MEXISTAN MEXISTAN Raymond Krishchyunas Wilbur Zelinsky The fragrance of the spring steppe near Dzhezkazgan is inebriating. In Could this place be in the United States? The plaza in Santa Fe, New the area where the grasslands are not yet plowed under or overgrazed to Mexico does not seem to be standard American. The architecture suits the become a desert, where the land blooms blood red with poppies and the southwest desert and the merchandise offered by the sidewalk vendors is wild tulips grow, the memories brought back by that smell may drive a unfamiliar, but appealing in its own way - pottery and weavings, Spanish- native Kazakh or Russian alike to sense the hidden strength and vanished American food, leatherwork, mementos of the Old Anglo West. Even the glory of this land. In the restlessly nomadic Russian spirit it awakens the skies are bluer, the air more transparent, and the smells different. People subdued urge to move into open spaces; in the hearts of yesterday’s may expect something exotic in border towns like Mexicali, but this place nomads, the Kazakh people, it may stir the image of the pastoralists’ is more than 200 miles from Mexico, and no foreign flags are flapping in the happiness, expressed in the poem of Kazakh 19th century poet Abai breeze. Kunanbaev: But at a second look the city begins to feel less alien, even to East Coast On springtime pasture my people gather; Americans. The “southwestern” furniture and jewelry displayed in the shop Kinsmen embrace and rejoice together. windows look similar to ones sold in fashionable establishments back Joking and laughing, they stand and chat, east, and the more adventurous suburbs throughout the United States are About everything -from their herds to the weather. copying these Pueblo or Spanish motif buildings. But the pleasant reverie set off by the spring grasses may end abruptly Santa Fe turns out to be not an exotic place at all, but rather something with the roar and blast-off of a rocket from nearby Baikonur, for this ancient both uniquely influential and peculiarly emblematic of a special region and steppe was turned into the launching site for all Soviet manned missions a new way of thinking about places in the United States. This is the land of into space. The faces of this region could not be in greater contrast, yet is it intertwined peoples, a place clearly rooted in times long past, but a place any wonder in this place where two worlds meet? that speaks to Americans of an altogether possible postmodern future, where cultures and lifestyles hybridize into new, unpredictable forms. 1 2 3 4 A GRASSLAND COMMONS WHICH DOESN’T QUITE UNIFY AN INTERNATIONAL BORDER WHICH DOESN’T QUITE DIVIDE Almost all of the region is a wide belt of dry grasslands and semi-deserts. To the The international boundary between Mexico and the United States bisects two halves north lie the steppes and forest; to the south, the mountains of Central Asia with which are certainly distinct, yet are intimately intertwined. It is this line that gives their intricate lace of piedmont oases. From ancient times this sea of grass was home vitality and substance to the entire region, acting as the spine or central organizing to a succession of nomadic peoples who navigated it on camel and horseback. For mechanism. “Mexistan” is the place where two streams of people and their cultures have the nomads the grasslands, extending from China to the very doorstep of Europe, entered, met head-on, and intersected, one arriving from the south, the other from the were a highway of expansion and a base of operations for plundering richer sedentary east and north, and both superimposing themselves upon various earlier, stubbornly neighbors to the north and south. The Kalmyk people in the extreme west who speak surviving Native American societies. a Mongol-related language and profess Buddhism are an exotic reminder of the past The border is a crucible for intense interaction and some remarkable international unity of the huge nomadic sea. chemistry, an interface that has sprayed its effects far into the interiors of the U.S. and The heirs to the latest wave of nomads, the Kazakhs and Kirgiz, are a product of the Mexico alike. It is difficult to think of any other border that jostles together two such blending of various local Turkic peoples with Mongol invaders. Their languages are utterly different ways of life. More than 1500 miles in length, it has much in common Turkic, while in racial type they are distinctly Mongoloid. Among the Kazakhs, Kirgiz with many other international boundaries established by the imperial European powers and Turkmens, the nomadic way of life prevailed until the 20th century, and nomadic and their settler colonies during the 19th Century. Generally, there was little thought traits are still a visible element of their culture. The origins of the ethnic name “Kazakh” given to historical or cultural realities, but maximum attention to national power, are probably the same as of “Kazak” (the Russian for Cossack) and are often traced to profit, and convenience. The outcome is the legacy of a one-sided conflict and US the Turkic “qaz” (to wander). invasion in the 1840s and the subsequent diplomatic armtwisting, and has never made a great deal of sense in terms of either physical or human geography. Being a nomad is practically defined through cattle ownership. Abai Kunanbaev wrote, “Honor, reason, science, all for them is less than the herds. They think that by the The Rio Grande is a flimsy, porous barrier since its waters are only waist-deep or even gift of livestock they receive the good opinion even of God. For them religion, the lower much of the time. Elsewhere the boundary is a sequence of straight segments people and influence is all livestock.” Even the souls of dead ancestors were believed to that blithely ignore the lay of the land and seldom impede the determined wanderer. occupy animal bodies. The Kirgiz, with their annual migrations from alpine pastures to In fact, the whole U.S.-Mexican boundary has always been a rather permeable sort of lower valleys, were nomadic as well and are closely related to Kazakhs, although their membrane, so much so that the social and cultural presence of the foreign neighbor is mountain environment is quite different from dry grasslands. readily detectable some hundreds of miles beyond the border checkpoints. 5 6 Both the Kazakhs and Kirgizs became distinctly separate people around the year The least “Mexican” segment of Mexico may be the northern Mexican states along the 1500, about the same time as the emergence of their future adversaries, Russians border - places in which the imprint of North American culture is inescapable - and and Uzbeks. Ever since, the region has been either a buffer or a bridge between two likewise, in terms of U.S. territory, New Mexico, roughly half of Arizona and Texas, mutually opposed worlds: European-Christian Russia to the north and Islamic Central and small slivers of Colorado and California are the least standard region within the Asia (where the Uzbeks dominated) to the south. Maneuvering between these two U.S based on the traditional Anglo definition of what is American. But perhaps these expansionist forces, the Kazakhs managed to preserve the independence of their tribal terms are already out-of-date, and here in Mexistan, a new idea of “American” is being federations until the mid-19th century, when Central Asia was annexed by the Russian born. Empire in the worldwide scramble for colonies. The native population found itself within the same state with Russia and Islamic Asia and was heavily influenced by both. Where Mexico Meets Anglo-America But even if the two once opposed worlds overlapped here, they have as yet hardly The initial European thrust into the region came in the 1540s, not long after the blended. The grassland commons are vast enough to be shared by both Europe and conquest of Mexico. Motivated by rumors of opulent cities to the north, Spanish Asia, presenting the two faces of the dual society of the region. explorers marched through New Mexico and as far as Kansas before turning back with Where Russia and Islam Converge empty hands. So great was their disillusionment that it was not until 1598 that the Spanish regime founded the first church missions and settler colonies in the upper Rio Even a hundred years ago the nomadic corridor was much wider. But for the sedentary Grande valley. The settlers were few because the economic potential of the area was so neighbors of the nomads, the grasslands were an open frontier. By the late 18th century, meager and the supply lines and communications to the well-settled core area of New Southern Ukraine and lands on the Volga were lost to the nomad and gained by the Spain were so slow and hazardous. Nevertheless this remote outpost has somehow Slav farmer. What remained was no longer the commons for the nomads’ wandering, persisted, and the descendants of the pioneer generations still cling proudly to their but rather their besieged refuge. Already by the 17th century, Russian and Kazakh Spanish (rather than simply Mexican) heritage. The introduction of European cultural expansion clashed in the zone between the Siberian forests and the grasslands - the zone items, most notably livestock, metal-working, and an assortment of grains, fruits, that was summer pastures to the Kazakhs, but virgin lands waiting for the plow from vegetables, and other domesticated plants, meant considerable change in the economy the European viewpoint. and lifestyles of the surviving Native American groups.