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THE LIME TREES OF MICHOACAN A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree A5 ' 30 Master of Arts ErtGClO In • 5 8 3 * English: Creative Writing by Rene Juarez-Vazquez San Francisco, California Spring 2016 Copyright by Rene Juarez-Vazquez 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read The Lime Trees of Michoacan by Rene Juarez-Vazquez, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Peter Orner, M.F.A Creative Writing Professor JC- Nona Caspers, M.F.A Creative Writing Professor C jjJ . Alejandro Murguia, M.F.A Latino Studies Department Chair THE LIME TREES OF MICHOACAN Rene Juarez-Vazquez San Francisco, California 2016 A farmer in Mexico is forced to defend his lime farm with force after a drug cartel orders his family from their ancestral home. The story will be told in third person and will contain themes centered around Mexican and Aztec philosophy, family, devotion, inheritance, and crime abroad. I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. k}. ..y lA Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this moment to thank all involved in this creative process. My partner Daelana Angela Victoria Burrell. My editors Amy Jones and Martin Oropeza. My mentor Alejandro Murguia, and my advisor, Maxine Chemoff. This story wouldn’t have been possible without all their help through out the past year. v 1 Santiago Bautista walked shoulder to shoulder, next to his son. He wanted show his son the family’s lime tree the same way his father had shown him when he was a boy. Father and son treaded on the old path adjacent to the old river that led into the time tested orchards. Lime trees were originally foreign in Mexico, with the Spaniards having brought them over in the 16th century. Santiago’s father had brought him here in the same fashion he was bringing Carlos. Hundreds of beautiful trees covered his property, green leaves, earth tone branches and trunks and of course the verdant and lush limes, perfect and flawless in color. Santiago’s father had taught him the Spanish brought over thousands of seeds and saplings during their conquest of Mexico. Scurvy was the reason history relayed to the world about the arrival of the limes trees, but Santiago’s father said the trees called out spread across the world and the Spanish had simply obeyed. By the twilight of the Spanish conquest there were more trees than the tallest man could see for miles and miles covering the fields of Colima and other towns know historically for their lime gardens and fruit farms. The Mexican lime trees evolved from Persian trees brought from Spain. They were cousins of the American key lime and both had their thorns bred out to ease the picking process. The lime trees on the Bautista orchard continued to carry their thorns. Years of meticulous breeding by the Bautista forefathers had created a perfect green lime that held an optimal amount of juice and flesh while retaining the thorns on the branches. His father’s opinion regarding the thorny lime trees was that they were perfect. Santiago wanted to show his son Carlos these perfect green limes in the same fashion his father had done for him. 2 The orchard sat twenty minutes away from the house by foot. It was sunset and the crickets began to sing their songs, coyotes in the hills howled. Carlos was glued on his phone, swiping away at the screen and tapping his fingers in rapid succession on the glass During the picking seasons Santiago, Carlos and their workers rode horses to the orchards where they would work tirelessly before hauling in their yield with tractors. Before they could afford tractors, workers, farmhands, and other equipment, the Bautista family did the harvest themselves. They walked to the orchard on foot and returned on foot. Miguel Bautista, Santiago’s father, was an only child. He left his father and the land at twenty years old, vowing never to be a lime farmer. He went to Mexico City to study numbers and business. At thirty, he returned to the family orchards with enough business acumen to turn the family farm into a successful business. He took out a loan and tripled the money in a year, allowing the family to purchase equipment and hire seasonal workers. One thing was missing from the picture, a family. Miguel Bautista left his father and mother as a young man, returned in his thirties and became a father at forty, much older than the other men in town, who at that age were changing the diapers of grandchildren and the occasional great-grand child. Not wanting to be like his father, Santiago had three children, Carlos at twenty-one, Manuel at twenty-three and Monica at twenty-four. He wanted more children but his wife no longer could carry children to term. Santiago counted his three blessings and cherished all his children. The two walked with their donkey, the baskets on his brown wooly side empty, except for a rooster they brought with them. “I’ve seen the trees before, Dad,” Carlos said, finally putting his phone away. “Not in this way Mz/'o,” Santiago replied with smile on his face. “I pick them every year with you, Alejandro, Benito and everyone else.” This was true, Carlos would pick the fruit with their workers every couple of months. “It’ll be a good lesson. I promise,” Santiago said. “It’s Friday night dad, I want to go into town tonight. This wont take long will it?” “No, I promise, it won’t take long,” Santiago said. “Good, I wanted to hang out with Alejo and a few people tonight.” “You’re hanging around with that Granada kid again? What do you have in common with him? He was arrested a few months ago. What do you see in him?” “He’s better company than all these chuntis that live around here.” Santiago turned to his son, disgust on his face. “What did I tell you about saying things like that?” “Whoa, relax dad it was just a joke.” “You are no better than anyone else. I’m dark and you’re the same shade as me. Watch your tongue.” 4 “Yeah dad, and we’re also over a foot taller than most people. We also look pretty good the last time I checked, except for Manuel, but Manuel doesn’t count.” “Leave your brother out of this. Can we please not argue? I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t argue during this. I promised you it wouldn’t take that long. You’ll have plenty of time to go out with your friends later on.” “Fine,” Carlos huffed “I’ll stop arguing with you, dad.” They arrived at the lime trees. Forty acres, all theirs. The trees had been brought during the Spanish conquest. Originally they were Persian fruits brought to Spain by one conquest. The more recent one of the Americas had brought the Spanish lime here where it bred into the Mexican version. The Bautistas had always lived on this land. They lived here when they were pure Indio and they were here after the Spanish forced themselves into their bloodline. When Emiliano Zapata rode into town during the revolution, A Spanish family still owned the land. Santiago’s family worked it of course, even if it wasn’t their land on paper. Zapata offered the share croppers many things if they joined him; fame, women, guns, horses, a chance to kill the people at the top. The Bautista family only asked for their land. Zapata agreed and with his blessing the Spanish family was slaughtered that very night. The Spanish family was buried among the trees. Santiago’s family had inherited the trees generations ago and no longer had a connection to anything Spanish. However, the Bautista’s feared their spirits would walk the land in anger. If they were buried among the trees, their spirits would sustain the trees in the afterlife creating bittersweet joy for them in death so their spirits would not linger and 5 haunt the land. The lime trees had been tended by the Bautista family officially since then, but in reality, the family had been tending the land before anyone. Santiago extended his arm into a lime tree. He plucked of one of the tree’s biggest fruits and returned his arm to his side unscathed, years of picking the limes had hardened his brown skin. When Carlos was a boy, he grabbed a lime without being careful and had shredded his arm. Santiago told him to wash the blood off in the river. He knew his son’s hands and arms would eventually match his, scarred and rough from years of tending the trees and picking the limes. Santiago looked at his seventeen-year-old son’s arm. They would still be cut if he reached into the heart of a tree like he just did. They were getting close to being like his, not yet though, another few years when Carlos’ arms were rough would be the proof Santiago would need to pass over the farm to his son. In the meantime, Santiago would have to prepare his son to take care of the trees.

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