HITCH-HIKING MENNONITE CARRIAGES

Elbowed out of the rest of the World by cars and motorcycles, the horse-drawn kart, the mythic chariot, has found among the Mennonites a sanctuary where its thread of evolution. One of the aims of my trip was to hitch a ride in on of these fancy vehicles, called buggies by themselves. No need to stretch my thumb, I am offered a ride by one of the guys, whose family sells spiced cheese. I say I would like to buy some, and he takes me to his house in his buggy. The name of my new friend is Pedro.

To my surprise, the buggy advances smoothly over the unpaved road. The car I had arrived in had, in the contrary, let me feel every ditch of the road with more fidelity. Jacobo tells me that buggies are produced in the colony by a couple of families, who charge around 6000 and 8000 pesos for them (1,800 USD). The deluxe version has adjustable seats, glass windshield and Volkswagen suspension system.

Along the dusty avenue we find scattered groups of boys and girls. Since it is Sunday, it is the only the day they can abstract from their work routine. Then, boys and girls meet up to chat –and drink beer- in the road itself. Jacobo says if they meet a girl and start going out with her, thay can visit each other in her house Mondays and Wednesday afternoon for two hours. A remember a novel by Bioy Casares in which a Danish family who had settle in Patagonia attempts to stop time –and then death- by repeating every day the same sequence of prearranged acts, barring entry to their farm of every news. Likewise, this tendency to schedules makes the Mennonites a community sedentary not only in space but also in time.

MENNONITE FAMILIES AND THE RIGHT TO DIFFERENCE

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We arrive to Pedro’s house, and after a tour of their carpentry, we are shown the traditional cheeses. We enter a small room where also two large pieces of jam are being stationed, and choose a couple of oregano and pepper cheeses we buy from them. Pedro invites us to drink mate with his family. It is our first chance to enter a Mennonite house. The excuse for socializing is quite Argentinean; the bizarre social situation we are about to live is rather unclassifiable.

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The first impression on passing the simple wooden door is that we were not expected by Pedro’s family, who immediately order two of their daughters to sweep the wooden floor. A compact legion of blonde kids is chewing and spitting sunflower seeds, almost in consonance. When I remark how much they seem to like the seeds Pedro’s explanation is: “Well, it is Sunday”. So in Sunday everything that’s otherwise banned during the week seems to be tolerated. And sunflower seeds are the closest to a forbidden snack children can crave for.

The two teenage girls prepare the mate while their mother swings quietly in a rocking chair by the window. The woman is huge like a Russian matrioska. You would bet there are several layers of women inside… None of the women take part of the conversation, which rather have Raul (my friend), Pedro, Pedro’s father, and me as participants. Even if the girls would like to talk, they are not taught Spanish. The father is a lightly built man with square glasses and a broad forehead. He makes me several questions about Germany, a country that I have visited several times, and which is where the Mennonite’s gene pool comes from… The man is kind and low paced in all his way of being and talking. I talk to him in German and we understand each other despite speaking different dialects. They all have a lot of fun when I take their Bible and start reading –without understanding everything- a short bit…

I ask the man for the names of his children, and he names only the boys. The girls, both the tiny ones chewing seeds and the teenage ones coming and going with the mate, remain anonymous. In this context, I can imagine the girls have no further life prospects than becoming children factories and seating by the window as their mother. There is no chance of getting to the “outside world” to work or study.

A dilemma emerges. Must the estate interfere in order to guarantee certain contents in education? Can family and community exclude the instruction of the language needed to be a free person in Argentina? I mean, is it fine that girls here speak medieval German and couldn’t even take a bus if they dared to, while men are bilingual? Schools have always been factories of mentalities, from the times of Sarmiento to nowadays. They have been widely used to displace the native tongues prior to the Conquista and homogenize population. Bilingual education has normally arrived too late. It happened with Irish, and also with quechua. Will it come the day when prohibition of prohibition becomes a part of universal ethics? Tht day Iranian girls will have the chance to walk unveiled, and Mennonite ones will be taught Spanish. The systems that now try to protect themselves by coercing individuals to act this or that way will only be legitimized when they become optional. We leave Pedro’s house and 30 kms later we are having a beer in one of Guatrache’s bars, wondering if everything was real or if we have just dreamt it.

THE LAND WITOUT SOCCER

We continue towards a more distant second church. On the way we see children playing around the school yard. At the sight of the car, they promptly hide beneath a tree, and only gradually go out to look at us when they discover we are carrying two of their men in the car. There is a skateboard near them which must be the most boring toy to have in an unpaved road. Jacobo explains us that bicycles are also banned. And soccer?

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Forbidden as well. –says Jacobo while pretending not be regretting it- Last year we attempted to start playing it, but the bishop ordered us to stop it.

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In a world where soccer seems to globalize in spite of any social, political and ethnic context the fact that a nostalgic agricultural colony can still bar it through an edict of its bishop vindicates the unpredictable of our species.

I remember to have seen a guy with a small pin of River Plata clinged to the zip of his jacket. How does he do to know the weekly scores without TV? Jacobo once more rescues me from ignorance and explains that the guys who installs the silos, masterly produce and sell nationwide by the Mennonites , are the only ones with chances to get to the outside world. They bring –smuggle- the weekly scores. Just imagine one of them whispering in church the results of a River-Boca match in Low German.

TOWERLESS CHURCHES AND ABSTRACT SPIRITUALITY

If protestant churches are themselves scarcely decorated, Mennonite ones go a step further and lack any ornamentation at all. An abstract spirituality didn’t put Muslim calligraphists and architects to come up with Esfahan mosques. Its intricate designs avoid human figures but resourcefully extract all possibilities of flowers and purely geometric figures. Mennonites don’t just avoid representation; they avoid any sort of decoration. This iconoclast spirit also means they don’t have tombs for their dead. Only the land he so eagerly worked and oblivion wait for each man after his material cycle is over. Both religiously and economically, Mennonites are nothing but pragmatic. In the same way they do without the aesthetic additives of their temples they equally discard the symbolic background of the land they plough. Most of them couldn’t point the areas of Germany and the Netherlands their community is originally from. Most of the adults in the Colony at Nueva Esperanza were born in other Mennonite colonies in Mexico and Bolivia, out of a Nordic gene pool, displaced again towards Argentina, so I can understand they identify with their community rather than with any of the countries they have paraded through. The contrast is generated by their being so uprooted from the symbolic dimension of the grounds they work, while so inserted glued to it at a literal and concrete level.

THE UNIVERSE OF CONDEMABLE ITEMS IN MENNONITE SYMBOLIC SYSTEM

An obvious of conversation was prohibitions. The guys say adults don’t want them to drink, but beer has somehow become tolerated, unlike whiskey or wine. So far the list of sins is predictable: adultery, alcohol, etc. However, Mennonites can surprise with a unique universe of condemnable items and activities.

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Nobody would think tractors tyres are harmful, but all tractors here are deprived of their rear tyres. Maybe it is a precaution to make it harder for a teenager to leave the colony. Almost all items derived from technological advances of the twentieth century are banned, such as cars, mobile phones and computers. So is music. Despite this, we have seen a couple of guys with MP3s. Jacob, one of the guys, admits he secretly listens to music. When I enquire what genre of music he likes most, he is surprised at the whole idea of genres, and says he only listens once and again to the only CD he was able to get, some sort of Mexican music.

OUT OF A GOETHE’S NOVEL…

As a sample of how predictable human nature is beyond the cultural format, not far from the boys I find a group of girls. Like among the Kalasha in Pakistan, or the Otavaleños in Ecuador, here are also women who conserve the typical way of dressing. As elsewhere, men end up by adopting a pair of jeans or similar variations of contemporary clothes.

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Mennonite girls seem straight out of Goethe’s novels, elegant blue eyed dolls wearing violet and blue neck-to-toe dresses and stunning hats. It’s in these unknown settlements were Romantic aesthetics have residually survived. What are those dresses, designed some centuries ago in Eastern Prussia, getting dirty with the Pampas soil? Curious collage plotted by history’s turns, migrations and religious persecutions. The girls smile and tell each other secrets in the ear. Saying I feel sad for them unveils my ethnocentrism.

I don’t know why, I feel more sorry for them than for the boys, and I perfectly know I shouldn’t be sorry for anyone but myself. I have travelled 45 countries and learnt to find beauty in each kind of society. Maybe I believe that male soul is the ony capable of building and applying castrating philosophical systems. Obsessions in general, either to build skyscrapers, cities or cults, seem to me a male affair. Women are smarter, and they are the ones showing us the apples. They go always in front, throwing banana skins just ahead of any kind of theological arithmetic planned by ayatollahs, bishops or popes. Parties can be organized by either men or women. Boring scenario, instead, can only have a man behind the master plan. Women’s boycott consists of returning man to reality. And they can achieve this very simply, by the only mean of existing. Some religions have chosen to call this temptation. Behind the grind of resignation, nevertheless, I can guess a winged spirit…

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The only girl of the group to look at me in the eye did so because her boyfriend had told her to behave normally in front of foreigners. Of course, here the ones speaking medieval German are the locals, while we are the exotic!

IN THE MENNONITE COLONY OF NUEVA ESPERANZA

Take a second to read: most Mennonite related internet searches land on this article. Laura and I are hapy that our essays continue to provide faithful information about the least visited and most remote cultures on Earth. But please, if you find this resource useful , keep us travelling the world and reaserching by donating towards our project. Find the ay Pal button on the barside.


The Mennonites are an Anabaptist religious community that originated in the 16th Century in Europe. In the times of the Reform the Anabaptists took distance from both the Vatican and the Lutheran church, since they didn’t support the baptism of babies but that of adult voluntary believers. By 1530 Rome and the Protestant communities agreed to persecute the Anabaptists, who organized a frustrated revolt in Munster, Germany. Hundreds of them died in the attempt. But many others, later called the Mennonites preferred to start an exodus that four centuries later resulted in more than a million and a half Mennonites settling in more than 109 countries. Where they go, the nestle in farming communities where they practice a frugal lifestyle characterized by work in the fields, strong sense of community and family, the conservation of plat-deutsch, and regulation of the contacts with the outside world. They don’t use cars, radios, computers, etc. Today, only 37% of them live in Europe (they are original from Northern Germany and the Netherlands), the rest have settled across the Atlantic in North and Latin America (particularly in Paraguay, Mexico and Bolivia). The largest numbers of them are found, however, in Africa.

We finally catch a glimpse of a Group of them. When we go out of the car, it seems we are in front of several clones of the same individual. They all resemble each other! I allow myself to think that, after several centuries of crossing of the same genetic lots nature must tend to the generation of beings with less and less inter-individual differences. They are all blonde, tall, with an unmistakable Nordic look. They also wear the same kind of clothes: they use baseball caps –cowboy hats for the adults- quadrille shirts and blue trousers. Two little kids observe us from afield, but don’t get close.

At their feet I see an empty wine bottle. Alcohol is forbidden, but I haven’t yet generated the sufficient confidence to ask them details about that and other transgressions. My mind is an index of questions which remain unsaid out of strategy. The tallest of them has clearly a set of white headphones climbing from within his jacket to his ears. Music is also theoretically banned, as anything else that takes man away from the three pillars of the Mennonites: family, work and spirituality. The Taliban had also banned music in Afghanistan. While a parallel with them would be an exaggeration, reminiscence in some regards in unavoidable.

UNVISIBLE BOUNDARIES IN LA PAMPA PROVINCE

When something exotic flourishes in distant latitudes, it surprises gently. The adrenaline of the truly exotic comes when the unseen arises around the corner. That’s what I felt last week when visiting the Mennonite colony of Nueva Esperanza, in the Argentinean province of La Pampa.

We exited Bahía Blanca towards Guatraché, the closest town. In the ay, we can see the typically rural landscape configuration of the Pampas: broad horizons, uninterrupted plains, perpendicular windmills with metallic spikes, and cows and cows, symbols of the richness of a few landowners. From time to time a tiny town, with its weathered red brick houses of tall roofs… The wind arouses dry bushes to roll over the plain, and dust filters through our car ventilation system. Focused in the meteorological adversity we forget we are crossing invisible cultural boundaries.

IMAGES OF A ROUND THE WORLD HITCH-HIKING TRIP, IN TANDIL

Making a Photo Exhibition in Tandil, Argentina. he venue was offered by Tandil University Cultural Center. Title of the exhbition was "Images of a Round the World Hitch-hiking trip". More than 50 people attended the event.

After introducing myself and The Wizard (my backpack) we carried on with the slide of around 400 photographs. I thought they would be too many, but people kept their attention focused. Many of them later bought copies of my book "Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil" (Spanish version. English one coming soon). I also displayed a hundred of my hand made postcards. Rhey allow anyone to take a souvenir home, since they are cheaper than the 20x30 I always sell.

What is behind selling a photograph? There several dimensions beyond the economic side of it. Firstly, unlike the book, people can choose among the +100 pictures, letting me know something about their likes, dislikes, etc. More importantly, the energy of the photographed episoded comes back to me when someone chooses a picture. Kids smile again, and deserts print their austerity in my eyes once again... A magic evocation that claims time for already lived moments and make life reversible...

As I said, there is something fundamental behind a simple event. I have been a nomad fo 4 years now, and my e-mail contact list has around 1400 addresses, plus some 690 Facebook friends (clic here to find my profile and add me!) This forces me to inforce some discipline in the task of recording and organizing new contacts. As ii travel, I send general e-mails telling all this readers and friends where I am, and if there is any event coming. And then the desired alchemy happens: the virtual world touches the real one, when someone comes to the event thanks to an e-mail. In this case I could meet face to face dozens of readers I had never seen before. In the picture you can see Teresa foor instance. She would always comment my blog to check I was still alive while hiking in Tibet or Afghanistan. I could have never fortold this woman whose messages often gave me strenght was on a wheelchair.

Readres geting their book signed.

My girfriend Paula and Rocío. I had last seen Rocío, from the Cyclown Circus in Thailand in 2007. Imagine my surprise!

Friends at Tandil, Argentina.

A cute boy selling bicycles made from wire in the streets.

BY THE SHORES OF URUGUAY RIVER, IN ENTRE RIOS PROVINCE

Sticky Notice! Visit my online bookshop, order my book and keep me hitch-hiking around the world!
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As I keep preparing the Americycle for my Argentina-Alaska trip, I take short rips around Argentina by hitch-hiking. Paula and I spent a nice weekend in Concepción del Uruguay and Colón, both cities in the Argentinean province of Entre Ríos. In the picture, one of the historic buildings that charm up the shores of Colón.

A rusty abandoned Wessel sets the scenes for lovers who can’t afford to rent a true Titanic for a romantic kiss.

As Colón is a touristy place, houses and guesthouses are painted in the fashion way their Buenos Aires counterpart are.

Zárate – Brazo Largo Bridge is the easiest access point for hitch-hikers thumbing north from the national capital.

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THE CULT OF SAINT DEATH AND THE ARGENTINEAN ROADS

Our driver was called Javier and he was from Concordia, Entre Ríos. He stopped for to check the tires pressure in Gualeguay crossing and we were soon asking him wether he could take us south back to Buenos Aires. On board, the cabin of his Mercedes 1620 had its own iconography that including illustrations of different saints.

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Among the classic stamp of Gauchito Gil and Difunta Correa, emerges the image of Death, with her own chopper. “It’s Saint Death” – affirms Javier, and proceeds to tell us the story of how he became a follower.

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He had been working for years for a logistic company. He used to drive so fast that his boss seemed to trust Javier would always made it, no matter how distant was the goal. If there was a queue of fifty truck in the loading spot, he wouls be granted priority. He was a true king of the road. “Then they started sending me to Misiones province” – regrets. There the landscape is so hilly that you can hardly drive Fast. When going down a hill, actually, you need to have good breaking skills. On the contrary, Javier had fun descending at 120 km/h.

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One day, on reaching the bottom of a steep hill, he found an old truck joining the main road from an unpaved track coming from the rainforest. It’s the kind of trucks carrying on illegal deforestation. E had no time to break and next time he opened his eyes he had all sorts of electrodes connected to his body. He lost her job, and his wife. A man who came suddenly out of nowhere –like the truck he had crushed with- gave him an illustration of Saint Death. As in a miracle, he got a better job and mended the relationship with his wife.

With a bit of research, I found that the cult had its origins in neighbouring Paraguay, as some kind of syncretism that takes roots in the Guarani tradition of worshipping the bones of your ancestors. Natives there used to ask for protection from physical pain and natural disasters.

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During the Jesuits era this concept boarded the Christian entity of saint to form a new cult that hasn’t however been recognized by the church. Inner migrations forwarded the cult into other regions, such as the Argentinean provinces of Santa Fe. Corrientes, Chaco and Formosa, and south of Brasil. There is even a large sanctuary in RN 12 Km. 983, in Corrientes. Another example of how there is a lot to learn from hitch-hiking.

GASTRONOMY AND INMIGRATION IN ARGENTINEAN NORTHEAST (Salam Aleikum my gaucho!)

It was quite a surprise to find these two guys Dresde in Iraqi T-shirts selling shawarma, as I strolled the shores of Uruguay River, in Colón, Entre Ríos. I approached them in Arabic and of course they were true Iraqis who had migrated from Baghdad in 2002, precisely a year in which Argentina sent out huge waves of émigrés as a result of local crisis.

Aiming to seduce the pocket of patriots, the guy next stall made it clear he was selling Argentinean meet…

As for us, far from having passport related problems in our diet, we cooked this Dorado in a clay oven, spiced with chilli, herbs, lemon, etc. We bought it first hand to the fisherman who goes around the city in his bicycle…

Paula and I baking bread for dinner, filled up with salami and cheese.

Our hosts, Miguel and Paula.

VOLGADEUTSCHEN COLONIES IN ENTRE RIOS, ARGENTINA

This is how the streets of Valle María, a little rural town 50 km south of Paraná, the provincial capital of Entre Ríos, Argentina, look. From left to right, the German flag, the provincial and the national one. How do we arrive to this? The story begins in 1770, when the Russian tsar Catalina II invited Germans to populate a strip of land near the Volga River. After a short stage of hope, it turned out the lands were poor indeed, and moreover, the new generations were expected to line up in the Russian Army… SO emigration began towards South America. Many of them made it to Brazil, and after a time there head on south towards Argentina, where the government granted them lands in 1880. The Argentineans of the time, moved by a simplifier spirit, decided to nick them “Russians” full stop.

Paying attention to a road map of Entre Rios Province, the fact is clear. Hasenkamp, Spatzenkutter, Aldea Protestante, Valle María…. The last two still mark the religious differences the original settlers had when they set foot in the steam ship that brought them from Europe. Today the region still bears a visible ethnic Teutonic feature, but the language has been nearly lost, with a few exceptions I observed, as an 80 years old couple speaking out loud in old German while killing time in the supermarket queue…

Augusto Lucero, collegue from Autostop Argentina, and road mate in this short visit to Vale María, one of the German colonies. In the photo you can see him hitching with a reflective sign. Despite darkness came over, we managed to stop a Renault 18…

Signs of the German heritage can be observed in the name of local shops and companies.

THE LOCAL “BOLICHE” IN VALLE MARIA.

Carlos, the owner, opens our beer. His sad grind was later explained by other locals, who said he had been a rich landlord of the region, before loosing everything in Argentina’s hyperinflation of 1989.

Among the gin and the vermouth, a sign says: “We no longer keep your drinks. Once served, you drink it, take it home or throw it away!”

Locals were proud that at least some lost hitch-hiker remembers the existence of their villages. Notably, Carlos invited to stay overnight at his home. While another local toured us around his milk farm on the morning of our departure.

IMAGES OF VALLE MARIA, SOCCER AND STUDEBAKER.

"The other photograph"

Studebaker Champion.

POSSIBLE ENDS FOR OLD SCHOOL BUSES

One possibility is plain abandonment. The gradual rust conciliates technology and nature. Something Julio Cortázar would have called the unfair cycle of trash. Example: this Mercedes 1114 school bus will hardly have a different chance.

The other possibility as an extra flair of poetry. The bus, already disabled for its original task, ends up taking up a new job and avoiding retirement…. In the picture, a 1960 English-made Leyland renamed “Choribus”. Now it hosts the kitchen room! Instead of children, grilled sausages come out of its depths now. Well, there is not a big difference if you read it as a Pink Floyd The Wall metaphor.

HITCH-HKING COMPETITIONS IN GERMANY

Abgefahren e.V. presents the second german hitchhiking championships. It will take place from 12th to 13th June 2009. We will start in Karlsruhe and hitchhike in teams of two to a destination, which you will be told on the day we start. The team with the best time will win. But you can solve funny or exciting tasks on the way to get bonus time. The winning will winning some small prices. Info & Registration: http://race.abgefahren-ev.de/index.php?id=home&locale=en

On August 18th, Tramprennen 2009 will take place, starting in the German city of Kiel, and proposing a route of 2300 km all the way to Dubrovnik. More information on http://www.tramprennen.org/

My new book is out! Vagabonding in th Axis of Evil - By thumb in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan is a detailed account of a one year long journey across the Muslim World, in search of the hospitality silenced by  mainstream media. The e-book contains 250 pages and colour photographs. You can learn more and  contribute towards the Educational Nomadic Project by ordering a copy here.