I found my wife on page 19.

“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”  --Jorge Luis Borges

One decade ago I read about my future in a history book.  For a variety of reasons, I read the complete fiction of Borges at the end of summer 2014. However, this account begins several years previously.  During my senior year at the University of Nebraska (2009-10) I picked up this book A Social History of Mexico's Railroads by Teresa Van Hoy. I do not remember whether it was in a giveaway pile in the Honors Dorm or an impulse buy at the bookstore. I only remember my intention when I acquired it: to expand and diversify my library. And an outlier addition it was! No remotely related books could serve as shelf-mates. I sandwiched it between European history books.  I read the introduction and launched into the second chapter. Like the strategically-planned Tehuantepec railroad in Southern Mexico in the 1880s, my progress ground to a halt. Indigenous indignation (of the righteous sort) and rain mired the railroad's construction. Thickets of my own confusion tangled my personal progress. I loved trains when I was 10 and the cover had a nice looking locomotive that caught my eye. Sales receipts, economic data, and lessons of Porfiriato hubris hardly held my interest. Chief project engineer Alejandro Prieto attempted to expropriate peasants' land without prior compensation and little notice. It didn't go so well. That's where I stopped reading and went on with my life. I moved to Indiana, did a master's degree at Notre Dame. Then to Kansas, I started a doctorate, and subsequently took a job in Houston. The books--forgotten or not--always followed me. A Social History of Mexico's Railroads was gathering dust at this point. I plunked myself down in a small apartment smack dab in the center of a sprawling, sweltering concrete jungle. Teaming with 5 million people and 1 million stray dogs, it was a cultural, culinary wonderland. Forty miles of light pollution on all sides cloaked the night sky (one of the Space City's ironies). But who needs the black cavities of space when one has shimmering black gold snaking in silently from all directions? It powers a powerful city and, in a roundabout way, fed, clothed, sheltered, and entertained me. The Bayou boom-town is a youngster, even by North American standards. Few people have been there long and plentiful work lures settlers, carpetbaggers, hustlers and hucksters alike.   

Houston, energy city, shrouded in Gulf Coast fog

Eighty or 90 years is a long time by Houston standards. So, Liz's family has been around Houston for a "long time." Shortly after meeting Liz through a mutual friend at the Co-Cathedral in Houston, I visited her home for a meal. We were sitting in the living room and her mother pointed to a series of photos on the wall behind an antique radio cabinet. Beginning with her parents, there were four consecutive generations of wedding portraits--all mothers and daughters. The series terminated with an elaborately dressed couple behind beveled glass in the far left corner of the room.  When I asked about the people, Liz's mother responded, "Her name was Prieto. He was Delgado. They were Italian and he came from Italy as an engineer for the construction of the railroad." 

I couldn't clear those sentences from my ears. I've done enough family history to know that there are always bits of truth in even the most convoluted stories--usually a question of untangling mixed narratives. What she said sounded familiar but also not quite right. (Delgado is, after all, not an Italian surname!) So, I began digging and researching. As I read, translated, transcribed, and patched together nouns, a story emerged. On one hand, it was completely new work. A characteristic sense of ownership welled up--my original work, my excavation and reconstruction--an intrinsic reward that comes with any such labor, especially original research or writing. I slashed my way out of the concrete jungle without moving an inch, nevertheless blazing a trail deep into southern Mexico. Yet, the more I cut into this particular past--distant in both space and time--the more familiar it seemed. Names of people and places resonated with my own past. In a couple months I realized that the bride's uncle was the man mentioned on page 19 of  Van Hoy’s A Social History of Mexico's Railroads.

Isthmus of Tehuantepec, showing the Chivela Pass

After returning from Guatemala where he was secretary to his brother-in-law/ambassador, Alejandro Prieto was appointed chief engineer of the Tehuantepec Railroad in 1884. President Porfirio Diaz had an eye for men who believed that infrastructure, and scientific thinking would bring Mexico into the 19th century (even as the century neared its close!) As Diaz consolidated his power following election (not "re-election") in 1884, the trans-isthmus railroad funneled 400 years of dreams into one point. At the Chivela Pass in Oaxaca, the western hemisphere's backbone tapers to a 800 foot summit. To the north, a slow decline--about 100 miles of thick jungle--terminates at the Bay of Campeche. To the south, after a quick drop of 20-odd miles, the land slides into the Pacific Ocean. It is Mexico's narrowest point. Since Cortés, power brokers and colonial dons dreamed of severing the gap (and thus the continent, thereby dominating the hemisphere's economy). In the summer, winds from the Gulf of Mexico tear through the gauntlet--"Tehuana winds"--and rush into the Pacific with a force that can strip paint from ships. In 1884 the ascendant dictator hoped to thread the railroad through this needle's eye. But it was not to be (at least for another decade and a half!)

Félix Diaz Mori--brother of the future president, killed in Juchitán

In the 20-odd miles between Chivela Pass and the Pacific sit a handful of ancient Zapotec towns. No one--not God, not nature, not man--has completely conquered them in millenia. A catastrophic 8.2 magnitude earthquake could not raze Juchitán in 2017. In the 1529, following the fall of Tenochtitlan, Charles V granted Hernán Cortés this land as Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca. These haciendas of sugar cane and indigo passed through his descendants until the Independence of Mexico. Even then, in the early 19th century, European and North American travel writers regarded the locals' stubborn syncretism with as much curiosity as faint disdain. Today, Juchitán still garners fame for its "muxes"--transgender women who dominate social life and heckle market-going passersby without shame. In 1872, Félix Diaz--Porfirio's brother and governor of Oaxaca--abducted a likeness of the town's patron saint in his liberal zeal, lopping off his legs. When the Juchitecos got ahold of him, they summarily murdered him and mutilated the corpse. 

In 1883-84, Alejandro Prieto--like generations of criollos before him--did his bidding and tried to pull a "fast one" on the Zapotecs just outside Juchitán. Invoking a hastily passed imminent domain law, his job was to confiscate small tracts of land for the railroad right-of-way. It was a disaster. Land owners invoked the law's provision for due notice and the federal government screwed them on not having perfected titles. (Virtually no one did!) But this was "kicking the hornet's nest." Many hunkered down, and those who had means mounted legal challenges. For his part, Alejandro attempted to compensate some landowners out of the company coffers. This did not play well in Mexico City! The company had laid barely 20 miles of track from the Pacific and stalled.  Alejandro employed his younger brother Rodolfo as the pagador for what was becoming a sleepy project. (It's not clear to me whether this was a payroll manager or the person in charge of dolling out the expropriation indemnities to cranky landowners). 

Wind-farm at La Venta

Regardless, Rodolfo kept busy. In the spring of 1884 the railroad terminated north of Juchitán, at the foot of Chivela Pass. The pueblo was called Ixtepec but it was part of La Venta--at that point an indigo plantation on former Marquesanas. (Today, a wind-farm capitalizes on the torrential gusts that sweep through the pass in this aptly named place). There, a tenuously-employed Rodolfo knocked-up an 18 year-old native named Micaela. The daughter, born in January 1885, is the woman in the wedding portrait in the corner of Liz's living-room.