Regular readers will be familiar with my several previous
postings about the San Javier Mission, the second Mission to be established after
the original one was founded here in Loreto about 300 years ago. I have written before about the 30+ km drive
into the Sierra de La Giganta mountain range west of here and the tiny hamlet
surrounding the historic building itself, the oldest un-restored Mission in the
Baja. I have expressed how I am moved by
the sense of history and spirituality every time I return to visit this special
place.
However, in spite of frequent visits, the community of San
Javier itself has remained an enigma to me – a cluster of small buildings
bordering the unexpectedly wide avenue leading to the Mission building with one
or two palapa style restaurants (that may, or may not, be open on any given day)
a MINI “mini-super” with little stock on the shelves, other than the ubiquitous
Coca-Cola cooler, bags of spicy chips and foil wrapped cookies.
Beyond the Mission building itself, are the irregular shaped
fields that are cultivated with onions in season and the orchards of olive and
fruit trees, with a few livestock and, of course, territorial dogs – evidence
of a larger population that is largely invisible to most of the casual
visitors. However “connected” I have
felt on a spiritual level, after a visit to San Javier, I often left there feeling
that I have missed connecting with the real place that is San Javier today.
But that has now
begun to change!
This change started for me last week when I went to an open
meeting here in Loreto Bay at the Community Center, sponsored by the Loreto Bay
Volunteers, on behalf of Living Roots, a non-profit organization with the goal
of nurturing and assisting the ranchero lifestyle and culture in the Sierra de
La Giganta region surrounding Loreto (www.livingrootsbaja.org
). The meeting was an introduction to
McKenzie Campbell, the co-founder and director of Living Roots, accompanied by
several residents of San Javier who are part of the organization she has been
working to develop over the past several years.
The presentation that took place here was coordinated
through the Loreto Bay Volunteers organization, some of whose members have
assisted in the beginnings of Living Roots, and was to announce the official
opening of a newly completed cultural center and marketplace in San Javier last
weekend, so your “Faithful Scribe” decided that this would be a worthy Blog
item and made plans to attend. There have
been some significant improvements to the San Javier road since my last visit a
couple of months ago (http://livingloreto.blogspot.mx/2013/01/san-javier-redux-post-paul.html
) the paving has been completed on the last stretch of the approach to the
community, although there are still the other washouts through the
mountains.
For the occasion, shade tents had been erected at the
entrance where a couple of celebratory cakes were on display as well as some
cold drinks. Inside there were several
small displays of locally produced handcrafts including leatherwork, quilts,
embroidery, preserves and baking, among other things. Establishing direct market access for locally
produced goods is a primary goal of Living Roots, with the dual benefits of
preserving traditional skills and generating commerce for the local
craftspeople.
Although, from a merchandise point of view, the offerings
were modest, the obvious pride and enthusiasm of the people who there that had
made the goods was evident, as was the pride of ownership they had, as members
of the community, for what they had accomplished in building the cultural
center itself. But as the afternoon
passed, I came to appreciate that probably the most significant element was the
“sea-change” that was evidenced by the very existence of this Living Roots
organization – for a community that had changed little in perhaps hundreds of
years and an economy that had been largely self-sufficient and supplemented by
barter – now was making its first tentative steps towards modern commerce.
I also realized that this incipient commercialism was almost
exclusively being undertaken by the women of the community. McKenzie told me a story that serves as an
example of this feminine entrepreneurship.
During the Festival of San Javier, an annual celebration of the
Mission’s Patron Saint’s day held in early December that attracts hundreds of
pilgrims and people participating in the combination county fair/carnival
atmosphere that overwhelms the hamlet every year, one of the women who had
become involved in Living Roots decided to put up a hot-dog stand – her first
such venture at the Festival, although she had grown up in the community. She also had her portable wood stove set up
from which she was making and selling tortillas, and while she sold lots of
hot-dogs, what surprised her the most was that her tortilla stove attracted a
standing room crowd of fascinated on-lookers waiting to be customers.
Now that the Cultural Center has been launched and is
staffed by contributing volunteers, the next project is to establish a
self-guided nature walk of the surrounding area, including the orchards that
date back almost three centuries to the Jesuit founders of the original
mission. Listening to McKenzie, there
are many more ambitious plans for new products and projects in the future, and
as this initial San Javier Living Roots “takes root” and becomes self
sustaining, it will become a model that will be duplicated in a network of
other ranchero communities within Baja California Sur.
What I took away from my afternoon visit to San Javier was a
new appreciation of the underlying community that has existed there for many
generations, but has remained largely invisible to the average casual visitor
who comes to see history in the form of the Mission building, and then leaves
again, without having made a connection to the living history that is
represented by the people who call this place home. But on second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t be
surprised by the revelation that an organization called Living Roots could make
a big impact on “Living Loreto”! 
