I was Baja, Mexico lost. On the cool night's breeze I could smell the pacific ocean and corn. To the north east, electric light flowered into a moonless sky to lively accordion, staccato strings and defiant, melodic voices. The direction to town was clear, but when you’re Baja lost the tracks have no roadsigns and the well worn route is rarely the path to your destination. I had made that turn already - the well worn route to Baja lost on corn field access roads.
At least the track was firm and smooth but punctuated by puddles of standing water. Eore, my 1974 Land Rover 88", ran home-bound light through the rows of corn. In the rearview mirror, a Hawaiian print bathing suit swung over empty jerry cans of fuel and water, a backpack full of dirty clothes and a loose tent left to dry after a heavy morning dew.
I braked as my left front tire sent violent ripples through a dark, still puddle that spanned the track. A cool splash hit my left arm and shoulder. There was a faint, childhood familiar smell of horse shit, but the ignition system was kept dry on Eore’s high right side.
Clutch, third, accelerator and 35 mph through the rows of corn. Above us that light undulated to seductive strumming and the carnal sighs and moans of an accordion. There was dust stirred by Cowboy boots in a glint off a polished belt buckle. There was colour fanned skyward by swaying, laughing hips stirring passions cigarette and pot smoke. The sweat of movement and intention rode the eddies of sound, light and colour only to fall on the mesquite waiting to perfume the desert air.
I needed a beer. I had spent four days on my own on the pacific coast - hiking and escaping the heat by exploring tide pools on the rocky coastline. Too many granola bars, canned Dinty Moore beef stew on tortillas and too much piss warm Tang.
In high-range, four wheel drive Eore clambered over a small berm. Across a two lane dirt road our headlights exposed the skeleton remains of an old field plow in our disturbed dust. Abandoned - rust and earth slowly consumed its staggered ribs and cutting discs. The night felt darker, eerie, and I felt an involuntary shiver. Working the Land Rover’s grunting levers and popping plunger I selected 2 wheel drive. The clutch juddered in a wail of rpms as 4 cylinders worked to spin Eore's back wheels. There was relief and a smile in fleeing and in our juvenile dust rooster tail - red in the taillights.
Our headlights found a stop sign not far down the road where it veered to the right. It was a simple, familiar symbol, but at the sight of it the muscles in my shoulders relaxed. Eore’s dusty drum brakes squeaked as we rolled to a stop. Lifting the door latch by my hip, I stood to stretch off the miles as a breeze tickled the vinyl seat sweat on my back. There was a clean button-up shirt in my day pack. Struggling to appear presentable in the wing mounted mirror, I gave up at sun and ocean kissed blond, dirty in the folds and wild haired. We turned right and did our best to find the light in the dust on the empty track.
Steering left, I eased up on the accelerator as Eore skidded sideways over the tightly patterned bumps of a washboard section of the dirt road. Blackness spread ahead - an end to the corn. Around a curve's apex red taillights barred the road. Bugger. Three military Dodge pickups in the bent tube troop carrier configuration. Soldiers leaned on fenders and spoke casually in the headlights. I let the rpm’s drop as flashlights sparked like fireflies followed by shadowy figures running in my direction.
“Alto, Alto.”
Eore and I were directed into their headlights. We were quickly flanked while the focused beams of their flashlights bounced around my possessions. Why are they facing away from the corn field? Are they guarding the corn field - what’s in the corn? Are they raiding the party? Whose at that party? Fuck. The biggest story to hit my farm town as a kid was a local arrest by the Provincial Police who spotted pot hidden in a corn field from a Cessna overhead. I was close enough to town to hear the murmur of spanish and laughter, smell the woodsmoke of cook fires - but I felt alone and distant from the cervezas and rhythmic hips, from my life in San Diego and from the corn fields back home; I felt the distance more acutely than ever before.
Alright, I don’t have any pot and no firearms - relax. The reassuring vibration and sputter of Eore’s engine stopped as I turned the key. The best place for my hands seemed to be just above the steering wheel. Fuck, this probably looks guilty.
“habla espanol? Get out,” barked the soldier at my door. He didn’t care to hear my reply.
“Un poquito,” I dumbly answered. Two soldiers pushed me off to the edge of illumination. FAL pattern rifles were pointed down but shouldered with fingers on the trigger guards. This wasn’t the - loose weapons dangling on slings - search I was used to. Don’t look at the fields, who cares what’s in the fields.
Eore, my Land Rover, was being stripped of the gear we carried. Rough and eager hands inspected tools, repair parts, my dirty undies, an axe, my new MSR Whisperlite stove - and tossed them in the dust of a growing pile. A four-inch folding knife was tucked in the right side of my waistband. It spurred my temper, but I felt foolish, violated and helpless. Bastards. The bastards stopped a dumb gringo in the dead of night. A lost, horse shit smelling gringo running agriculture access roads far from the primary arteries north. A dumb, unwittingly suspicious gringo.
In the prohibition north, under the same moonless sky, individuals make a choice to disappear into smoke and powder. On city streets the death flares of muzzle flashes spark in concert with their lighters. Violence marks the drug corridors to, through and from every major city. Like a great snake that sheds its skin on the journey north - bloodstains mark the ground with the frequency of graffiti, and the ghosts of innocence struggle to shake the trophies of sadistic coyotes from border rape tree branches.
At the School of the America’s, US forces train the next batch of latin drug war combatants. Their tactics, funding and equipment will fan out across Central and South America to engage drug lords, gang youth and political dissidents alike. Overhead, DEA aircraft will lay a cover of chemical fog over indigenous lands, crops, and rural neighbourhoods. Some people might fall sick to tainted air or water, some will bend to the will of local thugs or brake like their corn put to the scythe.
Satisfied - I guess. The soldiers minding me put rifle slings over shoulders and walked away. I stuffed clothes into my backpack. I shook the dust from my tent. I placed my fuel and water cans in their proper place and order - a plastic water can alternating with a metal fuel jerry. On rough tracks the metal cans together would clang and thud; it was an effort - particularly important in this moment - to reintroduce some small order to the chaos and hold it firmly, safely in place under a ratchet strap in my small space.
We idled on the side of the road outside of town; Eore and I. The party was over. The electic light was an obnoxious glare over the clanking bottles of cleanup, and the military concealed in the nearby fields. The musicians had left the stage and played disjointed fragments of tunes sung in low voices to a few lingering, doe eyed girls. I felt disappointment. The persistent nag of anger. There would be no cold Tecate. The platoon in the regimented rows of corn had been too much of a juxtaposition to the Tang fuelled liberty of the cactus desert. I had a long highway slog north to mull over the price of state control over individual liberty, and the far reaching consequences of policies to save people from themselves. A new prospective from a corn field far from home.
