If you want a good guide, try asking around for the local poet. My Jaltepec poet has opened my eyes to the world of the Mexican countryside. I have never before encountered such an enthusiastic companion.
We sit waiting for lunch in the town square. Look at this! he says. And we watch, transfixed, at an army of ants hard at work.
Walking along the dry fields of maize I am tiring in the hot sun. Let's go down here and look at this, he says, it's really interesting. And it is.
It's just a pile of beans, drying in the sun. But he starts to explain the process. Drying the beans. How the animals will walk round this circle, threshing the plants. The white beans will fall to the ground, and then be sifted before sale. And I can see it all, the animals turning, the beans falling, the hard grind of the peasant farmers, the low price of the beans, the need for their sons to find work in Mexico or the US, the beans arriving at my breakfast table, sustaining me throughout the day.
And suddenly the pile of dry plants is not just a pile of beans. It's...poetry, of course.
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