Old Ways in the Wake of Change
By : Gordon Johnson
The Press-Enterprise
Teodora Cuero lives much in the old ways of the Kumeyaay Indians, but Teodora Cuero, 80, has seen change, too.
For Indian people, times spin faster than limes, cherries and oranges on a slot machine. With the changing times come assimilation, a mainstreaming of Indians into popular culture. A quiet war rages in Indian Country, the culture clash between tradition and technology. Many Indian people, especially on gaming reservations, lead much different lives than they did 50, even 20 years ago, before the arrival of gambling money.
Nowadays, more and more American Indians navigate reservation roads in Lincolns, wearing three-piece suits and boutique cocktail dresses on their way to see old-school rock acts in casino lounges. But what of the old ways? Curiosity led me to Baja California, to La Huerta, a small Kumeyaay Indian settlement near Ensenada in Baja Mexico. I wanted to see how Indians below the border fared in these days of change. A good example is the Kumeyaay tribe, whose land is split by the U.S.-Mexican border. Part of the tribe lives in southern San Diego County, while the other part lives in northern Baja California. One tribe, two countries, two standards of living.
The following is a profile of Teodora Cuero, a 80-year-old Kumeyaay Indian woman born and reared in La Huerta, Baja California, far from the noisy spill of American silver dollars into metal trays. It's just a glimpse into her life and times, but it's nonetheless a telling glimpse. Maybe change below the border is slower, but it hasn't left Indians untouched. LA HUERTA, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO -- Red-barked manzanita limbs sizzle and pop in the old cast-iron cookstove. Wisps of smoke escape from the heat-warped lid and from the firebox door that won't close. Wood smoke entwines with tobacco smoke curling from a Marlboro Menthol cigarette held in sepia-toned fingers. Teodora Cuero, 80, is in her spot.
She's ensconced in a loose-jointed office chair next to the cookstove, cradled by fire warmth, drinking boiled coffee, and ruminating over a filtered cigarette as grandkids run in and out of the house. She's in her Indian life. Teodora, a Kumeyaay, lives in La Huerta, which in Spanish means "the orchard." But there's not a planted grove in sight. Maybe a few fruit trees sprouting here and there in assorted yards, but hardly an orchard. La Huerta, about 38 miles east of Ensenada, is an 8,680-acre Kumeyaay Indian
settlement, the Mexican equivalent of an Indian reservation.
About 200 people live here, in hand-built houses with tree-shaded yards spread out across the landscape on hilltops and down in valleys. Like their American counterparts, the Indian yards in La Huerta feature a car or two on blocks, several barking dogs bristling at strangers and kids wrestling around in the dirt. In summer, the sere land bakes in arid contempt. Bleached cattle bones litter trails that carve through brush leading to lord knows where. In winter, winds chilled by the Pacific wend through sandy-bottomed arroyos, tripping along agricultural fields where most La Huertans work, swirling into yards, ruffling the feathers of laying hens and forcing denizens to button up sweaters and sit closer to the cookstove. Teodora says the La Huerta Kumeyaays have been in this spot maybe 700 or 800 years.
Florence Shipek, retired San Diego State University anthropology professor and a Kumeyaay specialist, says Kumeyaays have been Southern California and Baja California inhabitants for some 20,000 years. Before an imaginary border divided the Californias, the Kumeyaays were simply Kumeyaays, neither Mexican or American. All that changed when Spaniards came with alien notions of countries and borders and officialdom. In the heat of the day, Teodora sits on an old car seat propped against the trunk of a mulberry tree.
The midday wind rankles the leaves, pushing them this way and that, like petting a cat opposite to the way the fur grows. A passel of grandkids tears into a watermelon, sucking the red juices from the green rind, wiping glistening chins with the backs of hands. To the "ptui" of kids spitting out watermelon seeds, Teodora catches up with Audrey Ceballos, another Kumeyaay Indian who lives on the Campo Indian Reservation on the American side. Teodora hasn't seen Audrey in a couple of years, and they exchange news of their lives in Spanish. Occasionally, Audrey stumbles on a Spanish word and Teodora gives her a leg up. Sometimes they rely on Kumeyaay when the Spanish fails them. Audrey speaks English first, and limps along in Spanish and Kumeyaay. Teodora thinks in Kumeyaay, speaks in Spanish, and attempts very little English. No matter the language, they talk, apprising each other of the comings and goings of mutual friends.
As they chat, a burly black German shepherd-mix scratches in the dirt, making a place to lay. Herky-jerky chickens strut in the yard, heads bobbing to the beat of their walk. They scratch and peck at the ground. The dog keeps the coyotes away from the chickens. That's his job and he's good at it. There's no doorbell on Teodora's house. No porch light or rain gutters or porch even. Her husband, Bernardo Aldama, built this small house of local stones and mortar. The wooden kitchen was added later. A drain pipe runs from the kitchen sink through the kitchen wall and spills out into the yard to seep into the ground. A community of plants congregates near the drain, and chickens peck at the insects attracted by the sink-fed wetlands. In this house, she raised 13 children. She's buried three of her children, casualties of life, in the graveyard just down road. But 10 still live, the oldest 61, the youngest 31. She has 48 grandchildren and 48 great-grandchildren. One son, Egencio "Tejon" (raccoon) Aldama, still lives with her in the old homestead. The house bustles with grandchildren. Most of Teodora's offspring live nearby, never straying far from the home where Teodora fed them boiled beans and tortillas blistered on a wood stove. Teodora grew up not far fromhere, at her parents' -- Jesus Cuero and Elena Robles -- home. In the Kumeyaay way, women keep their father's name, even after marriage. Her mother was born in 1898 and died an old woman in 1995.
Her mother told stories to Teodora of the Mexican Revolution that started in 1910, when Elena was a girl. As a girl, Teodora lived Kumeyaay style. Her father hunted only with a bow and arrow, never a gun. Rabbits, gray-furred, long-legged creatures pierced by an arrow behind the shoulder, were fried, boiled, baked and grilled. She ate many, many rabbits in her youth. Too many rabbits. "I don't like rabbits anymore," she says. "Anyway, the men can't hunt rabbits much. No bullets." Mexican federales stop every car at the crossroads leading into La Huerta, confiscating contraband, including bullets. Bullets are not allowed. Rattlesnake skins hang from a wall. Succulents grow in a washtub. A makeshift shower stall, where the family showers, sits out in the yard. No hot water, though. A stone metate and mano,
used for grinding acorns, peeks out from beneath a bench. She has made shawee, an acorn pudding of sorts, since childhood.
An arroyo about several miles distant yields oak trees where Kumeyaays collect acorns in the fall. Teodora's knowledge of herbs and other medicinal plants is highly regarded. Never one to rely on doctors, Teodora has kept her family healthy with nature's drug store. Even at age 80, she clambers up nearby hills, going to the likely spots, to pick the herbs, like salvia and hierba buena, that her
mother and grandmother taught her about. Various medicinal plants thrive in buckets and planters around the yard. A sapling loquat tree grows near the house. Teodora dries loquat leaves and makes a tea that counteracts her diabetes and high blood pressure. "I take the tea morning and night for nine days. Then I go without for nine days and then do it all again. It doesn't taste bad and it takes everything away," she says. A government doctor swings by every two weeks, dispensing diabetes pills. "But they are no good," Teodora says. "I feel sick all the time with those pills." She says the loquat tea dropped her blood sugar from 360 to 80. After the tea, her high blood pressure drops to almost normal. "I can eat candy, drink soda, with no diet, and I'm fine," she says. She uses herbs, she says, for most maladies, for kidneys, for the liver, for the heart, for diarrhea, for headaches for the stomach.
Tejon pulls into the yard. In a 1970s beater pickup, he brings lengths of manzanita bought in bundles from 20 miles away. Grandkids playing catch in the dirt driveway move out of the way. Four horses in a nearby paddock take notice. The dog knows the truck's engine and rises stiffly to greet Tejon. Maybe there'll be a pat on the head from Tejon. Teodora explains that she's a viuda, a widow. Her husband died years ago. "But she has a boyfriend," jokes Tejon as he walks by in long hair and black jeans with cowboy boots well past being worn in. Teodora reddens at his ribbing. An anthropologist from the other side visits Teodora often, and the kids tease that he must be smitten. Then Tejon tells Audrey, "That ring you wear doesn't mean you're married. Your husband should be by your side, yet here you are alone. You must be the one that runs the house." Audrey laughs shaking her head but doesn't refute his wisecrack. Laughter paints the afternoon, the way the sunset paints the sky.
As the weakening sun lapses toward the horizon, the wind takes on a bite and Teodora pulls the sweater tighter around her. To get out of the chill, Teodora moves into the house. She stoops for the wood box and stuffs several lengths of manzanita into the cookstove's firebox. Tejon pours coffee for his mother from a large enameled coffee pot, the kind a camp cook might use on a cattle drive. She slips her fingers through the mug's handle and sips. Two rings of silver and turquoise glint on her left hand. She lights another cigarette. Sugar, cigarettes and other necessities are about 10 miles away in Ojos Negros, the nearest small town. For big shopping days, they drive to Ensenada. "We must have coffee," Teodora says. She sips the steaming brew and looks over the rim of her cup. These modern times bring many changes. Her youth now seems so distant. "We had no games, no plastic dolls, no toy cars. We made rag dolls, made our own dolls to play with. And out of clay, we made little clay dishes, and little dogs made of clay. We'd let the clay dry and then bake it," she says. Wistfully she goes on. "Indian people have changed much. The elders of long ago were really good people. We shared more when I was little. We would take food to the neighbors.
There was a lot of respect for the elders. Now there is no respect for anything. Oh, that isn't right either. There's some respect, but kids aren't taught respect, and they don't care anymore," she says. So much is disappearing, so much is being lost. "The food, the dances, the customs. We want to rescue the dances and the customs from disappearing," she says. "We must reteach the past." In La Huerta, Teodora heads the tribal government. She is a spokeswoman and often conducts tribal meetings in Kumeyaay. This, she hopes, will force the language to stay alive. So many of the kids won't speak Kumeyaay, preferring the Spanish they hear on television. Teodora feels he weight of the future. She tries to ward off excessive change. She does what she can. "But sometimes I just don't feel like doing anything. I'm starting to feel tired," she says. At 6 in the morning, however, you'll find her next to the cookstove, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, humming a Kumeyaay song. Published 1/4/2001
(c) 2001 The Press-Enterprise Company.