“Thank you very much,” responded Cam, not sure what they meant by the offer. He poured the oil into the engine and closed the hood. The two police officers smiled as Cam climbed back into the Buick. Cam started the car and gave a wave to signal he was ready. The officers kick-started their motorcycles.
Cam was telling Elvira and Evelyn what the police officers had said when the motorbike sirens began to wail. The officers looked back grinning and waved Cam on. Cam guided the Buick hauling the house trailer away from the curb and followed the two motorcycles. On both sides of the road, buses screeched to a halt, cars and horse-drawn wagons stopped dead, and trucks piled high with produce pulled to the side of the road. Cam laughed out loud. He was in Mexico City, and he felt like Moses parting the Red Sea as he made his way effortlessly through the traffic.
Chapter 14
Tetelcingo
Cam could not have planned things better if he had tried. His arrival in Mexico City coincided with the start of the two-week-long Seventh Inter-American Scientific Congress. This was an annual event where officials from all over Central America gathered to explore ways to improve the lot of the people in their countries. At the 1935 congress, the main topic on the agenda was to be how to promote the use of Indian languages. As soon as Cam had dispatched the Camp Wycliffe students to their various assignments around the country, he went straight downtown to the Palace of Fine Arts, where the congress had been convened. When he arrived there, he was recognized by a number of the congress delegates from Guatemala who invited him to take part in the various forums being held.
During the congress, Cam met many important people who showed great interest in and support for his work. Among them were Mexico’s secretary of labor, the founder and director of the Mexican Institute of Linguistic Investigations, and his old friend Rafael Ramírez, the director of rural education in Mexico. Each man enthusiastically endorsed Cam’s work and introduced Cam to many other government officials present at the congress.
On the final day, President Cárdenas addressed the congress. He did not sound to Cam at all like the radical reformer who had banned missionaries from Mexico when he first came to power. Indeed, the president seemed to be a sincere and concerned man who had the good of all Mexican people at heart. He was the first Mexican president to really concern himself with the welfare of the poorest Indians in the country, so much so that he had been nicknamed the “peasant’s president.” President Cárdenas, a small man with dark black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, was himself part Indian. Cam wished he could meet and speak personally to the president, but he knew it was impossible. There were so many other important men at the congress for President Cárdenas to talk to. Little did Cam know then that one day the president would come to speak with him!
By the time the Seventh Inter-American Scientific Congress was over, Cam had been issued a challenge. There was an Aztec-speaking village sixty miles outside Mexico City in the state of Morelos. Although the village was only a mile from the highway, its one thousand inhabitants were said to be the poorest in all of Morelos. A government official suggested Cam begin his translation work there so that everyone could see the kind of difference having the Bible in their own language would make to the people of the village.
Cam discussed the idea with Elvira and Evelyn. They got out a map of Mexico and found Morelos and then the village of Tetelcingo, located due south and situated three thousand feet lower than Mexico City. The elevation was much better for Elvira’s heart condition, and they would be only a mile from the main highway should Elvira need urgent medical help. It all seemed to fit together perfectly. Cam poured another quart of oil into the Buick’s engine and hitched up the house trailer.
Several hours later, Cam brought the old Buick with the heavy house trailer behind it to a halt. He was parked at the edge of the large dirt square in the center of Tetelcingo. Within moments, swarms of half-dressed, barefoot children emerged from the dust and surrounded the car. The children giggled and shouted to one another, but Cam could not understand a word they said. Gently he opened the car door and climbed out. Hoping someone would understand him, he announced in Spanish, “I would like to see the mayor.”
Sure enough, a short, square-faced man wearing the traditional white muslin suit and serape (the Mexican shawl men wore over one shoulder) stepped forward. Cam noticed he had a gun tucked in his belt. “I am the mayor,” said the man in perfect Spanish.
Cam smiled broadly. “Then you are just the man I have come to talk to,” he exclaimed. “But before anything else, please tell me how you say good day in your language so I can greet you properly.”
“Shimopanotli,” said the man, looking puzzled.
“Shimopanotli,” Cam replied, pulling a small notebook from his pocket and writing the word down. He then turned to the children. “Shimopanotli,” he said to them. The children laughed and elbowed each other.
The mayor chuckled, too. “I must say, no stranger has ever wanted to know how to talk like us. My name is Martin Méndez. What can I do for you, señor?”
Cam watched out of the corner of his eye as two piglets chased each other under the house trailer. “My wife and niece are in the car. We would like to live in your village,” he said.
Shock registered on the mayor’s face. “For what purpose?” he questioned.
“I would like to learn your language and write it down for you,” said Cam simply. “I have some official papers for you to look at.”
Cam reached into the car and pulled out his briefcase. He clicked the case open and pulled out some letters of recommendation a number of officials had written for him. “You speak excellent Spanish,” he commented as he handed the letters to the mayor.
Martin Méndez nodded. “Thank you,” he replied. “I am the only good Spanish speaker in the village. I served in Zapata’s army for eleven years, and I had to learn Spanish then. Now it comes in useful from time to time.” He paused to read the letters of recommendation.
“Well,” he said when he finished reading, “you are very welcome to live in our humble village. Do you intend to live in the house on wheels?”
“Yes,” replied Cam. “We have towed it all the way from the United States so we could get right to work when we arrived.”
“In that case,” said the mayor, “you can park it under the tree at the far end of the square. You will be close to the public fountain, and you will have many villagers who will visit and help you to learn our language.”
“Thank you,” said Cam with genuine appreciation. “I look forward to getting to know you better.”
Martin Méndez bowed slightly and stepped back, yelling something to the children as he did so.
The children scattered quickly as Cam guided the car and house trailer to their new home site at the far end of the town square. Soon he had the house trailer uncoupled and opened up. As he and Elvira and Evelyn arranged things inside, brown eyes stared in through the windows. The mayor was right, thought Cam. There will be no shortage of visitors here.
The house trailer became a continual source of entertainment for the village. Someone was always peering in to see what the “gringos” were doing inside. The Indians were particularly fascinated by teeth cleaning, something they had never seen before.
Life soon fell into a pattern for Cam, Elvira, and Evelyn. Elvira was still very weak and spent a good deal of her time lying in bed reading or sitting in the trailer writing letters. Evelyn took good care of her aunt. She also did the cooking and helped Cam in any way she could. The question of what to cook was a difficult one. The local Indians lived on a diet of tortillas, chilies, and a few beans. Meat consisted mainly of worms or tadpoles, which the locals ate either raw or fried. The two women could not bring themselves to eat the creatures, raw or fried, but Cam did so in an effort to make friends with the stall owners at the local market.
Cam decided one of his first jobs in Tetelcingo was to get to know the mayor, since he was the only person who could translate from Spanish into the Aztec language for him. The mayor was happy to be Cam’s friend. Since Tetelcingo was very small, he often got bored and longed for outsiders to talk to. He came to visit Cam each morning after breakfast. At these meetings, Cam learned many things about Martin Méndez. The mayor was not a happy man. At different times over the past few years he had lived with twenty-eight women. Each woman had eventually left him because of his terrible temper. The mayor told Cam that he carried his pistol with him everywhere because he had made many enemies as a result of some unfair mayoral decisions.
Besides talking to and learning Aztec words from the mayor, each morning Cam read to him from a Spanish New Testament. Soon Martin Méndez asked Cam if he could have his own copy of the New Testament. Cam eagerly gave him one, and soon the mayor was reading it aloud from the steps of the municipal building. After he had read a passage in Spanish, he would translate it into Aztec so that those who had gathered to listen could get its meaning. Sometimes he read to the people in this way for two or three hours.
Several weeks after receiving his own Spanish New Testament, Martin Méndez came to speak to Cam. “Don Guillermo, something strange is happening to me. I cannot understand it. I can’t do the things I used to do. I go to lie, and that book stops me. I can’t even get drunk or beat up my woman anymore! You must tell me what is wrong.”
Cam smiled. “You have read in the book how God can change people from the inside out. I think that is what is happening to you. Keep reading!”
A week later, Martin Méndez came to talk to Cam again. “This time I have put my gun away, don Guillermo. I do not want to wear it anymore, but I do want to buy three Bibles. I will send them to my enemies who want to kill me. I will write that this book has made me want to forgive them and that they should read it too and see if they can forgive me. I feel so different inside now, I no longer want to shoot people,” he added.
This was even more than Cam had hoped for. The mayor becoming a Christian and reading and explaining the New Testament to the village each day was not something he had anticipated, at least not so soon.
Other noticeable improvements were happening in Tetelcingo. Cam, who had grown up on and around farms, could hardly believe the dull and unbalanced diet the Indians followed. He set about showing them how to grow a wide range of foods suited to their tropical climate. The town square was the perfect place to start, except for one thing. Over the years, all the good topsoil had been carted away to make adobe bricks. Cam set about inspiring the Indians to make new soil. Thousands of baskets of pig manure, bat dung, and ashes were spread over the square, and then Cam helped the Indians construct a simple irrigation system. With new “soil” and irrigation in place, Cam set off for Mexico City in his Buick to buy seed.
Cam returned with lettuce, carrot, celery, radish, and beet seeds. These were all plants the locals had never seen before. Rafael Ramírez also sent orange and lemon trees, and soon the village square was transformed into a lush garden. The people of the village loved to walk along the brick paths that crisscrossed the garden and ask the names of the various plants growing there. They would then try to imagine what the plant or its fruit might taste like.
When it was harvest time, Cam brought the schoolchildren out into the square. He showed them how to pull up the beets and cut the lettuce heads. Next he explained how the plants should be eaten. He then sent each child home with an armful of vegetables. Soon people were asking him how they could grow their own produce.
Cam knew that the Indians would need many things to grow their own vegetables, so he began making a list. As he listened to the needs of the people of the village, the list began to grow. Finally in October 1935, Cam was ready to go back to Mexico City and ask the government for: (1) Five hundred trees to plant along the streets, (2) a doctor to visit the village regularly and treat the poor free of charge, (3) cows, (4) timber to build public toilets, (5) money for the local store to expand the stock it carried, (6) pipes with which to construct a much larger irrigation system, and (7) publication of an Aztec-Spanish primer he had been working on so that people of all ages could learn to read their own language. Finally he added an eighth item to his wish list: a swimming pool for the children.
