our second trip, there was a double-headed eagle painted on a basketball backboard and a restored wooden panel inside the church with a double-headed eagle with the Fleece.

The double-headed eagle as a decorative motif inside of a church is not unique to Apoala. Charles Moritzky noted that a small ruined church in San Francisco Ixtacamaxtitlan had reddish designs of the double-headed eagle on its walls (3). Did the same artist execute them?

The double-headed eagle and the Order of the Golden Fleece were associated with the Hapsburgs and were carried to Mexico by Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico. Had Maximilian, disguised as one of the people, visited Apoala, thereby inspiring the emblem of the double-headed eagle and the insignia of the Fleece? Or were the eagle and the Fleece Apoala’s attempt to add character and color to the village?

I was grateful to have been present at the birth and evolution of a village’s stories. They hint at a village’s origins. In them are the sacred wellsprings of history, which are always carefully guarded. Sacred sites, symbols and stories are carefully groomed for public presentation. In some respects, I felt I had not only visited the birthplace of the Mixtecas but the birthplace of developing legends.

Stories would be told. Perhaps even we had entered a story. I wondered what elements of our story would be included. Part of the charm is not knowing. I was not born in Apoala. Nor did I spend any length of time there. On our first visit, we dropped out of the mists, unannounced and unexpected. The village offered us its best hospitality in food and stories. Our more formal arrival six months later with rooms reserved in a new tourist lodge led to as much hospitality but less colorful stories.

To drop out of the mists is to catch a village and its people unguarded and unrehearsed. It is to place oneself in a position so that the question is asked, “How shall we entertain such a visitor, a visitor from outside of our area and outside of our country?” Clearly, everyone did his best.

Part of the story the people of Apoala would never know. How my mental landscape and my dream landscape had coalesced in their village. And how a symbol that represented each landscape had presented itself to me within Apoala’s church. The Fleece belonged to my mental landscape: the ocean and Jason, my childhood hero. The wheel with bells attached to its spokes that evoked images of Tibetan prayer wheels represented my dream landscape.

I had yearned for Tibet. The Himalayas were the longed-for lofty mountains with peaks that would endow me with spiritual insights. The trip I wanted to take would have me flying over haughty, snow-covered summits and landing in Lhasa, short of breath, gasping for air from the altitude and overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Potala.

High mountains that simultaneously contemplated deep valleys and immense skies, blue lakes, clear air and the deep spiritual devotion of a people became the benchmarks for what I met in Oaxaca. Tibet always lurked beneath the surface.

How do the mountains compare to those in Tibet? Is the silence of the high places similar; is the silence more profound in Tibet?

Look! The festive triangles of colored paper and plastic triangles strung between trees, across the facades of churches and over roads with the mountains as a backdrop. How like Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the breeze!

The women using their rebozos as baby slings or carry-alls reminded me of Tibetans storing babies, cups, bowls and whatever else they needed to travel with in the recesses of their belted robes.

I visualized the two symbols that had made such an impact on me when I stood in the church in Apoala. As I cradled both images deep inside me, the voice again spoke. “This is what you’ve been searching for.”

(1) Whipperman, Bruce. Oaxacan Handbook. Moon Travel Handbooks. Avalon Travel Publishing. Emeryville, CA. 2000, pp.254-255. Note: Our visit to Apoala in 1999 was before the Cave of the Serpent and the Rock Where the Eagle with Two Heads Died became the official names of these two sites.

(2) “Apoala. Nochixtlan, Oaxaca. January 30 of 1981
I remember future generations
Restorer Edwardo Zavaleta”

(3) Perspectives from San Francisco Ixtacamaxtitlan, Mexico by Charles Moritsky. www.mexconnect.com/mex_/trave