With the recent death of 94 year-old Doña Chuy, current memory of the wall and gate is becoming mistier, receding as a shadow touched by darkness, falling away into the unrecorded past. Built in turbulent, repressive times following the Mexican Revolution and Cristero Rebellion, it remained, until 1935, a veritable wedge, separating the two barrios of the community destined, as it grew, to become a village on the southwest shore of Lake Chapala. On the east side of the wall lived the "prietos", dark skinned indigenous people; on the west side lived the "güeros", lighter skinned, mixed blood mestizos.
Great hand-forged iron hinges protested the nightly closing of the imposing gate, the authoritative clank of the chain and large key in the padlock. The huge rock wall, built with such rancor, must have seemed a sheer mountain to village children, the hand-adzed planks of the gate, a ladder to the sky.
The staunch silvered mesquite gate posts bore many scars, some from horns of cattle funneling through the gate but also from a resentful machete-wielding man, crazy drunk. God too had his say when lightning split and burned one post. Ignoring the omen, the güero men fashioned another, equally hefty.
Daily horse-drawn carts with great spokes on the iron-clad wheels, animals of burden, herds of cattle, and workers passed back and forth through the gate. "The wall was necessary for commerce," intoned Doña Chuy, as did her peers. Indeed, commerce was active in this fertile alluvial valley where people toiled from sunup to sundown producing abundant crops. Brigades of men shouldering yokes with buckets of water from hand-dug wells irrigated the fields. Burro trains carrying produce to Guadalajara traveled varied trails to elude "Cristero" bandits for those were days when med robbed and killed wantonly and peril stalked the land.
Friendship, playing and courting were discouraged between the two barrios. Only the "small heads", a genetically impaired family moved with impunity on either side, their open smiling faces exuding innocence.
Life was harsh and demanding, many times brutal by necessity. A girl, who scorched a garment with the heavy charcoal-burning iron, had the iron burned into her hand; a child who allowed cattle to stray earned a welt-raising whipping. If a cow kicked over a bucket of milk, the milker did not eat that day.
It was during this time of friction and distrust that the Garcia/Hernandez feud was born. Only after nine appalling murders that spanned several generations did it wear itself out with the shooting of a gentle, dignified 65 year-old man 15 years ago.
On day in 1935, in a dash to avoid the crushing hooves of a stampeding herd of cattle, a fair-complected child scaled the slippery planks of the gate, lost his balance, and toppled head first staining the cobbles red. Being only 5 years old, the child was considered, in Mexican culture, an angel and he seemed so as he lay in the simple white washed pine box. The wake, surprisingly enough, was attended by people from both barrios, their natural love of children overcoming restriction, sorrow being their fragile link. Illuminated by candlelight, they sang throughout the night, women's voices alternating with the men's, "Adios, mi amor," "Goodbye, my love". However, tears could not erase the tragedy of the child's death nor the social injustice and insult of the gate and wall.
The following day, by common assent, the gate was dismantled. But change is slow and to this day, the barrios are still identified as prieto and güero and disparity remains.
Was the gate really necessary for commerce, Doña Chuy?
