Mexican journey

I spent my last Sunday in Mexico participating in the creation of La Fiesta de los Puercos de la Trinitaria — or, in English, the Festival of the Pigs of Trinitaria.

In Mexico there are perhaps thousands of fiestas. Some, like Todos Santos, are celebrated by the entire nation. Most are local. For instance, there is the magnificent Fiesta of the Radishes in Oaxaca.

Land Minds

By Tim King

The Fiesta of the Pigs is very local. It’s not really in Trinitaria, which is a pretty little town in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. The fiesta is in a place near Trinitaria which is a scattered collection of very small houses among fields of tall hand-planted corn and pastures. A rough path, more used by barefoot children and burros rather than motorized vehicles, leads through this place.

Opinion

door stove) and his three children.

Here also live pigs amazing enough to celebrate. They grunt and squeak in a cement block palm-thatched barn. One of the pens hold 8-10 grunting two-monthold pigs.

Marcos and Pepe talk a long time about them. Marcos marks four of the larger ones with a blue indelible pen. The last gives him a run for his money around the slippery pen. Then, to my amazement, eight of the pigs are picked up under arms and hauled to the Volkswagen. All are put in 4-foot by 18-inch space behind the last seat. They don’t fit well. As we climb back up the mountain, they shriek, wiggle, manure, and finally go to sleep on top of each other.

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My friends and I left our home in the city of Comitan at mid-morning following a breakfast of papaya and tamales. Pepe drove. His father, Absolun, sat next to me on a board placed between driver and passenger seats. Mario and his wife were in the back of the Volkswagen bus with a load of freshly-planed pine lumber. In the first village outside of Comitan we picked up a hitchhiker. We were all headed to San Pedro.

San Pedro is in a valley at the foot of the mountains. It is a collection of small, private farms which grow sugar cane, corn and monstrous cattle called cebu.

The view riding out of the mountains is awesome and frightening. Cliffs drop away from a road which barely hangs onto the mountains side. As we swoop around hairpin after hairpin turn, there are little colored doghouses with plastic flowers. On Todos Santos, the families of this road’s victims will bring sweet cakes and flowers and put them in the houses. I wonder what my family would put in my house. Pepe points gleefully to a mashed guard rail and the green forest 200 feet below. An entire family recently went over here. Nobody died, Pepe tells me as he eases into position to pass a gasoline tanker groaning around a particularly nasty curve.

Finally we reach the 80 hectare ranch at San Pedro. Here are artesian sulphur springs which are diverted to irrigate the corn and cane. One spring passes through a swimming pool rich with algae on its sides. Over the pool hang branches of huge trees rich with orange and purple blossoms. I’ve only seen the pool used once. A thin brown cane cutter came to it, sweaty, one hot mid-afternoon. He looked about shyly, then slipped out of his clothes and into the pool. The pool is, I learned, a semi-public bath.

These waters also must be healthy because here lives Fidel. He drinks the sulphur water and is short, thin, dark brown, and very strong. Fidel, who would like to know how to read, lives with his wife (who makes wonderful corn tortillas on her wood-fired out-

I have a box of 11 peeping chicks at my feet. The chicks go to Pepe’s house in the city. The four blue marked pigs go to a pen in Marcos’ village. Then Pepe, Absolun and I head out to Trinitaria. Just before arriving, we turn off onto a path with large boulders and deep ruts. Pepe drives as if he were one of the firewood laden burros we pass. As we inch forward, we ask for directions from men strolling from or to the fields with machetes over their shoulders. The fields have tall corn with beans that have red flowers climbing the stalks.

Finally, it appears, we have arrived. A short woman, who has heard we are seeking her, greets us on the path. She is beautiful — more Maya than mestizo. Vert black very long hair; maybe five feet tall. She signals four boys. They come running. Each grabs a pig and holds it to his brave chest. The boys’ grins are as big as the pig’s squeal. The brown boys take the pink pigs to the porch of a blue house. The short woman and Pepe (not much taller) follow to the porch. Other people are coming at the call of the pigs: women with babies; men shining with sweat from the fields; girls in bright dresses. All gather around the pigs on the porch. Pepe pulls up a green lard bucket and seats himself. Everyone has gathered. The pigs, now quiet at his feet, are waiting. Pepe begins his speech.

“These are amazing pigs,” he tells the people. “You may cross them with your small pigs. The small pigs will become larger.”

He tells them to multiply the amazing pigs also. He tells them how to keep the line pure; how to improve their own runty pigs. He tells them there will be more meat for their children. The people understand this. They celebrate these pigs. They celebrate the idea of children eating pork. They look at the pigs at Pepe’s feet and are happy. It is the day of la Fiesta de los Puercos.

Tim King has been a contributor to The Land since 1985. He also co-founded the community newspaper La Voz Libre and served as its publisher and editor from 2004 to 2014. He farms with his family near Long Prairie, Minn.