The Baja California
peninsula dangles from the edge of North America like
a question mark at the end of the continent. For more
than three centuries, this enigmatic land has drawn a
steady stream of seekers: explorers, adventurers,
fishers of souls, all of whom have sought, in their
own way, the nature of its mysterious question. Some
have felt that the peninsula’s question has
something to do with our very identity, so that it
draws us back again and again, as if to some parallel
home, as John Steinbeck observed in his Log from the
Sea of Cortez. “Some quality there is,” he
wrote, “that trips a trigger of recognition so
that in fantastic and exotic scenery one finds
oneself nodding and saying inwardly, ‘Yes, I
know’”.
That inward
“Yes, I know” informs the photographs in
Leland Foerster’s stunning new work The
Californios. With skill and deep understanding,
Foerster’s camera records a world of fantastic
and exotic scenery, faces unknown and unknowable that
somehow seem familiar. We feel in these photos, as
Steinbeck expressed it, a sense of returning rather
than visiting. If the question posed by Baja
California is “Who are we?”, then the
Californios may be the answer.
Today’s
Californios, descended from the soldiers and artisans
who accompanied the early European missionaries to
Baja California, live and work on ranches started a
dozen generations ago by their ancestors. The
geography of their world—precipitous mountain
canyons and rocky windswept mesas—has isolated
them, preserving a culture almost miraculously
innocent of the twenty first century. In the world of
the Californios there are few or no roads;
transportation is by foot or by mule. There are few
telephones or televisions; communication takes place
through gossip and stories when the day’s chores
are done. Trade is more likely to be by barter than
cash; there are no banks, no ATM machines, no
currency exchanges. Much of the clothing and most of
the food is generated on the ranch itself. In short,
as Foerster notes in the introduction to his book,
the Californios represent “a resilient frontier
culture”.
Thus, the sense of
recognition: The faces that smile, brood, and peer at
us from these pages are faces straight out of our own
American frontier mythology. Cheeks weathered by too
many rainless seasons, hands gnarled with years of
scrubbing laundry in cold water—Foerster’s
stark black-and-white images have the timeless
quality of myth. In the scenes of ranch life with its
livestock, crops, and daily chores, many native
Californians will recognize moments from their own
childhoods, or those of their parents. And even for
those of us without a ranch in our immediate past,
there is somehow a sense of belonging: This is where
we came from; this is who we really are. The portrait
of Ramón Arce’s family, each smiling shyly at
the unfamiliar camera, could be a portrait of a
frontier family in Alta California a century and a
half ago. The three Aguiar sisters, breathtaking in
their wild beauty as they teeter on the edge of
womanhood, bring a lump to the throat: We know these
girls; they are our own daughters and sisters.
But the power of
Foerster’s photographs derives not only from
their universality, but also from their exquisite
specificity. This photographer sees his subjects not
as symbols but as friends, and his respect for their
individuality lends great depth to his work. The
portrait of Rosario Arce, for example, captures a
facial expression as complex and enigmatic as any
Mona Lisa. It is a portrait that could have been
created only by an artist who knew and understood
that face well. Similarly, Camerina and Antonio
Villavicencio posed for a friend, not for a
photographer—he stiff and formal in his best
suit, she warm and relaxed despite her
finery—but both gazing at Foerster’s
compassionate lens with complete trust. In return
Foerster captures, with the click of a shutter, their
dignity, their humor, their wisdom. They are no more
abstract symbols to him than are the flesh-and-blood
individuals who gaze at us across the centuries from
the great portraits of Velázquez.
And like
Velázquez, Foerster records not only individuals,
but also the specific world they occupy. In the
photograph called “Esmeralda Arce Making
Tortillas”, Esmeralda’s face and hands are
only a blur of activity, while the very real buckets
and pots and pans of her kitchen glow bright and
sharp in the light from the open doorway. By
contrast, in “Chema Aguiar with Goats”, it
is the goats that are a blur of activity, while Chema
himself seems to almost float above his herd, holding
tight to his solidly constructed corral. In “The
Villavicencio Brothers Cultivating their
Garden”, the brothers’ faces are obscured;
what is illuminated is the earth itself, the
Californios’ legacy across the generations.
Baja
California’s well-known historian Harry Crosby
wrote the definitive history of the Californios,
published by the Copley Press in 1981 (and now,
regrettably, out of print). He called his book The
Last of the Californios, implying the end of an era.
And to be sure, the pressures of change reach even to
the most remote mountain ranches of Baja California.
But one of the last photos in Foerster’s book
shows a smiling young Californio, Luis Bastida,
dressed in shorts, tee shirt and teva sandals. Luis
exudes a confident energy as he stands by his garden
in the Sierra de la Giganta—a garden he
cultivates with modern techniques on the ancient land
of his grandfathers.
One of the most
memorable photographs of Foerster’s remarkable
collection is titled “Edrulfo Villavicencio
Aguilar and his daughter, Elisa”. Erdulfo lies
on what is presumably his deathbed, and his daughter
sits by him in attendance. But rather than pathos,
what shines in their faces is joy. Light suffuses the
humble room; light suffuses the photograph. We know,
in this image, that the Californios will survive.
There is a clock on the table by Erdulfo’s bed,
and it foreshadows what Foerster describes in the
text accompanying the final photo of the book:
“Unexplicably,” he writes, “the clock
stopped, and time stood still.”
Baja
California’s headlong rush into modernity
started three decades ago with the completion of the
transpeninsular highway. Since then, what was once a
stream of seekers has swollen to a torrent of
visitors that pours across the border. Cabo San Lucas
has transformed itself almost overnight from a dusty
village to a world-class tourist destination, and the
northern towns of Tijuana, Rosarito and Ensenada
welcome hordes of shoppers and revelers twenty-four
hours a day. On both coasts, the beaches boom with
surfers, divers, kayakers, whale-watchers,
sunbathers, and assorted beachcombers.
Such precipitous
change would be enough to rattle the romance and
magic from a lesser land. But Baja California is no
lesser land. She has her indomitable spine: the
mountain ranges that extend down the center of the
peninsula for almost its entire length; and she has
her soul: the Californios who bring life to those
mountains. It is typical of Leland Foerster that, of
all the magnificent images available in Baja, he
chose to record the very soul of the country. Those
of us who love Baja California, along with those of
us who will visit it only through the magic of his
vision, owe him a debt of gratitude for the enduring
gift of this book.