The Vilisar Times

HANGING OUT IN CHIHUAHU; DEALING IN CATTLE
Lunes, 26 de Septiembre de 2005

Spent Sunday killing time with Bob, the ranchero. The steering on his pickup has been so beaten up by the mountain ¨roads¨ that it needs serious repair. Since on Sunday workshops are closed, only this morning did we finally get a place to take a look at it sometime today and maybe even repair it today as well. Bob wants to get back to the ranch by tonight. Maybe we will make it but I am sure it will be well after dark, if at all, since it takes five hours just to get to the ranch road in Yepachic and then another two hours of crawling along in the dark on execrable to reach Rancho el Nogal. We are going to stop at Wal-Mart and a grocery store for some supplies before we leave Chihuahua. If we have time.

This being my second time here, I am getting to know Chihuahua a bit better. The first thing to note on the positive side is that the climate is very pleasant. It might gets up to an unpleasant ninety degrees (Fahrenheit) in June. But once the rainy season starts in July, it stays much cooler (from July onwards). It in no way compares to Guaymas or Corpus Christi or New Orleans or even Baltimore for heat and humidity. The city lies at an altitude of about 1,800 meters, Cuauhtémoc is even higher (same as Rancho el Nogal: 2,000 meters). There isn’t much need for air conditioners here and therefore you are not constantly threatened with serious cranial damage that comes from cracking your head on window a/c units installed just above eye level over the sidewalk or having your clothing dripped on from first-floor units. You tend to hit these while you are looking down to avoid falling into the pedestrian traps in the pavement, i.e. open manholes, deep potholes, broken concrete, and the like.

The weather is so nice that you can basically sit outside. Perfect street café weather. Unfortunately, however, although the hole-in-the-wall shops are often open to the street, there is no café-culture here. In fact there is no coffee culture here either. The streets are noisy and the sidewalks narrow. Public places do exist (e.g. in front of the big cathedral or in front of public buildings) but they are often intolerable to sit in because of the noise, the pigeons or lack of adequate seating. If you do manage to find a “café”, it is a pastry shop as in Europe. But there is no loitering around and the coffee is basically Nescafe with lots of sweet milk stirred in and kept moderately warm for hours. Mexicans just don’t seem to spend time drinking coffee and chatting. If anything, they are always on the hustle. They are always busy.

Bob goes off to do some errands on Sunday morning and I drift down from the Hotel Jardin Central to the cathedral square and then on down to the mercado. It is just coming to life; I guess Mexican Lords Day Observance Laws are not strong because everything retail is basically open on the Sabbath. I did get my coffee and a delicious fresh pastry. But it is not a place to hang out and read or chat and I head out to the cathedral square to sit on a bench with my book. On Sunday the traffic going by is not too bad. But the Rotary Club is raising money for something or other and is polluting whatever quiet has been there with their loudspeakers.

Eventually I meet Bob back at the hotel and we drive out to the big shopping mall on the periphery where the new Chihuahua is springing up. There are a lot of big housing developments, both social housing and private mansions. The Big-Box-phenomenon is hard at work in Chihuahua: everywhere you look are huge supermarkets, Wal-Marts, KFC, McDonald, even C&A from Holland. Again, everything is open and selling. Downtown is falling into disrepute and disrepair and, according to Bob, you can now rent a substantial house downtown now for about US$150 a month. The mall is busy but the big draw is the Cineplex. The mall also has a food court and a large and well frequented outside terrace overlooking the hills in the far distance and, of course, the unshaded asphalt parking lot near up. We decide to take in a second movie this evening and check out the times to watch La Luchador (Cinderella Man, a boxing movie).

In the meantime, I pay a visit with Bob to my first private Mexican house. We visit Xavier on a new-ish subdivision out near the edge of town. Bob bought Rancho el Nogal from Xavier’s father, a tough old rancher of the old school with a large family. Xavier has not lived on the ranch for many years and is a cattle dealer in his own employ. He bought a lot of cattle from Bob and we are visiting to sort out the brands on the cattle.

The animals are branded as calves using an iron specially wrought by a smithy. Each brand has to be registered with the Department of Agriculture (federal in the USA and state in Chihuahua) and, each time a new owner comes along, a new brand is put on the cow, bull, mare, or stallion (other animals don{t get brands). If a cattle dealer is simply going to on-sell as short time later, he probably will not brand the livestock. But sometimes he puts the livestock out to pasture on his own or rented land until they are fatter or market conditions more attractive. The dealer will then apply his own registered brands as well.

If an animal has been sold several times, it might have several brands on it. Since they are branded young to establish ownership, the brands sometimes become distorted as the beast grows. They can be a little hard to figure out sometimes.

Clearly, ownership was always going to be dicey thing on the vast cattle ranges of North America where the cattle are not continually under close control as are milk cows, for example. Searing a mark into the flesh of young livestock seems rather brutal. But no animal ever seems to expire from it.

But trying to keep all the paperwork tidy is a big job, especially in Mexico. In the States, once your brand is registered you have established ownership over all cattle, horses or mules once the brand has been physically placed and has healed. After that there is nothing more to worry about and you can buy or sell without much let or hindrance.

In Mexico, however, it is much more bureaucratic and to sell an animal you have to go to the local municipal presidente and get a release. Then, when transporting across country to sell, each municipal district has to check the brands and sign off on a piece of paper; there are five checkpoints between Yepachic and Chihuahua alone. In addition, if the livestock has come from a region that has bovine tuberculosis, the animal has to be earmarked and then there are restrictions on transporting within Mexico and exporting to the U.S.A. The meeting with Xavier was to compare the paperwork that Bob had with the actual brands that are on the livestock sold to Xavier.

We sit at his kitchen table. Xavier is a short now somewhat stocky man, black hair though he perhaps around sixty. He is very soft-spoken and speaks some English, which is good for both Bob and me. His wife, one of his four sons his son´s wife and infant daughter are watching TV in the background; a family Sunday and family activities move around us quietly. The house is modern, with two stories but not particularly large. On the wall are family photos. The household is by no means opulent but cozy in a kind of urbanized farmhouse way. The kitchen furniture and cupboards have been brought from elsewhere and fitted in. In the kitchen there is a big fridge-freezer combination and an even larger freezer chest (a cattle dealer ought to be able to procure lots of beef for his table), a 6-burner gas stove, and a large microwave oven. Otherwise nothing to distinguish it from suburban American houses. Smaller perhaps and less luxurious but otherwise the same.

Xavier and Bob work on the paperwork. It is in fact rather confused since the cattle that Bob has sold actually came with the ranch when he bought it. New calves added in the past six years since Bob and Cindy bought Rancho el Nogal is probably in better order. In fact, these papers probably originated with Xavier’s father.

Later, Xavier asks if we want to see some photographs. We move to the dining room table and he hauls out a big stack of photos. They are mixed together and include shots of a huge dam in Chiapas (in the far south of Mexico; some taken from a helicopter) as well as some cattle that he bought down there, harbour facilities in Vera Cruz, the cathedral in Tabasco, pictures of mountains and springs in Chihuahua, cattle castrations (yepp!), huge snakes, etc. All pretty eclectic but typical for the life of a rancher and cattle dealer, I guess.

Many of his sales go to the U.S.A. Mexican law forbids the export of breeding stock. Ranchers in the U.S.A. would dearly love to get hold of registered Corrientes cattle from Mexico. But all bulls are castrated and all cows made infertile before export. Even rodeo calves from Mexico have to be doctored. Anyway, the trade in beef is mainly from north to south: the U.S.A. has huge herds of cattle, much bigger than Canada and Mexico. Recently there has been a BSE scare in the U.S.A. and Canada and it is not permissible to import beef from those countries. This means the price of home-grown Mexican beef has shot up enormously, which of course is why Bob and Cindy are selling beef cattle at the moment.

And there are some other factors influencing the beef market as well: for example, there has been a continuing drought lasting for up to seven years now and cattlemen (here and in the U.S.A. southwest) have been liquidating herds for lack of forage and water. Rancho el Nogal is fortunate to be well supplied with year-round streams and rivers.

Our visit to Xavier is a pleasant interlude. We are invited to stay for a meal but decline since we have had such a big brunch in the morning. We drift off to see our movie at the cineplex after first going to a small hostel for teachers in the city centre that rents hotel rooms to non-teachers as well. It is a lot cheaper and actually nicer than the hotel where we stayed last night. They have a room for us.

This morning I am awakened by the sound of a girl singing outside in the street. She is selling newspapers to passing cars. She has a lovely country smile and sings beautifully, adding grace notes to the melodic line and effortlessly rising up and down the scale. The voice is strong and reaches us over the noise of the traffic.

posted by rjb,
1:48 pm

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		News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of Ron and Kathy Bird and the Vilisar, see these beautiful photos by Albert Pang Click here to e-mail Ron Click here to e-mail Kathy Archives January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Vilisar Translation Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty. SachverstÃ¤ndige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; GeschÃ¤ft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.	Monday, September 26, 2005 HANGING OUT IN CHIHUAHU; DEALING IN CATTLE Lunes, 26 de Septiembre de 2005 Spent Sunday killing time with Bob, the ranchero. The steering on his pickup has been so beaten up by the mountain ¨roads¨ that it needs serious repair. Since on Sunday workshops are closed, only this morning did we finally get a place to take a look at it sometime today and maybe even repair it today as well. Bob wants to get back to the ranch by tonight. Maybe we will make it but I am sure it will be well after dark, if at all, since it takes five hours just to get to the ranch road in Yepachic and then another two hours of crawling along in the dark on execrable to reach Rancho el Nogal. We are going to stop at Wal-Mart and a grocery store for some supplies before we leave Chihuahua. If we have time. This being my second time here, I am getting to know Chihuahua a bit better. The first thing to note on the positive side is that the climate is very pleasant. It might gets up to an unpleasant ninety degrees (Fahrenheit) in June. But once the rainy season starts in July, it stays much cooler (from July onwards). It in no way compares to Guaymas or Corpus Christi or New Orleans or even Baltimore for heat and humidity. The city lies at an altitude of about 1,800 meters, Cuauhtémoc is even higher (same as Rancho el Nogal: 2,000 meters). There isn’t much need for air conditioners here and therefore you are not constantly threatened with serious cranial damage that comes from cracking your head on window a/c units installed just above eye level over the sidewalk or having your clothing dripped on from first-floor units. You tend to hit these while you are looking down to avoid falling into the pedestrian traps in the pavement, i.e. open manholes, deep potholes, broken concrete, and the like. The weather is so nice that you can basically sit outside. Perfect street café weather. Unfortunately, however, although the hole-in-the-wall shops are often open to the street, there is no café-culture here. In fact there is no coffee culture here either. The streets are noisy and the sidewalks narrow. Public places do exist (e.g. in front of the big cathedral or in front of public buildings) but they are often intolerable to sit in because of the noise, the pigeons or lack of adequate seating. If you do manage to find a “café”, it is a pastry shop as in Europe. But there is no loitering around and the coffee is basically Nescafe with lots of sweet milk stirred in and kept moderately warm for hours. Mexicans just don’t seem to spend time drinking coffee and chatting. If anything, they are always on the hustle. They are always busy. Bob goes off to do some errands on Sunday morning and I drift down from the Hotel Jardin Central to the cathedral square and then on down to the mercado. It is just coming to life; I guess Mexican Lords Day Observance Laws are not strong because everything retail is basically open on the Sabbath. I did get my coffee and a delicious fresh pastry. But it is not a place to hang out and read or chat and I head out to the cathedral square to sit on a bench with my book. On Sunday the traffic going by is not too bad. But the Rotary Club is raising money for something or other and is polluting whatever quiet has been there with their loudspeakers. Eventually I meet Bob back at the hotel and we drive out to the big shopping mall on the periphery where the new Chihuahua is springing up. There are a lot of big housing developments, both social housing and private mansions. The Big-Box-phenomenon is hard at work in Chihuahua: everywhere you look are huge supermarkets, Wal-Marts, KFC, McDonald, even C&A from Holland. Again, everything is open and selling. Downtown is falling into disrepute and disrepair and, according to Bob, you can now rent a substantial house downtown now for about US$150 a month. The mall is busy but the big draw is the Cineplex. The mall also has a food court and a large and well frequented outside terrace overlooking the hills in the far distance and, of course, the unshaded asphalt parking lot near up. We decide to take in a second movie this evening and check out the times to watch La Luchador (Cinderella Man, a boxing movie). In the meantime, I pay a visit with Bob to my first private Mexican house. We visit Xavier on a new-ish subdivision out near the edge of town. Bob bought Rancho el Nogal from Xavier’s father, a tough old rancher of the old school with a large family. Xavier has not lived on the ranch for many years and is a cattle dealer in his own employ. He bought a lot of cattle from Bob and we are visiting to sort out the brands on the cattle. The animals are branded as calves using an iron specially wrought by a smithy. Each brand has to be registered with the Department of Agriculture (federal in the USA and state in Chihuahua) and, each time a new owner comes along, a new brand is put on the cow, bull, mare, or stallion (other animals don{t get brands). If a cattle dealer is simply going to on-sell as short time later, he probably will not brand the livestock. But sometimes he puts the livestock out to pasture on his own or rented land until they are fatter or market conditions more attractive. The dealer will then apply his own registered brands as well. If an animal has been sold several times, it might have several brands on it. Since they are branded young to establish ownership, the brands sometimes become distorted as the beast grows. They can be a little hard to figure out sometimes. Clearly, ownership was always going to be dicey thing on the vast cattle ranges of North America where the cattle are not continually under close control as are milk cows, for example. Searing a mark into the flesh of young livestock seems rather brutal. But no animal ever seems to expire from it. But trying to keep all the paperwork tidy is a big job, especially in Mexico. In the States, once your brand is registered you have established ownership over all cattle, horses or mules once the brand has been physically placed and has healed. After that there is nothing more to worry about and you can buy or sell without much let or hindrance. In Mexico, however, it is much more bureaucratic and to sell an animal you have to go to the local municipal presidente and get a release. Then, when transporting across country to sell, each municipal district has to check the brands and sign off on a piece of paper; there are five checkpoints between Yepachic and Chihuahua alone. In addition, if the livestock has come from a region that has bovine tuberculosis, the animal has to be earmarked and then there are restrictions on transporting within Mexico and exporting to the U.S.A. The meeting with Xavier was to compare the paperwork that Bob had with the actual brands that are on the livestock sold to Xavier. We sit at his kitchen table. Xavier is a short now somewhat stocky man, black hair though he perhaps around sixty. He is very soft-spoken and speaks some English, which is good for both Bob and me. His wife, one of his four sons his son´s wife and infant daughter are watching TV in the background; a family Sunday and family activities move around us quietly. The house is modern, with two stories but not particularly large. On the wall are family photos. The household is by no means opulent but cozy in a kind of urbanized farmhouse way. The kitchen furniture and cupboards have been brought from elsewhere and fitted in. In the kitchen there is a big fridge-freezer combination and an even larger freezer chest (a cattle dealer ought to be able to procure lots of beef for his table), a 6-burner gas stove, and a large microwave oven. Otherwise nothing to distinguish it from suburban American houses. Smaller perhaps and less luxurious but otherwise the same. Xavier and Bob work on the paperwork. It is in fact rather confused since the cattle that Bob has sold actually came with the ranch when he bought it. New calves added in the past six years since Bob and Cindy bought Rancho el Nogal is probably in better order. In fact, these papers probably originated with Xavier’s father. Later, Xavier asks if we want to see some photographs. We move to the dining room table and he hauls out a big stack of photos. They are mixed together and include shots of a huge dam in Chiapas (in the far south of Mexico; some taken from a helicopter) as well as some cattle that he bought down there, harbour facilities in Vera Cruz, the cathedral in Tabasco, pictures of mountains and springs in Chihuahua, cattle castrations (yepp!), huge snakes, etc. All pretty eclectic but typical for the life of a rancher and cattle dealer, I guess. Many of his sales go to the U.S.A. Mexican law forbids the export of breeding stock. Ranchers in the U.S.A. would dearly love to get hold of registered Corrientes cattle from Mexico. But all bulls are castrated and all cows made infertile before export. Even rodeo calves from Mexico have to be doctored. Anyway, the trade in beef is mainly from north to south: the U.S.A. has huge herds of cattle, much bigger than Canada and Mexico. Recently there has been a BSE scare in the U.S.A. and Canada and it is not permissible to import beef from those countries. This means the price of home-grown Mexican beef has shot up enormously, which of course is why Bob and Cindy are selling beef cattle at the moment. And there are some other factors influencing the beef market as well: for example, there has been a continuing drought lasting for up to seven years now and cattlemen (here and in the U.S.A. southwest) have been liquidating herds for lack of forage and water. Rancho el Nogal is fortunate to be well supplied with year-round streams and rivers. Our visit to Xavier is a pleasant interlude. We are invited to stay for a meal but decline since we have had such a big brunch in the morning. We drift off to see our movie at the cineplex after first going to a small hostel for teachers in the city centre that rents hotel rooms to non-teachers as well. It is a lot cheaper and actually nicer than the hotel where we stayed last night. They have a room for us. This morning I am awakened by the sound of a girl singing outside in the street. She is selling newspapers to passing cars. She has a lovely country smile and sings beautifully, adding grace notes to the melodic line and effortlessly rising up and down the scale. The voice is strong and reaches us over the noise of the traffic. posted by *rjb,* *1:48 pm* Comments: Post a Comment
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Monday, September 26, 2005