Querendaro Station
April 6 – 29, 2000
Portraits from a small place
These portraits are from the small village Estacion Querendaro (Querendaro Station) in the State of Michoacan in central Mexico. Like many small rural Mexican communities, Querendaro Station is attempting to bridge the gap between the traditional agricultural lifestyle of rural Mexico and the changing demands of the modern post NAFTA world. No longer able to sustain itself entirely by agriculture and having no commercial nor industrial base, a community such as Querendaro Station is able to survive in part by the migration of its young men and women to labor in the factories and fields of far off places, often requiring them to cross the border to find work as immigrants in the United States.
My first awareness of Querendaro Station came from working with a group of immigrant workers, around 15 to 20 in all, from this particular little village in central Mexico. I was curious. Who were these tough workers I was working with? Where did they come from? What was the life like back in their hometown? As I came to know them better I saw how they were living up here, mostly living lightly in sparsely furnished apartments on the cheap side of town. Their job required working long hours. They were committed to sending money back to their families in Mexico. They seemed to be in no hurry to acclimate to the Anglo culture, as if by learning English they would somehow jeopardize their loyalty to their place of origin. Each year as autumn came to an end, when the roofing work around the Pacific Northwest has slowed to a crawl, some of them who could afford to would return to winter over at their pueblo of Querendaro Station. I realized that I needed to pay this place a winter’s visit.
The train no longer stops at the old railroad station, now just an inert pile of bricks holding up a sign from another age, from a time when this was the railroad connection for the nearby Hacienda of Querendaro, hence the name Querendaro Station. This small town is pressed against the south shore of Lake Cuitzeo. Every year the white pelicans return to winter in the shallow waters of the lake. Lake Cuitzeo is now separated from the adjacent village by a toll way, running between Guadalajara and Mexico City. The toll way and the town, products of different times, of different priorities, are in no way connected. In the flat between this modern four lane elevated expressway and the village lies a bare dirt soccer field. A rocky footpath leads up from the pitch to the town which is comprised of the old railroad station, a church, a school, a few stores and agricultural buildings as well as several hundred brick houses clustered around a dead end road. This road connects it to the community of Francisco Villa on the road to Zinapecuaro.
I arrive in winter, and many of the village’s emigrant workers have already come trickling back from afar to their homes, friends and families. For them this is a time to rest, a time for celebration, for spending time with friends and families. In this town, which at that time (1997) had only two telephones, visiting is the order of the day. Those who have been successful in their work abroad return with their hard won earnings. Some of the more ambitious of these returnees are already at work using these resources to construct or expand houses for their growing families. Some of the younger returnees seem to be content just hanging out with their buddies. There are stories to share, games to play. I am received with great hospitality on my visit, as though I was royalty. The winter’s return of the town’s emigrant workers is duly noted by those next in line who, if now out of school, can see that the time indeed is coming when they too will have to pack up a few possessions and make the journey from this comfortable familiar place, where they know everyone and are known by everybody, to migrate to a larger, stranger world. For surely after the winter comes the spring when the wintering workers, as well as the pelicans, will again depart from the shores of the large shallow lake and make that journey to the North.
-William Washburn
