Back to Mexico 2023

LaVail and I just returned from a three-week trip back to the Yucatan to research my third Claire Aguila mystery, Rights of Passage.   Each time we return we find changes in the countryside and especially in the capital city of Merida, where much of the story takes place.

In the third novel, Claire Aguila is back in Merida with her daughter, parents, and, of course, Madge, for a special event (spoiler alert).  Claire is concerned when her friend Ruth does not return from a tour of archaeological sites. When Ruth’s daughter and granddaughter arrive in Merida and file a missing person’s report, and the Mexican Consulate contacts Detective Roberto Salinas of an investigation, Claire’s plans are interrupted.

The search for Ruth begins at the Merida English Library (below)—the local hub for American and Canadian expats and snowbirds in the city—where both Claire and Ruth participated in social events. Then, the 76-year-old woman disappears.

From Merida, the search widens as Claire and her family join Ruth’s family and Mexican authorities in a peninsula-wide search for the wealthy woman. 

The questions to be answered are:

1. Why didn’t she tell her family about her trip to Mexico?
2. Why did she lie to her son and daughter?
3. Why hasn’t anyone heard from her? Why doesn’t she answer texts and emails?
4. Was her disappearance voluntary or forced?
5. Who is the mysterious man seen with Ruth?
6. Will Claire and Roberto still be together at the end of the story?

Writing in the year of Covid: Announcing CULTURE SHOCK, the second book in the Claire Aguila Series!

              When LaVail and I returned from our winter retreat in Mexico in Early February 2020, our daughter, a physician, met us at the airport and pronounced that we were in lockdown. 

We had heard rumblings while in Mexico about a virus in China, but we had no idea the threat until we were asked at the US border if we had been to Wuhan, China.  “No,” we said, confused, “we were in Tulum and Merida, Mexico.” 

Covid 19 changed our everyday lives, our jobs, our travel, our ability to interact in our communities. Some of us suffered true loss of loved ones; many lost jobs or risked their own lives to save others; many of us found new ways of communicating with our friends and families, through ZOOM or even as pod grandparents maneuvering through the world of virtual learning with our grandchildren, or, in my case, being lunch lady.

While LaVail entered the world of model building, house chores, grandchild mentoring, and overseeing the painful progress of our new garage, I entered the world of Florida retirement communities.

No, I’m not planning a move to Florida any time soon, but my main character from Human Sacrifice, Claire Aguila, is on her way to her second adventure as sous-detective with Roberto Salinas and her sidekick, Madge Carmichael. 

From my office window, I watched winter turn to spring, then summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, and fall again. I watched our old garage collapse and our garage emerge from the snow in our backyard (though still not totally completed).

During that time, I also created a Florida retirement community, The Havens. I have visited several of these communities over the past few years as LaVail and I considered our future retirement, and I suspect that you have too, either for yourselves or as guests of your parents or grandparents.

In Culture Shock, Claire and her daughter visit Claire’s parents (Cristina’s grandparents) in The Havens. Theresa and Martín Aguila are staying at the winter home of Claire’s deceased husband, Aaron.

While Theresa enjoys their winter home, Martin, a Mexican American, doesn’t understand the world of customized golf carts, describing this affluent community as a ‘beige hell.’ Not a man of leisure, Martin snags a part-time job in the maintenance department, where he feels more comfortable with the Hispanic employees.

The Aguilas, in turn, are surprised to find Roberto Salinas and Madge Carmichael on their doorstep, one year after Claire and Madge assisted Salinas in solving several murders in Merida, Yucatan.

This unlikely reunion complicates an investigation of two deaths in the Havens, led by the local investigator, Detective Sergeant Davenport, as Claire and her companions become involved, and, once again, Madge proves to be a resourceful, if unconventional, sleuth.

Culture Shock is now available in print and eBook through Mission Point Press!

The First Claire Aguila Mystery Novel: Human Sacrifice, by Cindy L. Hull

THE MAGICIAN’S PYRAMID AT UXMAL, YUCATAN: THE SCENE OF THE FIRST MYSTERIOUS DEATH

“How many anthropologists usually die at your conferences?” This is the question Detective Roberto Salinas asks Dr. Claire Aguila after two mysterious deaths at a gathering of Maya scholars in Merida, Yucatán. When a souvenir vendor in a nearby town also turns up dead, the faculty members of the newly formed Keane College Mayanist Program find themselves under scrutiny from Mexican authorities and U.S. Customs agents. Available on Amazon
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My Journey as a Writer

Here I am, in beautiful Merida, Yucatan, in 2018. I am standing in front of what is likely one of the last henequen plants in the region. Henequen, or green gold, once dominated the landscape and provided a livelihood for the majority of families in rural Yucatan. In the early 1900’s wealthy Europeans built mansions on this boulevard, the Paseo Montejo, and sent their children to the United States to study…all on the backs of the peasants who worked on the henequen haciendas, cutting the leaves or working in the factories that extracted the fibers that were manufactured into rope and binder twine.

When my husband, LaVail, and I moved to a small village in 1976, most families were still dependent upon the cutting and extracting of the henequen fibers, but the heyday of henequen was over. Hemp rope and twine were replaced by plastic products, cheaper and easily produced. We lived in Yaxbe (a pseudonym) for my doctoral research. I learned how rural families transitioned from agriculture to other forms of income production, and how these adaptations affected women’s roles, family structure, and migration. My research resulted in an ethnography, Katun: A Twenty-Year Journey with the Maya.

Since our research year, I have returned to the village many times, with LaVail and with our children. We have shared the joys and sorrows of life with our lifelong friends in Yaxbe. We have watched their families grow as they have watched ours. When we first arrived in the village, there were no telephones. Today, I keep in touch with our friends through FaceBook.

LaVail and I return to Merida, the capital of Yucatan, whenever we can. We love the craziness of the traffic and even the jostling with locals and tourists in the market. We visit the archaeological sites and revel in the history and the mystery of the Maya. Since retirement, I have been weaving my enthusiasm for all things anthropological and Mayan with my passion for mysteries.

In my novel, Human Sacrifice, I use the locations dear to me as a backdrop for a series of murders: Merida, the archaeological site at Uxmal, and various rural communities. While attending a conference of Mayan scholars, Professor Claire Aguila becomes a reluctant police collaborator as she confronts the possibility that someone she knows might be responsible for the deaths. It turns out that Claire and Detective Salinas had met years earlier during Claire’s internship in Merida. Claire’s knowledge of academics and Mayan village life unites them in the investigation. However, their re-established acquaintance complicates the investigation, as it threatens the trust of her colleagues. Human Sacrifice will be available soon!

Location is an integral part of storytelling, as important as plot and character. The places where I have lived have often driven my research and writing. When our family settled in Chippewa Lake, Michigan in 1981, I was a reluctant transplant to the community where LaVail’s family had settled in the 1800s. We lived in the community for over thirty years, raised our children, and became embedded with a rural community, not unlike Yaxbe. Over the years, I noticed the similarities in economic challenges and social life between these two communities. I explored these similarities in a research project that included anthropology students from Grand Valley State University. The project resulted in my second ethnography: Chippewa Lake: A Community in Search of an Identity. Both Katun and Chippewa Lake are available on Amazon.

A Journey

I WANT TO BE LIKE ELIZABETH GEORGE; OR HOW SHE INSPIRED ME TO WRITE MY FIRST MYSTERY NOVEL

I have read every Elizabeth George mystery novel, from A Great Deliverance (1988) to The Punishment She Deserves (2018).  I have loved Detective Lynley and admired Barbara Havers and followed their prickly partnership through their cases and tragedies. I had a slight falling out of love with Elizabeth George after she killed off Helen (spoiler alert), and I struggled through several subsequent novels where the author herself seemed to be grieving and off her game. I cheered when I read her most recent novels. She was back! For George, it’s not the murder component, though it’s brilliantly devised and written. Her stories are compelling. Her characters have emotional depth. They exhibit critical flaws and live complicated, multidimensional lives.

I say I want to be like here because I hold her books up as a model for my own attempts at writing in the mystery genre. I have read and re-read her writer’s guide, Write Away.  In developing my story, I diligently devised character prompts and story arcs. I devoured her chapters on dialog, description, and atmosphere.  I also try to maintain writing journals in which I outline ideas, problems, and progress or lack thereof. However, I have found that I lack the discipline to write in them every day. Instead, my journaling is sporadic, and, sadly, I tend to write my notes on scraps of paper that get discarded, or in the margins of earlier versions. I seem to have misplaced that sense of order that served me so well in my academic life.

I have wanted to write fiction since I was young. I remember my earliest “book,” Babe, about a girl who raised a cow for 4H. This ten-page masterpiece was written long before the Disney story about Babe the pig, and I have been upset that Disney stole my story…but enough about that. I also wrote a story based loosely on Hansel and Gretel, about two children who are kidnapped. I don’t remember the exact plot, but the most memorable line I remember was when the father came home from work, and the mother admitted that she had lost the kids. His response: “Don’t worry honey. Here’s some money. Go shopping and enjoy yourself.” Needless to say, the kids escaped on their own.

During my last year of teaching at Grand Valley State University,  I dreamed of a retirement during which  would write that mystery novel floating around in my brain. I was looking for inspiration and found a mystery writers’ retreat at Interlochen Academy. It fit into my schedule, so I dove in. “This will be fun,” I thought. “A mystery will be easy. I love mysteries.” I packed my suitcase, my computer, and all my enthusiasm, and drove to Interlochen. The retreat was fun, the group conversations and instructor  were stimulating. I enjoyed sitting in my room at night concocting crime scenes, victim and perpetrator character sketches, and reading these to the group. The basic ideas I developed that weekend became the bare bones of Human Sacrifice, the novel  that will be published soon!

But the idea that a mystery would be simple was highly optimistic. In all of my reading, I didn’t appreciate the difficulty of developing plot, timelines, and characters that move the story. Several additional writing courses and mystery writer events added to my store of knowledge. However, knowing the techniques is easier than doing it.  That takes practice!

Human Sacrifice has evolved over several years, more time than it took to conduct my anthropological fieldwork in Mexico and write my doctoral dissertation. Since that first writers’ workshop, I have written and re-written more drafts than I care to admit. I have discovered how difficult it is to develop a timeline that withstands the ability of my characters to muck up my story. When I realized that Clare (my protagonist) couldn’t possibly know a bit of information (who last saw the victim near the pyramid) in Chapter 20 because she wasn’t at the critical meeting in Chapter 4 where it was disclosed, my beautiful timeline had to be revised again…and again…forward and backward.

Happily, persistence and hard work have paid off and I have finished Human Sacrifice!  Admittedly, it is not Elizabeth George (after all she can get away with writing 600 pages!), but it is mine!  It takes place in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico where Dr. Claire Aguila is participating in a conference of Maya scholars. Here she meets up with and assists a detective whom she had met years earlier. I have completed a draft of a second mystery novel that brings Claire back to the US where the detective meets her in Florida. Here,  she is visiting her parents in a senior retirement community which I hold is a great place for a murder.  This book is titled Culture Shock.  Even though I have improved my ability to develop detailed timelines, my characters don’t always cooperate; they still resist showing up at the time and place I had planned.

But I muddle on….

LETTER TO MY PARENTS, NOVEMBER 11, 1976

LETTER TO MY PARENTS, NOVEMBER 11, 1976

After my father passed away, my mother sadly packed away or sold years of tangible and intangible memories of their 45 years together as she prepared to move from the family home into an apartment. One day, she handed me a bulging plastic bag. It contained the letters (on thin air mail stationery and still in the air mail envelopes) I had written to mom and dad during my 1976-77 fieldwork year in the village of Yaxbe (pseudonym), Yucatán, Mexico. She had saved the letters for twenty years. I stashed them in a file cabinet along with more than twenty-years’ worth of academic materials: field notebooks and journals from our years in Mexico, Micronesia, and Chippewa Lake, Michigan; an appalling collection of papers presented at anthropology conferences; and an entire drawer dedicated to articles I had read in graduate school and somehow thought would come in handy again someday.

When we moved from our farm at Chippewa Lake to a Traverse City condo, the ominous chore of shedding ourselves of thirty five years of possessions loomed, and I approached “THE FILE CABINET” with trepidation. Now was the time to purge…. to free myself from my academic hoarding and dispose of “stuff.” Of course, much of the stuff had to stay… I couldn’t dispose of original field notes, but the duplicate (carbon paper) field notes could go, as could the 3 x 5 and 5 x 7 file boxes stuffed with multi-colored index cards filled with data bits (this was pre-computer research, remember).  The articles written in the 1970’s could go, as could my copies (multiple) of papers presented.

Then, I found the letters, and I realized that mom had given me a gift.

I have been working on a mystery book that takes place in Merida, the capital city of Yucatán state. To revive those first impressions of our life in a Mexican village,  I read those old letters, composed in my younger, clearer penmanship. Many of the letters outlined daily routines, the culture shock of scorpions, and children running amok through our little house. Reading the letters has allowed me to recapture the awe and anxiety of living in a foreign country, where our daily lives depended on being able to communicate with our neighbors, strangers at first, then, eventually, friends.

One letter, written in November, when we had settled into our house in Yaxbe (actually one room in a larger building that gave us access to a cold water shower and toilet) and finally got around to describing the scene to my parents. It went like this…

November 11, 1976

Dear mom and dad,

…….Living here has had a very strong effect on me. I’m learning just how little one needs to survive. We feel guilty having brought so much stuff. Most of it we’ll never need. Many of the families here are so poor that you could put all of their possessions in our VW. One family here has been very kind to us, bringing us fruit, etc., and we were shocked when we visited her house. The wood sticks for the frame were so far apart you could see the outside. The roof is a very poor tar paper material. When it rains she has four pails to catch water. She also has plastic lining the walls against the cold. The floor is dirt and she cooks over a fire. Her husband works in the henequen fields. Their kids are spotless, however—though they have no [indoor]bathroom and their clothes, though few, are always clean.

                We are finding that we don’t need a refrigerator. We buy vegetables every day and make just enough food for two. Some people have more than we do—small stoves, usually oil, like ours—and some have TVs. Everyone is not equally poor, even in a small village. Few people have bathrooms. The people here have what are called solars (so-lárs). It is like our fenced in back yard, but very unique. They are usually quite large and fenced in with stone. Within the solar, people grow vegetables, fruits, raise chickens and pigs. When a son marries, he builds a house within the solar for his wife and future family. Some solárs have 3-4 houses, a chicken coop, kitchen (built outside the house under a lean-to), and a well. When I visit, I dodge chickens, turkeys, pigs, dogs, cats; there are banana trees, falling coconuts, and I have to stoop to avoid hitting my head on the low doorways. I feel like the jolly green giant….

Rereading this letter and the others, I can’t imagine research with computers, internet, and easy communication. Today, I am Face Book friends with several of the families we knew well in 1975-76. But our new connection is with those who were young when we lived there, the sons and daughters of our earliest friends, who are now parents or grandparents themselves. The images that come to me over the internet remind me of the experiences we shared. I remember when Henry, now a married father, pulled a chicken foot out of the soup and chomped on it, resulting in our daughter becoming a vegetarian. I remember when Priscilla came to visit us in the United States as a teenager, and how she loved Mackinac Island. Now she is married with two children.

It amazes me to see Face Book photos of the same activities we remember—so many things look the same. But yet, there are changes….foremost, the fact that their lives are now recorded on the internet. When we lived in Yaxbe, there was no telephone in the village. To call our families, we had to travel to a Long Distance Office in another village and hope that someone was home to get the call. Now I follow the births, deaths, and joys of the village and the Yaxbe archipelago in the United States daily, on the internet.

The photographs that I have taken over the years, the letters that my mother returned to me, and the multitude of postings I now read from Yaxbe, allow me to draw visuals for my mystery novel and to remember the people and places that meant so much to us over the years.

So I thank my mother for returning these letters to me.

Seeing myself now, nearly forty years later, is haunting. Did I really do these things?  Did Bo and I really leave the United States with no jobs, minimal language skills, and move into a Mayan village?  Did we really live on a Micronesian island with two young children? Did we let two of our three children leave home for a year to become exchange students in a foreign country? Who were those people?  Can we recapture that adventurous spirit?

 

Summer II in Traverse City- The Adventure Continues

We are reaching the end of our second summer in Traverse City and we are learning about the local culture. I am enjoying the urban life here, the ability to leave our condo and walk downtown- to the bookstores, library, bars and restaurants, and the beach.  We have loved spending time with our grandchildren who live here, and still be close enough to our newest grandchild to spend time with her. We have been assistant managers/managers of a venue in the film festival and we are meeting new friends. I have made some observations on this new culture that I would like to share.

1- Natives and Newcomers

Field notes- Heard on the street: “No…I am not a native. I have only lived here twenty years… I am a native, but only second generation—my parents immigrated from Detroit (Grand Rapids, Lansing, Chicago).”

Traverse City is a town where long term residents vie for space with tourists and the newly arriving retirees and young families seeking a quality of life opportunities they see here. I have had people tell me that the “natives” are not friendly to newcomers and that there is an invisible barrier in making friends here.

I don’t doubt that this occurs, but it is not limited to Traverse City. It is a common human “us/them” scenario that I have observed in Mexican villages, Pacific Islands, Detroit neighborhoods, and college towns. In my book, Chippewa Lake: A Community in Search of an Identity, I examined a similar situation in this small Mecosta County rural/resort area, though on a much smaller scale. Chippewa Lake was settled by Scotch-Irish and German families in the 1800’s during the same lumber boom that brought the Hannahs, the Boardmans, and the Lays to Traverse City.

As an area forested with white pine, Chippewa Lake was a small spur of lumber activity. It started as a lumbering community that bragged a hotel, a variety of stores, a church, and lumber camp and mill. Unlike Traverse City, when the white pine was logged out in Chippewa Township, the lumber business left town, rolling up the small railroad line behind it, leaving Chippewa Lake to revert to a small farming community.

The lake for which the community is named, has evolved from a working class vacation spot– surrounded by small one-room cottages and trailers– to a middle class retirement lake. Large homes have replaced many of the cottages and a rift has appeared between the perceptions of community espoused by the descendant of the rural community and the newcomers.

In Chippewa Lake, and I assume in Traverse City as well, people come and go, and people who reside in the community year round and have done so for many years are established in their family and friends and activities. They are not necessarily looking for new friends, and not welcoming of those who come and want to change things. Families who arrive with children become engaged in activities related to new jobs and schools. Those of us who are moving to communities to retire are looking for new relationships, a life beyond jobs, but hopefully incorporating our grown children and their families. We have expectations of open-arms and “come join us.” These types of relationships take time and patience, and a willingness of the newcomers to commit to the community through volunteering or community work.

This is our second year in Traverse City (confession: we escape the snow in the winter months), and we have found people here to be very friendly, and eager to engage in spontaneous conversations in bars and social events. We have been appreciated in our volunteering and have met many new people. It is difficult to be a newcomer, but even for that, there is the active Newcomers Club where, I understand, many have been active for years!

2- Tourism

Field notes-heard on the phone: “I’m running late-got stuck in the fudge”

I have learned that this phrase refers to the tourist crowds, particularly during Cherry Festival; It means:

1. you can’t find parking in or around the downtown area during one of the many festivals
2. you can’t get through the parade barricades that separate you from your house
3. It takes several light cycles to make a left hand turn

Traverse City, because of its location, has survived the logging collapse and become a thriving business and resort community, and residents acknowledge that the tourist dollars help to underwrite the long sleepy winters. Chippewa Lake was not so lucky. Once a thriving lumber town, and, in the 1950’s a thriving resort town (complete with dance hall and skating rink and family restaurant-bar, two grocery stores), Chippewa Lake now has a small marina-grocery store, restaurant, community church, and post office. Even the bar closed down last year.

The many festivals define Traverse City for many Michiganders, and it is the diversity of festivals that interests me. In my desire to find patterns, it seems to me that people in Traverse City fall into two categories: Those who go away during Cherry Festival, and those who have a houseful of guests. We fall in the second category. We collect family members from several Michigan towns and from Wisconsin where my brother and his family live, and whose son competes in the band competition every year at Trilby Field and who marches in the Cherry Festival parades.

There is a disparity between the crowds at the Cherry Festival and those of the Film Festival during July. This, of course , is obvious to those who live here, but to the anthropologist’s eye, they reflect intersecting visions of small town life. The crowds in Traverse City during the Cherry Festival are dominated by families, enjoying the beaches, the music and the midway, a non-animal complement to the Northern Michigan Fair that takes place later in the summer. Most counties in Michigan celebrate their rural past and/or present with agricultural fairs, including Mecosta County, where our children “showed” horses and rabbits (not the chickens).

The Cherry Festival is a celebration of Grand Traverse/Leelanau Counties agricultural past and present, with a county fair atmosphere, complete with Gibby Fries and the midway. But the focus of the festival is “Cherries!” even though most of them, at that time of the year, come from elsewhere. The food fare for the midway in Mecosta County and Traverse City does not differ significantly—hotdogs, cotton candy, ice cream, and popcorn– though I know that the Mecosta County fair doesn’t have a Thai food booth!

The Film Festival draws an entirely different crowd, that seeks out the foodie restaurants, artisan foods, wineries and craft breweries. I have been told that waiters and waitresses hate to work the Cherry Festival restaurants, but love the Film Festival– fewer messes and better tips in the latter. The yachts in the harbor are bigger and more prevalent, and the crowds more “mature” in age, if not behavior.

I know—and now understand—some of the anxiety felt by locals regarding the festivals (parking, crowds, messes to be picked by locals), because we live in the downtown area… but what these anecdotes mean to me is a community with a strong identity, despite its diversity

3- Quality of Life

Field notes–Observation: To be a true Traverse City resident, need: a dog, a bicycle (with all the accoutrements and appropriate clothing), running shoes (ditto on the accoutrements), and a yoga mat (ditto). To prove your true membership, the dog must be included in at least two of these activities. If children replace (or accompany) the dog, they too are transported in the appropriate accoutrements- bicycle wagons or jogging buggies.

One of my assumptions when I first came to Traverse City as a visitor was that Traverse City would be an affluent and politically progressive city, and it is, compared to rural Mecosta County where my husband joked that I was the only democrat. This is not technically true, but not too far off. There are democrats in Big Rapids, the county seat where Ferris State University is located.) While not a democratic stronghold, Traverse City has a diversity of political philosophies that I find refreshing.

There is also economic diversity. As a visitor to Traverse City, I was struck by the shiny boats in the marina, the beautiful homes and mansions on the peninsulas, the wineries, beautiful beaches, and the thriving downtown area. As a resident, I have become aware of the income disparities and I wonder about the discrepancy between the affluence of those of those who visit Traverse City on yachts and sailboats worth more than houses, and those of us who can afford to live in Traverse City or on the peninsulas, in contrast to those who live on the streets and trailer parks on the fringes of town.

Last summer, our first year in Traverse City, we read and heard about the debate on the homeless shelter considered in the neighborhood near our residence. Signs immediately erupted on lawns in the area promoting an alternative use of the structure under consideration. The homeless in Traverse City are visible, and from my reading of the Zine (a magazine written and sold by the homeless), they come from a cross-section of American life—they were children in families—in polka bands—who fell off the ledge somehow; they sleep on the beach and sometimes in the protected corners of our building.

Yet, Traverse City is a town where the homeless walk among us; sometimes, while jogging early in the morning, we see them on the beach or in the parks; they sell the Zine and engage us in conversation. They want to tell their story. And on any day, within a few feet of a Zine vendor, a young girl or boy is playing a violin, requesting donations for study at Interlochen Music Camp. On Saturday mornings, the Occupiers stand in the open area across from Horizon books to protest the pipeline, economic inequality, and other political issues; and during certain films at the film festival, or running events (why, I don’t know), the group of religious zealots tell everyone where they are heading if their behavior continues. This is America, in microcosm.

Before we moved here, my husband and I came up for the film festival and to visit our daughter’s family who live here. We stood in line at Lars Auditorium waiting to “load” (as I now know it is called), when we struck up a conversation with several women in line with us. At that time we were thinking of moving here and took every opportunity to ask people about the city. One woman told us that she moved here because “I wanted to live in a community where people come on vacation.” We liked that idea. We are fortunate to have two residences both in places where people go on vacation- Traverse City and Tampa Bay, FL. These locations differ in many ways, but in some they are similar. In both, we experience the ebb and flow of tourists in the winter months (which includes us), and during spring break (avoid the beaches in March).

Viva Mexico!

As I watch Mexico play soccer (futbal!) against the Netherlands (my maiden name is Vandenbergh), I am sorry to say that my heart is with Mexico. LaVail and I have spent many months of our life  living and visiting in Mexico, mainly in the Yucatan Peninsula, and I have a huge place in my heart for the Mexican people, particularly the Mayan people of Yucatan.  The people of Yaxkukul accepted  us into their community when I was a graduate student in anthropology and LaVail was a new lawyer.  LaVail gave up a real job to accompany me on my fieldwork, and that year remains one of the most memorable in my life, a life of many memorable years and experiences.

One of the many valuable lessons in anthropology, one that I strive to instill in my students, is that stereotypes are not only dangerous, but they prevent us from knowing people for their individuality, not for the assumptions we hold about them.  Living in a village for a year, learning their language (no one else spoke English) and their customs, we were forced to learn, as infants learn, culture.  We learned the polite way to visit a house, eat a meal, interact with others older/younger/different gender.  Our assumptions were tested daily.  We learned the value of a siesta as we escaped to our hammocks in the mid-day heat and we were surprised at how the village came to life in the evenings, after dinner and baths, when teenage men came to the central plaza to play futball and check out the teenage women, children played tag, and adults discussed their day and the latest  gossip about the strange gringos.

We learned how hard people worked in the henequen (sisal) fields to feed their families, and we watched as their lives changed when the henequen economy collapsed.  We watched as women left their homes to find jobs in the city and young people ventured beyond the village to finish their educations or find jobs in the tourist industry, traveling to Merida, Cancun and  Cozumel. .  Both young men and women have earned careers in teaching, nursing, construction, and other professions.

Over the years, I have returned to the village more than ten times, for several weeks or months at a time, documenting these changes.  I have watched as the villagers who were teenagers during my first visit have married,  had children, and even grandchildren.   At the same time, they have watched as our own children grew up.  All three of our children have lived in the village with me at least once.  I follow families on Facebook, and see both the changes in their lives and the ways in which their traditions are maintained and their values reinforced by close family ties, dense social and religious networks and a closely knit community.

Well, Mexico has lost the futbal match and is out of the World Cup competition.  I am sad for this, because the Mexican people deserve any good breaks that they can achieve.  Conquered by the Spanish, enslaved, and killed, the Mexicans are a resilient people (please pardon the stereotype).  They manage to maintain their spirit despite economic hardship, political disparity, and the corruption of power that permeates their country.  Like in many other countries that we disparage or do not understand, it is a mistake to judge the people of Mexico by their leaders or by groups within the country who promote violence.  After all, we would not want to be judged by the worst elements in our society.

Viva Mexico!

For my ethnography on the Maya, check out Katun: A Twenty Year Journey with the Maya, Cindy Hull, Wadsworth Publishing, 2004.

The Power of Travel

We have recently learned that our youngest son is moving to Washington State to live.  I am in a vacillating state of semi-panic and pride as I both hate to see him leave and at the same time I know that it will be a great adventure for him.  And as I contemplate his adventure, I force myself to reflect on what my husband and I did to our parents when we were his age.  First, we moved to Mexico for a year as I completed my anthropological dissertation research on the Yucatec Maya.  Then, after returning to Grand Rapids long enough to have our first child and complete my doctoral dissertation, we left again, this time to the remote island of Pohnpei in the Micronesial Islands where LaVail worked as an attorney for Micronesian Legal Services.  We stayed in Micronesia for two years, returning to Michigan after one year, long enough to have our second child and then returning to complete our contract.  After returning to Michigan, we settled in at LaVail’s family farm where we raised our three children (#3 child not being dragged around the world, except for family vacations and one research trip with me to Mexico).  After 30 years on the farm, we have now moved to Traverse City where we will live for 7-8 months a year, spending winters in Florida.  

Teaching college students over many years, I emphasize the importance of travel as a means to learn about other cultures and appreciate the diversity of lifestyles around the world.  Living in Mexico and on Pohnpei afforded us the opportunity to learn so much about the local culture, history, and people.  It allows us, if we are willing, to question and hopefully abandon the stereotypes that we have about others.  But, while travel is wonderful, and gives us a glimpse, we can only really learn about a culture by living there, learning the language, and participating in the day to day lives. “Being There,” as anthropologists say, forces us to learn about the history of a region, its indigenous roots, struggles against colonialism or for independence, its religious grounding, and how these elements merge in the development of culture, customs and values.  When we first considered moving to Micronesia, we had to look it up on a map.  We knew very little about its history of colonialism by Spain, Germany, Japan, and most recently by the US as a post- WWII Trust Territory.  How does a culture (not only Pohnpei, but the many other Micronesian Islands– Palau, Yap, Marshall Islands, Truk, Guam and Mariana Islands) maintain their cultural traditions, kinship systems and languages through 400 years of foreign control?  What kind of resilience and resistance must people have to maintain their traditions?   What are the mechanisms that they adopt to find that balance between the modern world and their traditions?  

As an anthropologist, I have always valued travel, and luckily, my husband shares my wanderlust.  We have taken many trips with our children, the most frequent destination the exotic Disney World, but also we have taken our family on many foreign vacations over the years.  Our two older children lived in Chile for a year as high school exchange students, and out daughter took two medical trips to Africa. But, alas, our youngest chose not to follow in the footsteps of his siblings.  Packing up and moving to Washington is a great move for him, I keep telling myself.  

Another realization that I have learned is that, though obvious differences, there are similarities among individuals and cultures everywhere.  Humans everywhere are trying to solve the same problems- poverty, health, environment, political upheaval– in ways that reflect their history and cultural traditions.   

Now, as a retired anthropologist, I am trying to bring my academic knowledge into a new world–fiction.  I have written an ethnography on Mexican culture as well as the culture of the small rural community where my husband’s family lived and where we raised our children.  In writing these two books and conducting the research for them, I learned that rural Yucatecan farmers and American farmers share similar problems and values; I have also learned that the process in the US of transitioning from farming to wage labor and the shift of small resort communities, like  Chippewa Lake, from farming to retirement communities is not unique.  

So as I will say “See you later” to our son, I will try to remember that we raised him to fly.  And, besides, it’s not as if Washington State is on the other side of the world… Road Trip!