Journey to Xibalba: A Life in Archaeology

Letter continued

TheHouseofBats(MonteAlbanProject)฀฀ v฀฀ 203 gypsy flamenco guitar player with the unlikely name of Wolfgang Fink. Everyone called him Lobo. Lobo was more than just a musician. He was also a composer. Technically, he had the fastest right hand I had ever seen in a guitar player. He practiced eight hours a day and played in the restaurant every evening for his food and his share of the rent. It was one of my most wonderful experiences in Oaxaca. One weekend near the end of my stay in Oaxaca, I asked Lobo if he would like to go over to the coast for a couple of days. He expressed his desire to go but lacked funds for the flight. We cut a deal. I would pay his airfare and hotel and he would provide our meals. It worked out great and he didn’t have to spend a cent. The first night in Puerto Escondido, he played a couple of his compositions on his guitar and the owner of the restaurant plied us with food. Of course the restaurateur was happy. His place completely filled every time Lobo played. When Lobo left Oaxaca, he went to San Miguel de Allende where he lived with my wife and me for a while. He played at Mama Mia’s for several years and finally hooked up with a fiddle player as crazy as himself . Over the last few years, they have made ten CD recordings, the last three or four on Atlantic Records. v฀v฀v฀ LETTER CONTINUED v฀v฀v By some miracle, I returned from Oaxaca to the Federal District with the five men, documentation team intact. We didn’t have an office and the team didn’t have a place to stay. Paco’s and my apartment doubled as the team’s work space and dormitory. Luckily, our apartment was less than three blocks from the main administration offices of INAH and less than four blocks from the Direction of Pre-Hispanic Monuments and the Department of Museums. After turning over my report to Don Gaston and Eduardo Villa, we began the initial discussion of a Monte Alban publication. Eduardo suggested that apart from INAH’s in-house publication department, I get at least two different printing companies’ estimates for the job. He also suggested that we hire a commercial artist to help design the catalog . He had someone in mind and showed me a sample of his work on the recently published book by INAH, Corazón de Copil. While I busied myself with contacting the commercial designer and reputable publishers and began the laborious task of writing, the rest of the crew took on the tedious burden of organizing and indexing the documentation materials for the publisher. In between my traumatic typing battles, taking out the wastepaper basket that I filled several times a day, and coordinating the work for the catalog’s publication, I relaxed by visiting friends. This was easy enough to do, as almost all my friends were employees of INAH. Most of them had offices near the apartment. Although they were not all archaeologists, this was the group I associated with the most. We usually ate breakfast or lunch together at some nearby restaurant. Paco’s and my apartment became a center for numerous gatherings , formal as well as informal. The formal meetings centered on Mesoamerica in general, personal projects, philosophy, and professional ethics, and now and then a little gossip filtered in. Surprisingly , very little grilla (bad-mouthing) of either the institution or its employees took place. If we complained at all, it was generally about the amount of gossip and grilla that permeated the institution . Moreover, I can’t remember an angry phrase or word ever being uttered in the apartment. I guess we got along well and didn’t get tired of one another because most of us had projects that took us away from the city, and each other, for long periods of time. Oddly enough, it was a comfortable, as well as an exciting, period in my life. It lasted for two months. Then, Eduardo Villa sent word for me to come to his office. v฀v฀v 204฀฀ v฀฀ L E T T E R C O N T I N U E D ...