Exotic

Robert and I had gone to a town called Tlaxiaco, which means in Nahuatl: place where it rains on the ball court, so you know that North Americans aren’t the first civilization obsessed with sports. We were visiting our team mates, Paco and Ofelia, and they introduced us to Pedro, a person as unlikely as the town. Because it’s not just the name. After driving three hours through mountainside, small towns, and corn fields, you suddenly enter this miniature city bristling with people and every trade imaginable. No two homes or buildings or streets are built the same. Or painted the same. And some people have brought back some ideas for houses from the States: “siding” made from concrete, or a chalet that looks transplanted wholesale. It’s an interesting place.

Ok, Neil Peart didn’t think so. Too crowded maybe, too compact for comfort, all those narrow streets with the houses closing in on them like sleeves too tight. When he took his therapeutic motorcycle tour through southern Mexico, his policy was to stop at dark and grab a hotel, but he made an exception: Tlaxiaco.

That’s too bad. Tlaxiaco has history. It calls itself the Heroic City because its militia helped turn the tide in the resistance movement against the French invaders who had added Mexico to its Empire in the 1860’s. And it used to be the second most important city in the state, even boasting a theatre. But when it got sacked during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the business folk packed up and moved wholesale to the capital, leaving the forlorn town with a few mementos like a clock tower and beautiful colonial buildings to remind it of its glory days. Today it’s coming back as a thriving market town for the dozens of Indian communities surrounding it.

Pedro is as exotic as the city. Smartly dressed, articulate, courteous, this young man was born to a Mixtec family but raised in the city, speaking only Spanish. Although his parents are animists, still turning in illness to traditional healers to purge evil spirits and cure imbalances of hot and cold in the body, Pedro spent time in Ohio busing tables and brought back an interest in Buddhism. He’s a Hispanic, Mixtec, Catholic, Buddhist, Ohian restaurant worker turned Mexican farmer. You just don’t get much opportunity to talk to someone like this…with a place like Tlaxiaco bursting in the background.

Fascinating conversation. Pedro said that to choose among all the religions out there was to limit yourself, to fragment your thinking. You could be enriched by listening to the variety of gurus, monks, Sufis, and priests willing to teach you. (His very first question was about Jainism; we were scrambling.)  He said he lived without ambition, without being corrupted by materialism, and without dividing his mind by settling for just one faith. He embraced them all, but especially Buddhism that freed you from guilt and fear of death. Christians tell you you’re a sinner and then try to save you, he said. Buddhism doesn’t believe in sin; it’s just the flip-side of Good. Death is the friend of Life, he said, a time to be liberated from the body. I live a tranquil life, he said, accepting everything. 

I won't give you my side of the conversation. You know it. Life is a game of poker, and I staked all my chips on a guy who came back from the dead.With a body. Pedro said He knew all about this guy, but I said, no, because this guy takes you all or nothing, like a spouse.  He said love has no limits. I said, no, it doesn't. But it limits itself for the other. For both of us, the tone was right. We were both listening, and it was enjoyable. We both wished we could have persuaded the other.

In the end he said he was thankful for the conversation. I was, too. I asked him why he was, and he said he’d learned that different people can be comforted by such different beliefs. True enough.

In case you’re wondering where Robert was during all of this—he and Jason had driven on to Guerrero for a week of checking in with carpenters and believers there. I had stayed visiting until my bus brought me back to Oaxaca for the night.

A Mixtec Buddhist. That’s got to be a first. We all prayed together at the end, holding hands in a circle, and I prayed a blessing over him, and a hope that he would meet my guy someday. Not sure what I'd have done if he'd have offered to pray a Buddhist blessing over me. Have to think about that. It would have started a whole new round of conversation.

I think he doesn’t know what he’s missing. I think he’s like the people who bypass Tlaxiaco, or southern Mexico, for that matter, and miss the truly Exotic. But you make your choices.