The Bare-toed Vaquero: Life in Baja California's Desert Mountains

By Peter J. Marchand

Rarely visited by outsiders, the ranchers of the Sierra de la Giganta in Baja California Sur live much as their ancestors have for the past two centuries. They raise goats and cattle and grow a magnificent variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. In this book a gifted photojournalist introduces us to individual ranchers and their families and describes their traditional practices and the ways they have adapted to twenty-first-century challenges and technological advances.

Marchand’s photographs and text are both informative and intimate. His introduction to this little-known corner of Mexico will delight travelers and scholars alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780826353573

Peter J. Marchand

Peter J. Marchand is a field biologist and photographer whose interests in plant and animal adaptation extend to human cultures living in extreme environments. He has worked in forest, tundra, and desert ecosystems throughout North America and currently resides in Colorado.

Book preview

THE BARE-TOED VAQUERO

THE BARE-TOED

VAQUERO

LIFE IN BAJA CALIFORNIA’S DESERT MOUNTAINS

PETER J. MARCHAND

© 2013 by Peter J. Marchand

All rights reserved. Published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

18   17   16   15   14   13                1   2   3   4   5   6

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PRINTED EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Marchand, Peter J.

The bare-toed vaquero : life in Baja California’s desert mountains / Peter J. Marchand.

   pages cm

Summary: Though the world has seen many advances in technology and globalization since publication of Harry W. Crosby’s work in 1981, little seems to have changed in the Sierra de la Giganta of Baja California Sur. Peter Marchand finds that the traditional skills and values—strong family ties, shared work, friendliness—of which Crosby wrote continue to endure—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-8263-5356-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8263-5357-3 (electronic)

1. Baja California (Mexico : Peninsula)—Description and travel.

2. Baja California (Mexico : Peninsula)—Social life and customs.

I. Title.

F1246.M294 2013

972’.2—dc23

2013003755

For the rancheros of SIERRA DE LA GIGANTA,

who gave so generously of themselves.

Special thanks to TRUDI ROSITA ANGELL and RODOLFO PALACIOS, without whom this project would not have been possible. I am also grateful to the LEOPOLD FOUNDATION of the PIKES PEAK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION for their grant to help support production of this book. Finally, thanks to the entire staff of UNM PRESS for bringing this project to fruition.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

The Rancheros of Sierra de la Giganta

1 TIOMBÓ TO RANCHO VIEJO

The legacy of pirates and priests

Gardens in a land of rock and thorns

Keeping the cows alive

2 RANCHO NUEVO TO LOS PILARES

The wrath of John

Goat herders relief ride

The indomitable spirit of Lucio Salvador Meza

3 LOS CORRALES AND LOS DOLORES

The bare-toed vaquero

Cultivating the desert

Palm logs for Chuy Campion

PHOTOGRAPHS

4 LA HIGUERA TO AGUA ESCONDIDA

The high price of cannabis

Chavalo’s museo de carne

Up the arroyo early

5 RANCHO VIEJO TO TIOMBÓ

Reflections at the old mission site

New orchard for Antonio

Ghosts of Incha

APPENDIX

Rancheros Visited for This Work

PREFACE

THE RANCHEROS OF SIERRA DE LA GIGANTA

In his classic Last of the Californios (Copley Books, 1981), historian Harry W. Crosby wrote of the lives of rancheros in Baja California’s interior mountains whose ancestry, traditions, and values Crosby believed could be traced directly to the Jesuit mission era of the peninsula. Descendents of early Spanish and English adventurers—priests and soldiers, mariners and pirates—these traditional pastoralists and horticulturalists have survived long geographical isolation with a genetic and cultural distinctiveness that sets them apart from many of their mainland compatriots. The French naturalist Cyprien Combier, an astute observer, wrote of these Californios that I could not fail to recognize in their physical appearances . . . an immense difference from Mexicans of the continent. They do not seem to belong to the same origin and, on their faces, tanned as much by the excessive heat of the climate as by mixed blood, you note a striking variety of features and of expressions. Combier would seem to be describing the rancheros of Sierra de la Giganta today, as much as the Californios of a century and a half ago.

The men, women, and children of these rugged desert mountains have never known the luxury of running water or electricity on their ranches yet are remarkably self-sufficient in their use of technologies that would be considered archaic by most standards today. Though the world has seen almost unimaginable advances in technology and globalization in the more than quarter century since publication of Crosby’s work, little seems to have changed in the Sierra de la Giganta of Baja California Sur. Communication has improved with the introduction of cellular phones at a handful of ranches, and the pickup trucks are of a slightly later vintage. The San Javier ejido has made some technological advances—a 1970 John Deere tractor was purchased in the late 90s to help rancheros plow their fields, and a large diesel generator has been installed in the center of the community so that residents close in could have electricity for a few hours in the evening. But the traditional skills and values—strong family ties, shared work, friendliness—of which Crosby wrote continue to endure.

Rancheros in the Sierra do not shun technology. Indeed, they embrace it whenever it is accessible. Accessibility, however, is a matter of both money and distance. Distance precludes amenities like municipal water and electricity. (A small restaurant in San Javier has ceramic toilets in their baños but requires that patrons dip a bucket in a barrel of water outside the door and pour it down the toilet–poco, por favor–to flush it.) But many ranches now have two or three solar panels, a few old truck batteries, and a charge controller to power a refrigerator, a light bulb or two, a radio or TV, and, most recently, a cell phone charger. Beyond these simple luxuries, however, costs quickly escalate out of reach. So water is supplied either by gravity or a gasoline-powered pump (though windmills still turn at some ranches), cooking is most often by wood fire (prefered over gas for the better taste of food), machaca is ground on a stone metate or pounded on a stump, and coffee is ground in a hand-cranked mill. Plowing is still done by mule (the San Javier communal tractor an exception), and planting, harvesting, and milking is all done by hand.

It is precisely the resourcefulness of these people—their life skills, their use of native materials, their understanding of nature and stewardship of the land—as well as their cooperative spirit and cultivated friendliness (in Crosby’s words) that draw me to them now. These qualities endure, no doubt, partly through the isolation of the rancheros. Many of the distractions of twenty-first-century life, while known to most through radio or television and occasional excursions to town, are simply not available to these people. For the most part, children in the Sierra are educated at centrally located ranches where rural teachers, trained and placed by the state, instruct all grades to a handful of students. Extended family and neighbors (often the same) are still the center of attention, and even the youngest children engage in household and ranch activities, overseen patiently by older brothers and sisters, cousins, parents and grandparents. Visitors to the ranches are an occasion to drop everything, an opportunity to talk, to learn, to find out what is going on elsewhere, and even the kids sit and listen quietly to the adult conversation.

The title of Crosby’s book, Last of the Californios, might suggest that the end of traditional ranch