Tough Men for a Tough Land
Anguila Mesa is a special place for me. After all, I spent many of my growing years studying every visible nook and cranny for hours at a time, sitting on the front porch of the Lajitas Trading Post. It was the mesa that provided the most used routes for the loads of smuggled candelilla wax coming out of Mexico, and spotting them from afar gave us time to make ready.
To this day I can see that misshapen, massive, man killing mess of boulder, cacti and rock and a hundred memories come to mind, followed by another hundred and more. Gunfights, raging storms, unsolved murders, miles of nothing but heat and thirst, and those burro trains snaking across, through and around, brought in by whiplike, sunburnt, small statured men who had not an ounce of quit in them.
Smuggling has been the number one economy for this part of the river for some three hundred years now, and before then it was called ‘trading’ as no government officials were around to levy a tax or make some rule or regulation. Comanche Crossing at Lajitas carried the flow of traffic then, utilized by the ancients a long time before the first mounted kɨmantsi ever saw the lower Big Bend.
But when the customs houses and line boundaries came into existence, those who were not well disposed to either started moving their wares through Anguila Mesa. Guns, liquor, dope, jerked meat, raw ore, livestock, the wax business and more than a few humans were carried across from both directions, and for a long time the powers that be had not a clue or simply looked the other way.
Yet there was more to the story than that, as this treacherous old chunk of real estate and its fellows proved a serious, even deadly obstacle to any and all who entered their realms, government official or no. You had to know the shelters, the trails, the tinajas, the crossings, the terrain, the weather patterns and be as tough as the land itself to be accustomed to it, and too many times that was not enough.
If there was one place in this country where the ball marked ‘Darwinism’ was in full play, it was Anguila Mesa. In fact it still is, as more than one fumble butted fool has found out the hard way. Education and knowledge can be two completely different concepts out here.
The photo enclosed was taken from the higher heights of the mesa, looking down into a nameless canyon that provided one of the four main routes through, and most often used. There was no telling, no measurement, of the miseries found in this crevice, and likely still occasionally occurs. The way it sits makes for a natural oven during the summer months, especially in the early afternoon hours. Add to that is the attending humidity rising off the nearby river.
All in all it’s not even a nice place to visit for most but I still come when I can, seeking the last remnants of those fading old memories.
God bless to all,
Ben
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