People: "I Love You Too, Alberto"

I am at a bit of a loss. I have been gone quite a bit this year in order to help out my aging parents. For the second time in a matter of months I returned to Mérida to discover that a friend had passed away while I was absent, that the funeral was over, public mourning finished, and that the rest of the world had begun to adjust to the void, leaving me to catch up on my own.

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I saw an enchanting painting, a colorful and mysterious portrait of a woman, hanging on the wall of a house in Mérida a few years ago. I asked my host where it came from, and learned that the artist lived not far from me, and although in his eighties was still busy working. Not long afterward, I met the man at a social gathering. His whispy hair was windblown, his precariously-perched glasses held together with adhesive tape, and his clothes spotted here and there with paint. The artist handed me his card. The black on white card pictured an artist's palette and brush and said simply, Alberto Castillo Ku, Pintor.

A few weeks later I called the phone number on the card and Alberto Castillo invited me over to his house in San Sebastian. As we got acquainted that afternoon we touched upon many subjects. We looked at paintings and photos and slowly wandered through his ancient, eccentric house and extensive garden. He cooked, and while eating the lunch we shared a couple of large bottles of beer. Over the next several years, visits like this one to Alberto's house became a regular and unforgettable part of my life.

Alberto Castillo was born in Mérida in 1920, and even as a child he liked to draw. When Alberto was about ten years old, his father bought the old colonial house in San Sebastian where Alberto lived off and on for the rest of his life. As a young man he was passionate about art, and against the advice of his father, decided to go to Mexico City to find work and study. There one day he wandered by a studio where Diego Rivera, probably the best-known and loved Mexican artist, was teaching. Alberto started talking with Diego, and was invited to sit in on the class. This began an exciting time in Alberto's life. He was a young man from an isolated provincial capital, suddenly immersed in cosmopolitan Mexico City of the 1940's. Communists, Nazis, spies, artists -- a fabulous mix of interesting figures -- were part of the scene there. Alberto lived near Diego and Frida Khalo, with whom he began to socialize. Included in this social set were the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias and his wife Rosa, the American writer Alma Reed, who was once the lover of executed Yucatecan socialist Felipe Carillo Puerto, and many other figures in Mexican and international art, intellectual life and politics of the era.

After many years in Mexico City, Alberto married and was living in Acapulco, where he had a studio and small restaurant. Acapulco then was a trendy hot spot, with foreign tourism just taking off in the area. Movie stars, the rich and the famous all made appearances in Acapulco, and Alberto's place was right in the thick of things. Then suddenly, after giving birth to their two sons, Alberto's wife became ill and quickly died.

At this point in the story there are gaps in my knowledge, partially because I never asked a lot of questions when Alberto began telling stories, and perhaps because my memory for the details a few years later is not all that good. After leaving Acapulco, Alberto made a living mostly from art and his culinary skills, working in Mexico, many years in the United States where he made many lifelong friends and became fluent in English, and finally returning to Mérida to live with and help his aging parents. For many years Alberto ran a restaurant out of the Mérida family home. And always, always, until unable to during the last few years of his life, he painted.

All of the images in this blog post are from paintings sold to me by Alberto Castillo. Most are works completed in the later years of his career, when his skills, due to arthritis and deteriorating vision, were past their peak. I have seen a number of examples of work from the height of his abilities that would have made his old teacher Diego proud. The sense of light and energy, the sensuality, presence and fine techinque in some of these works are witness to the mastery Alberto achieved in his art, thanks to talent, passion, hard work, and to teachers like Diego. Although most of my "Castillos" were painted in the later years of his career, I have a couple examples of earlier work. Below is a detail of a 1970's painting of a woman from Chiapas "in the style of Diego," as Alberto put it, which hints at the life he could project and attention to detail that he was capable of in his prime.

Alberto painted original religious and Mexican subjects and to pay the bills in later years also made copies of paintings for churches and individuals. Yucatecan daily life and Chiapas were favorite subjects of paintings. Above, a late painting of Chiapanecan musicians that hangs in my living room. At right, a portrait of a young man from Chiapas. Above, near the top of this post, a Chiapanecan woman on her wedding day.

His Catholic faith was important to Alberto, and it was a significant influence in his art. This portrait of Jesus and the Sacred Heart is one that he painted for his mother and which hung in her room for many years.

Alberto's studio was located in a roofed patio area at the back of the house. It was a hodge-podge of paintings, sketches and sculptures, memorabilia, tools, bundles of canvas and wood for stretchers, works in progress, paint tubes and containers of other liquids, brushes, and many years' accumulation of bric-brac and found objects that one day might be useful in a project. The area was bright and airy, which made it a good place for working. And like the rest of the house, the studio leaked like a sieve in the rain.

I recall an afternoon in the dining room. We were seated at the table, which was always set with a complete service for eight, plates on metal chargers, cloth napkins, wine glasses and other service items, along with a collection of

unrelated objects that over time had accumulated here. The afternoon was darkening as a storm approached, so our meal was illuminated by the chandelier, which had been manufactured from an artificial Christmas tree, complete with decorations and lights, hanging upside down over the table. Alberto opened a bottle of beer and toasted the meal amidst rolling thunder. Just as we started to eat, the heavens opened and in a moment rain began to pour through cracks in the roof. One cascade began to fall right in the middle of Alberto's bald head. Alberto grabbed a baseball cap that just happened to be hanging on the back of the next chair and put it on. Then he looked at me for a second or two and laughed. "C'est la vie," he commented. We continued eating without further talk about the weather. After finishing, we walked through the house gathering the various buckets and pans, strategically situated under the worst leaks, and emptying the accumulated water in the garden.

I regret not having photos of the house. During the period I was spending a lot of time with Alberto, I was not doing much photography. I always said to myself that I ought to photograph his house, but preferred to enjoy his company in the moment rather than try to make images. The cluttered house and garden were a

museum of more than a century of family life and his interests that included art by his father, son and many friends, photos, antiques, stained glass, valuable religious art and artifacts, various collections, and furniture manufactured by Alberto himself. There were dining rooms whose roofs had gone years ago, but which were still furnished with tables and chairs from the long-closed restaurant. In one corner of the grounds lay a huge mound of wine bottles, the accumulation of decades in the restaurant business and enjoying fine drink. In the back grew a large ceiba tree, which is the sacred tree of the Maya people, with a bench underneath. Once Alberto told me that there was a baby buried in that spot, apparently the dead infant child of a young relative or family friend who stayed with the Castillo Ku family when she got "in trouble," many, many years ago.

There are more stories I could tell about Alberto Castillo. We went out drinking at his favorite bar, the expat hangout Pancho's in downtown Mérida. We took the bus and rode on errands in the city. We went out to dinner. I bought large paintings and before I had a car carried them across a good piece of Mérida centro to my house in the heat of the afternoon, prompting interesting conversations along the way. One painting, the large oil of Saint Michael with which Alberto poses in the photo of his studio above, was once lost when a hurricane-tossed tree landed on and collapsed the roof of Alberto's house. The storm then sent his possessions flying all over the neighborhood. The painting was later returned to Alberto by a friend who had found it. It now hangs in my front room.

Alberto loved fruit and knew a lot about plants, which he was always giving to me. Roots from plants growing on an outer wall of the house broke through the wall and hung down inside the bathroom. Alberto didn't cut them. Instead he painted a woman's lips and eyes on the wall and incorporated the roots as the hair in a new piece of living art, which happened to be right over the toilet. Every so often when I used the bathroom I noticed how the woman's hair had grown.

There was the story of the son whom Alberto had never met, the product of a love affair with an American woman years ago. His obvious pride in his grandson in France, also an artist, who had come to visit. Stories of friends who'd passed on, of whom there are many when a person reaches his late eighties. Through it all, Alberto's attitude seemed to be to enjoy life as much as possible. He was always saying with a smile, "such is life," as if to shrug off the problems and sadness that we all deal with at times. His other favorite saying, whenever someone thanked him, was, "don't say thanks, say more."

One of the last times I was with Alberto he suddenly looked at me, gave me a bear hug, and told me, "I love you." I could only reply, "I love you too, Alberto." About that time Alberto stopped painting and was having more pronounced health problems. He was no longer taking care of the house and was less able to handle his own personal care. I offered to help in the house but he mostly refused. Not long after this, one of his sons, who for some time had been trying to convince Alberto to move in with him over in Puerto Morelos, moved Alberto to a nursing home where his needs could better be taken care of.

Earlier this year a 30-year-old bonsai flamboyant tree that Alberto had given me suddenly dropped its leaves and dried up. I felt guilty because I had been gone a lot and feared that my lack of attention had been the cause of the loss. Then, when I heard belatedly of Alberto's passing, I thought again of that tiny, gnarled old tree that Alberto had started from a seed and taken care of for 25 years before he gave it to me, and I thought, "C'est la vie. More, Alberto, more."

People: Goodbye, Neighbor, and Thanks

My neighbor Alejandro died last week. I was out of town when it happened, and busy away from the house when I got back, so I didn't get the news until several days later.

Alejandro and I were not close, but he was my first friend in the neighborhood after I moved into my house in Mèrida a few years ago. He was an outgoing, gregarious type, always waving and saying hello, and I guess it was just in his nature to be the first one to start a conversation with the new guy on the block.

Alejandro was not a young man, but with his unlined face and continual smile he was energetic and always busy, so I was more than a little surprised when he told me several years ago that he was 75 years old. I would have sworn he was no more than sixty, and he might have passed for younger. He'd lost his wife at a young age and remarried, and worked many years as a taxi driver. He remained happy in his second marriage and together with his wife Ingrid raised a houseful of children, who now have families of their own.

Alejandro was always busy with projects, such as painting and repairing old cars he would buy, fix up, drive for awhile, and then resell. He told me he liked to work, and the problem-solving and tinkering involved with the cars, along with the incentive of making a little extra cash when he sold them, kept his mind and body agile and gave him something interesting to do.

Not that his days were empty. Various children and grandchildren were usually around, and the modest house full of activity. One of the last times I saw him, a few weeks ago, Alejandro was delightedly painting the house next door, which they had rented so his daughter and her family could move in. People from the U.S. often don't understand why different generations of a family would want to live in such close proximity. Here, people can't fathom how people from el norte manage living so far apart from the company, affection and support of their closest loved ones.

Passing by on the street when Alejandro was outside working often entailed more than a casual "buenos dias." He loved to talk about what he was doing, and to find out what I was up to. I sometimes brought him my car and home maintenance problems for advice. The give and take usually ran on for awhile. It seemed as if the socializing for him was the main point of being out on the street, and that washing the car or fixing the tire was something he would get done but not particularly important in comparison.

Alejandro's family owns a ranch about an hour's drive outside of Mèrida, and many times he invited me to go with him for a couple of days and hang out. Unfortunately that's something we never did because I always had something else going on. I started thinking about that when another neighbor told me Alejandro had suddenly died of a heart attack earlier last week. One of the reasons I moved to Mexico was because I wanted to stop living in tomorrow (laboring on and on for that retirement, saving all year for that brief vacation, etc.) and start doing what I want to do now. I have gotten better at living in the now, but the fact that I had put off the ranch visit time and again until it was too late bothers me. I looked forward to that trip as much as I liked Alejandro; he was a nice guy and we probably could have been better friends. I take all this as another of those little messages that life sends us, if we only will pay attention to them, telling us maybe we need to make an in-course correction along the way. I am taking it seriously.

Once my train of thought got rolling along these lines, I started thinking about how happy and successful this neighbor had always seemed to me. He was not a wealthy man, in fact by many Americans' standards he would have been considered poor. Alejandro and his wife raised a large family in a small three-room (not three bedroom, three room) house, where they lived for at least forty years. He didn't have a lot of stuff. His thirty-year-old cars were worth at most a few hundred dollars, and sometimes were broken down. But he always, even when under a balky car and covered with sweat and grease, seemed to enjoy living in the present and have a good time.

I read not long ago that Mexicans have among the highest levels of personal happiness in the world. I think that Alejandro is a good example of some of the reasons for this. It looks to me as if my late neighbor's success in life boiled down to a few simple points. He liked to be happy, so he usually was. He had a good attitude and didn't let small irritations or things beyond his control ruin his day. He was completely authentic: he had no "image" to maintain. He enjoyed everything he did as best he could. He seemed to be more interested in relationships -- his family, friends, and neighbors -- than in things or schedules. I think these qualities gave meaning to the life of a humble and modest man, and filled it with affection and love.

There is an example and a message here.

Adios, vecino, y gracias.

People: An Unorthodox Priest

In Manì, as in most old pueblos in the Yucatàn, the architecture consists mainly of a mixture of centuries-old colonial buildings and modern, utilitarian and often less attractive structures of cement block. Occasionally one will come across a much more ancient style of construction, the beautiful, elegantly simple oval Maya house, but these structures are fragile (they burn easily, and tend to blow away in hurricanes, for instance) and are only occasionally seen now because most people who can afford it want something more secure, modern and lasting.

However in Manì, located in the southern part of Yucatàn state, if a carload of tourists were to become disoriented on their way to the church and mistakenly turn down a certain rough side road, they might stumble upon an unexpectedly picturesque and bucolic scene. First they'd spy pointed roofs of palm fronds topping oval houses made of rough poles and plastered with red mud, scattered along the rocky cerros and shaded by native trees like pich, cedro and chacà roja that dot the

grassy landscape. The foliage, seed, flowers and fruit feed and shelter dozens of species of birds; parrots,

cardinals, vultures, grackles, doves, woodpeckers, chachalacas, hummingbirds and a variety of multi-colored songbirds (to name a very few) fly freely above and rummage in the brush. Wild orchids, some of which are species in danger of extinction, droop from the crooks of the trees.

This scene isn't, and yet it is, a dream.

The visitors have not inadvertently eaten a strange, hallucinogenic herb in their salad, or passed through a time warp back to an idealized pre-Colombian Mayan Eden. This place is real and exists in the year 2010. The lost tourists are not dreaming. They have found a dream.

The dream belongs to Father Luis Quintal Medina, known by everyone simply as Padre Luis, a Roman Catholic priest of Mayan descent who grew up in Hunucmà, near Mèrida, and has made his home in the Manì area for many years. This compound is the dream's living incarnation.

One incongruity the tourists might have missed upon first

glimpsing this idyllic vista is a steel column supporting large solar panels, which looms up above the rustic skyline. It's important because it is emblematic of this particular project.

A few more details about the Padre. Right now he does not have a parish, and the reasons are several. Technically, he is on sick leave, having had some heart problems. However, as he tells it, he also has had some disagreements with the church ("a church of the rich"), and is one of a small group of non-conformist priests that is at odds with the hierarchy in certain respects. That's about all he will say regarding the matter. But, from a little research and talking with others I learned that Padre Luis founded and led for years the well-known Escuela de Agricultura Ecològica U Yits Ka'an, in Manì, which teaches, tuition-free, environmentally appropriate, "green" agricultural techniques, until he was summarily relieved of the directorship and moved to another

parish awhile back. It seems that the Padre, a conservationist, is a bit liberal in some other areas. He is known for incorporating traditional Mayan rites into the Catholic mass. The words "liberation theology" pop up in the conversation. The heart of the matter is that Padre Luis is controversial, a priest without a church, maybe because he was too popular or too powerful. I am not positive, but this is the idea you get in talking with people who know him. At any rate, what really matters is what he is doing now. Although not being paid by the church, he still assists with things like masses and weddings when asked. But he spends most of his time these days planning and building, planting and growing.

The compound is being constructed as much as possible with traditional, local, renewable materials, and will consist of about a dozen houses, each of a slightly different design, and having kitchen, bathroom, living and sleeping areas all constructed in traditional style. Each house also has a kitchen garden and a pond, which could be used for raising edible fish. Some of the houses are wheelchair accessible. Construction is done by local crews, and furnishings are made by local craftsmen. Water for human use and for irrigation is pumped by solar energy. Although construction is not complete, Padre Luis invited us to hang hammocks and stay the night. The house (pictures below) was quiet, cool, comfortable, and the natural surroundings a pleasant escape from the rest of the world. Sitting in the house's entry area, I was able to tick off at least 20 species of birds, some of which I still have not identified, in about a half hour. Benches situated throughout the grounds provide shaded spots to rest and observe.

Among his projects, Padre Luis is dedicated to raising and propagating the endangered abeja melipona, or Yucatan species of stingless bee. He keeps his bees right on the property, situated amongst the houses. This insect was domesticated long ago by the Maya, and is still kept in traditional hollow-log hives. The honey is of extremely high quality, and is reported to have medicinal properties. [We were invited to come back later in April to observe and help with the honey harvest, so I hope to report more on this soon.]

The complex also will boast a restaurant, an underground museum in a cave that is currently being enlarged and cleaned out and an amphitheater-like area for holding traditional Mayan wedding ceremonies and perhaps performances. There is also a small section of elevated sac be, or "white road," a recreation of the paved highways that linked Mayan cities in ancient times. The partially-completed sac be looms like an acropolis along one end of the multi-acre property. The Padre hopes to rent the houses out to ecotourists interested in Mayan culture, sustainable development and the environment, and to people who just want a pleasant, stress-free place to rest for awhile.

It looks as if while Padre Luis is a priest without a parish, he is not a shepherd without a flock. He is very popular in the pueblo and seems to know everyone. Although he didn't say so, it appears that this project is a continuance of his past work with the agricultural school, educating people and promoting sustainable and environmentally friendly methods of survival, based upon the best of ancient and modern technologies. The world could do with more dreams like this one.