The English Pantheon

Compared to many other parts of the world, direct British influence in the Americas south of the Rio Grande has been limited. Its early interventions, led by Drake's piracy, were intermittent and less than noble, albeit no more ignoble than the conquistadores' savage, and yet pious, exploitation of the region and its peoples. As colonial masters, Britain controlled some Caribbean islands, of which only Jamaica and Trinidad are larger than tiny, plus the logging outposts of British Honduras and British Guyana, both of which have had a chequered history in this respect*. Otherwise my countrymen have left behind little evidence of their having been here: they built a few railways, farmed a few estancias and established a few football clubs down south and that was it ... or so I thought.

I had come to Pachuca in the state of Hidalgo, ninety-five kilometres north of Mexico City, to view the Archivo Casasola, a huge (three-quarters of a million items) and historically invaluable collection of photo-journalism depicting Mexico in the first half of the last century, but then I read that there was an English cemetery, known as El Panteón Inglés, in the nearby silver mining community of Real de Monte. I couldn't miss it.

Mexico has long been one of the world's greatest producers of silver, from shortly after the Spanish conquest through to the twentieth century. Today most of the mines are exhausted and closed, but even in 1950 Mexico accounted for one-quarter of the world's output of that precious metal. In the 1820s, after the struggle for independence from Spain, Mexican mines needed foreign capital, which attracted the interest of the British mining engineer, John Taylor. He established in Real de Monte a British-run company and imported Cornish methods to work the mines. From 1824, around 350 Cornish miners moved here, but they left in 1848 when the mines were transferred to Mexican ownership.

One afternoon I drove the dozen-or-so kilometres from Pachuca up to Real de Monte. The town shelters between rugged mountain ridges and presents to the arrival a cascade of red roofs of corrugated iron. The graveyard stands towards the top of one of the ridges, overlooking the town, at the end of a steep lane. It was a clear and sunny day, but the air was chilly, no doubt on account of the altitude. Pachuca itself is at 8,000 feet: surely it was over 9,000 feet here.

The wrought iron gates, dated 1862 and bearing the inscription "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord", were chained and padlocked. An old lady appeared from the cottage next door and told me that I'd find the caretaker working in his field below. I spotted him, twenty yards away, a squat old man in drab, baggy clothes and a white sombrero, bending over between the harvested stalks of maize. I called out, but he continued with his work. I tried again, louder, but still he ignored me and so I walked down into the plot. Only when he noticed my movement a few yards away did he look up. He was obviously more-or-less deaf but, looking at me speaking, he could understand my Spanish, which was puzzling. Was he guessing - I could want only one thing - or lip-reading or did the aged hearing function of his brain switch on only when he knew that he was being spoken to?

He let me through the gates, then padlocked them behind me and returned to his cornfield. It occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to get his attention when I wanted to leave. Oh well, I would deal with that later - I was eager to start exploring.

I resolved to inspect all of the graves. Almost every inch of the site spoke of the far-away home country. Beyond the high perimeter wall I could see maguey (agave) and nopal (prickly pear cactus) on the hillside, but inside was a foreign field that is forever England. The style of the gravestones was familiar and they were discoloured by lichen. Moss carpeted the graves and foxgloves grew in places, one even in flower. Agapanthus lined the foot of the wall. A breeze whispered through the tall pines. It was all beautifully tranquil - I couldn't imagine a more peaceful place for eternal rest.

By themselves, some surnames spoke of Cornwall: Trevethan and Trelease, Pengelly and Penprase. Certain names were repeated throughout the cemetery: Rabling, Rule, Richards, Jory, Devereux and Skewes. They came from Camborne, from Lanner, from Gwennap, Chacewood House, Bolenowe and Breace. But not all were Cornish, nor even from England. I noted provenances including Middleton in Teesdale, Whitchurch in Glamorgan, Glasgow, Wexford, Holland, Norway and Kansas. There were Stempels and Kuntzens. One stone read: Hier Ruht in Frieden Fern der Heimat (Here Rests in Peace Far from Home), Mein Geliebter Mann, Unser Guter Vater und Schwager, Ludwig Johannsen. He was doubly foreign - a German in an English graveyard in Mexico - but he was loved.

There was evidence too of the assimilation of the miners into the community, for example, Gualterio Jamieson - Natural de Escocia - Fallegio a la Edad de 48 Años en Pachuca - El Dia 14 de Mayo de 1858. Gualterio is the hispanic form of Walter. Other stones remembered Carolo Federico Skewes Ramirez, Carmen Ramirez de Skewes and Señor Doctor Jesus Trevethan Cortazar.

The most poignant memorials were to those who died young, some of them at their perilous workplaces: In Loving Memory of William Henry, the beloved son of Richard and Susan Sobey, who was accidentally killed at Santa Gertrudis Mine, Pachuca, Mexico on Tuesday, March 18th, 1890, aged 16 years & 11 months. This wording intrigued me: why did it state the obvious, that Pachuca is in Mexico? Was it carved in Cornwall? Lying on the ground were two tiny stone coffins: one told that the child had succumbed at three months, the other contained Maria, hija de Juan y Catalina Buchan, nacio y murio Nov. 24 de 1850.

As the sun lowered, I began to feel cold. I'd seen enough. Cemeteries bring down a melancholy wistfulness ... all those mundane hopes and plans, dashed. One day mine would be too. I made my way back to the locked entrance and, as I'd feared, there was no way of raising the caretaker from his agriculture. I clung on to the gate like a prisoner, looking out hopefully. Eventually he remembered me and I was released, shivering in the twilight. He was friendly enough and asked if I was searching for family. I signed the guest book and drove back to Pachuca and the warmth of my hotel, thoughtful, wondering whether it was desperation or the promise of riches (or are they the same thing?) that persuaded those Cornish families to uproot themselves to a strange land thousands of miles across the ocean.

I guessed that there would be some genealogists interested in the photographs I'd taken, so I made contact with a few through the Cornish Online Census Project at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html. One of my photos shows the inscription on the gravestone of one William Rule, the brother of the great-grandfather of Mary Lou Gibson, who lives in Redding in northern California and who has the lovely maiden name, Buckthought. Mary Lou and I subsequently exchanged a few e-mails: I told her about my big trip and she related to me the history of her ancestors in Mexico. I'd noticed that several of the Rule graves were grander than most, in marble rather than stone, so I suggested that perhaps her family were better off than the average miner's. I'll let her tell the story ...

"The secret is out. My great-grandfather, Richard Rule, was an administrator for the mines in Real del Monte. His uncle was Francisco (Frank) Rule, the head of all heads. When his daughter married, it was reported that he lined the streets with silver. Actually, he lined them only from the street to the church.

"You mention Pachuca and you hear Rules. The Casa Grande or Great House, built by Rules in Real del Monte, served as a family home for the Commissioner and an administration building for the company. It is now being used as a school. Francisco Rule's private home is now the seat of the Hidalgo state government. When he celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, he invited his relations from Cornwall and paid their travelling expenses. I think I was born to the wrong Rule.

"My great-grandfather was convinced of the moral degradation of many of his countrymen and gathered them at his house on Sundays, where they were joined by some Mexican Protestants under the leadership of a Medial (sic) practitioner. Richard Rule passed away in December 1871. He left a wife, Elizabeth, and five children. She returned to Gwinear with her children and lived with her parents Simon and Elizabeth Uren."

Mary Lou recommended The Search for Silver - Cornish Miners in Mexico 1824-1947, by A.C. Todd, in which the Rule clan features strongly. To me it sounds like interesting history. I even found the book at Amazon, but it was out of print and unavailable**.

The Cornish didn't all leave Real de Monte, of course, and their descendants live there today. The most recent grave I found was of Carlos Rubio Richards (rubio means blonde), who died on 3rd March 1998 (my thirty-seventh birthday), and in town I drove past the surgery of a Doctor Henry Skewes R (the R possibly stands for Ramirez). But they left behind more than their genes and their names, for the culinary speciality of the region is the paste, yes, the humble Cornish pastie. They are sold everywhere in Pachuca and they are recognisably related to their English cousin, albeit somewhat smaller - you need two or three to make a meal - and, not surprisingly, spiced with chili. I enjoyed several during my short stay.

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* All of the former British Honduras, now Belize, is claimed by Guatemala, while Venezuela regards nearly two-thirds of Guyana as Venezuelan, indeed the cartographers of Caracas invariably show the disputed territory as Zona En Reclamación (for example, see http://www.mre.gob.ve/metadot/index.pl?id=3136&isa=Category&op=show). I intend to deal with these matters later in my travels.

**For more info., see http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/cornishlatin/. Dr. Sharron Schwartz informed me that the caretaker of the English cemetery at Real de Monte was latterly awarded the OBE by the British Ambassador in Mexico City, for tending the site for 50 years.

Tales from the Open Road

Tell anyone in Latin America that you pick up hitch-hikers and they are bound to furrow their brows in disapproval and launch into horror stories that make Rutger Hauer (I'm thinking of the film "The Hitcher") seem like, well, Saint Christopher. This happens even in Cuba, where vehicles are at a premium and thumbing a lift is a way of life: people commute to and from work, and children to and from school, in this way, perhaps only a few kilometres. There they call it "La Botella" (the bottle) - I don't know why.

Once I picked up a policeman near Ciego de Avila, in the centre of the island, and took him two hundred or so miles back to his beat in Havana. When I spotted him by the road, I decided that having a law enforcement officer alongside might gain certain advantages in the event of any problem, so I welcomed him into my hire car. Of course, we chatted along the way and presently I asked him what the roadside salesmen, who held up their produce at the side of the highway as we passed, were selling. "Queso" (cheese), he answered, but I already knew: I wanted to prepare him for my purchasing a large block as a present for the mother of a girlfriend from Guanabacoa, a suburb to the east of the capital. Barbara's mum, Zobeyda, was understandably suspicious of me, a fly-by-night tourist, and I guessed that my gift of the local cheese, which is solid, crumbly and bland, would be well received, since she would use it in making the pizzas that she sold from her house and which were her only source of income.

When the next motorway vendor came into sight I slowed the car and explained my plan to my passenger. I hadn't considered the legality of roadside sales until the policeman, in uniform, got out of the car and the poor startled guajiro started to hightail it across the carriageway. To his credit, the policía recognised the favour he owed me, despite the law, and gestured to the fast-disappearing cheese seller to relax, whereupon we met and transacted our business. In the end the dairy gift, plus a brick of semi-solid guayaba conserve, did the trick: Zobeyda's resolve broke and I was a welcome guest for the rest of the holiday. It was a great experience to share Cuban life, away from the holiday hot-spots.

By the way, in Barbara's case I wasn't just a fly-by-night tourist. When she subsequently escaped from Cuba to Berlin, on the pretext of singing in a Cuban band on tour, I went over three times to help her out. She is still there, awaiting her residence permit, in an immigration limbo and unable to return to Cuba, where she'd be arrested and thrown into jail. In Germany she can get only the poorest paying jobs and she hasn't seen her lovely mum for nearly two years, but she is determined to break free. Whatever the benefits of Fidel's revolution (and there are some), they are outweighed by the disadvantages ... and yet I dread the eventual economic and cultural reannexation of the island by the United States, which seems inevitable.

To get back to my original topic, I was about to explain that I pick up hitchhikers, depending upon the circumstances, firstly because, in countries where most of the people are too poor to have their own transport, it seems only polite to do so, but also because, from time to time, the connections I make lead to invitations and diversions that you'd otherwise never experience as a tourist. Even if those things don't come about, your passengers can often tell you about dangerous places to avoid or simply the location of the next lead-free petrol station - valuable information in many Latin American countries, where leaded petrol and diesel are more readily available.

Before my nearest and dearest start to fret and to admonish me for my incaution, I would say that that I do exercise some judgement in choosing to whom I give a lift. And I have rules: (1) no pick-ups after dark, and (2) no men without women or children. I've already broken both of these on this trip. On one occasion I was driving along an empty highway through the high pine forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental, between Cusárare and Guachochi in Chihuahua state, when I stopped for a Tarahumara youth with a chain saw. If that sounds like the opening scene of a horror movie, then I should point out that the Tarahumara Indians are very reserved (and very poor), preferring to avoid contact with whites, whom they have good reason to view with caution. Moreover, I decided that he wouldn't be able to threaten me with the chain saw because there wasn't enough elbow room in the front passenger seat to pull the cord with enough power to get it going. Of course I never found out if I was right in that estimation. He got out at the next Tarahumara village, having said hardly a word to me. I didn't mind.

The pick-up that I made after dark led to my best adventure so far on this trip. I was driving along the coast road from Mazatlán south to San Blas, a small resort-cum-shrimping port in Nayarit, which is also a favourite destination for bird-watchers. I stopped behind a queue of vehicles in the middle of the countryside, expecting it to have been caused by the usual alternating one-way traffic control around roadworks, and waited ... and waited. It seemed strange because there were over-long intervals between the groups of oncoming traffic that were passing us and yet we were not moving on our side.

The traffic filed up behind me until both ends of the queue were out of sight, even with the use of my birding binoculars (Canon 15x45 Image Stabilization - wizard!). People started getting out of their vehicles and chatting. The guy in front of me in a Dodge pick-up with California plates came over. He was a Mexican, bringing his family home to Jalisco for Christmas. We swapped our stories then he flagged down a passing lorry for information. I was right: the queue was caused by roadworks, but they were on an unavoidable narrow bridge ahead and those responsible had badly miscalculated their ability to manage the traffic. The queue on this side of the bridge, said the truck driver, was twelve kilometres long and it would take us over two hours to get through the bottleneck.

Now if this had happened to me in Britain, while I was a stressed and uptight worker, I would have exploded in whining indignation at anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. Here, with no timetable and no-one waiting for me, I briefly considered and quickly rejected turning back, then resigned myself to the long wait. I did some birdwatching from the roadside. I listened to my iPod (2-4-6-8 Motorway, Baby You Can Drive My Car, Life in the Fast Lane, that sort of thing). A federal police truck drove past on the wrong side of the road, siren blaring, evidently to investigate and followed inevitably by several impatient smart alec drivers. The fair-minded folk remaining in the queue were enormously gratified when the self-important queue-jumpers were forced off the road by an oncoming convoy of articulated trucks, so that they gave up their trick and rejoined our line (ahead of me, though).

It began to get dark. My policy is to avoid long-distance driving at night because of the multiple hazards on Latin American roads - potholes, wandering livestock, vehicles without lights, the infamous Mexican "topes" (what we call sleeping policemen) - but this time I was going to have to cover the final fifty miles in the dark. After two-and-half hours, we finally got moving in a slow file. We crossed the problematic bridge - there was no sign of the roadworkers, of course - and began to pick up speed. I needed to find the turn-off to San Blas.

Presently I came upon several successive signs indicating the right turn, but the road was unlit and I couldn't see an exit. Worried, I pulled off onto the gravel at the side of the road before I missed the turning - I didn't fancy my chances of making a U-turn on the dark highway in that traffic. Lucy's headlights picked out a couple sitting disconsolately in the dirt. On asking them for the turning to San Blas, they visibly brightened. They had been waiting for hours for the bus from Tuxpan, which was who knows how far behind me in the jam. The situation demanded that I offer them a lift.

Luis, the middle-aged man, was especially grateful and talkative. The younger woman, Angelica, was quiet. They weren't actually a couple, they were just going the same way. He was shrimp-boat captain, returning from his home in Mazatlán. His boat was in port at San Blas. I struggled to keep up with his stream of Spanish. He would be taking the boat and its six-man crew on its next shrimping mission on Monday (today was Saturday). Did he just ask me if I wanted to come along? That sounded interesting. I got him to repeat his offer, just to confirm that I'd understood correctly - I had. I asked him for how long they went to sea at a time. Two or three weeks, maybe more, he replied, but I could come for just three or four days, then they'd get a launch to bring me back. It sounded like an adventure and I was definitely interested, but I suggested that a stay of twenty-four hours would suit me better, to which he agreed and he launched into the details of life at sea.

After half-an-hour of driving along narrow, twisting roads through the dark, scrubby bush and forest, we reached our destination and I dropped my passengers off at their respective doors before seeking a hotel. In Luis's case, the "door" was on the Tropico de Cancer itself, moored at the wharfside, a seventy-foot trawler that had obviously seen better days, like all of the San Blas fleet. The fishy stench of the dock was overpowering. It was late. We said our farewells and I promised to return on Monday morning to learn how to become a shrimp fisherman ...