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Published: January 29th 2017
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El Vaquero
Fabian and his horse Pajarito Chelesando Mason tells me about the boots of Pastores THE BOOTS OF PASTORES
By Dennis Cunningham
Antigua - Pastores, Guatemala
Fabian, the vaquero I am shaking hands with in the flatlands of Guatemala, is a leathery, lean man. A perfect coil of rope hangs from his burnished wood-horned saddle, the leather of which, by the way, is the same color as his skin. They both have a kind of coppery, buttery polish. White brahmas amble along behind him in the dry field. They are white and long-eared, their horns curving up stylishly. He has just finished lassoing one of them and injecting her with a mammoth dose of pink liquid from a syringe with a barrel the size of a soda can. He can make his horse dance like Fred Astaire, skipping sideways, and then back, then forward, taking little high steps as if he’s prancing on hot coals.
“Oh yes, he’s a very good horse, very smart. But sometimes he bucks, almost throws me off, when he doesn’t want to work.”
I ask what his name horse’s name is.
“Pajarito Chelasando Mason,” Fabian tells me.
By Guatemalan standards that is only 75% of a name. Everyone here seems
Concepcion
The bus to Pastores from the central market to have at least four. Fabian has that many, and I christen him with a fifth: de los Caballos. He smiles.
“I like your boots,” I say. They are classic working cowboy, dusty, but somehow Fabian has maintained on them the same burnish as his saddle and skin. The back of the heel is angled. The toes pointed like knife tips.
“I heard there is a place near Antigua,’ I say, “called Pastores, where you can find fine boots.”
“Yes, very beautiful boots. In Pastores they can make you a pair, just for you, if you want. You should go.”
And with that he slips a boot into the closed stirrup and swings himself onto Pajarito, landing as lightly as a leaf. He waves to me and trots off, he and his horse barely making a hoof print in the dry ground on the ranch.
The next day I stand in the cool mountain air of Antigua, the black perfect cones of volcanoes surrounding me. Mayan women stroll, selling their wares, clothed in an abundance of color. They balance bundles of cloth of their heads, and bright fabric is draped from their forearms in an
the line-up
A few of the perhaps thousands of boots you'll find in Pastores elegant display of culture. A fountain gurgles. It is a dramatic contrast to the desiccating heat and khaki colored fields in the low country.
At the Hotel Aurora I ask Julia how I can get to Pastores.
“You can take a taxi,” but then she reconsiders before continuing, “or you can get a bus from behind the market for two Quetzales.” I figure that’s about a quarter. I’ve seen the buses.
I find the right one with little trouble. It is an old Blue Bird school bus. The exterior is a riot of color, with figures and elaborate curly lettering flowing over its body. Her name is “Concepcion.” The grill is chromed and seems to snarl. I swing through the open door as the dust billows.
In my mind Pastores exists on a hilltop, a charming indigenous village where the bus would rumble to a stop in a square surrounded by adobe. So, as the bus rumbles over cobbles I wait for that, but Pastores is no more that a stretch of heavily populated road on the immediate outskirts of Antigua.
“Where are you going,” the fare collector asks me. The road has now turned
Leather and cloth
A typical combination of Mayan woven cloth and boot leather to dirt.
“Pastores.”
“Oh. We passed that. But stay on, we’re turning around here in Santa Lucia. We leave again in four minutes.” I am now in my imagined little village. But it is as deserted as a movie set between takes. The only people I see are a young women and her little son who board the bus. We’re of again.
Through the open doors on the busy main street, Calle Real, in Pastores I see rows and rows of beautifully crafted boots, some still in the shadows, others shown off regally by slicing shafts of sunlight. Men sit at old Singer machines, hides strewn at their feet. The smell of leather wafts out into the sunlight. Little workshop follows little workshop, with artisans bent over humming antiques, or stitching by hand before a jumble of tools. Nothing fancy here. Except, of course, for these boots. Oh, these boots.
I step into my first shop. A young man, Juan, of nineteen emerges from the shadows of a back room. He tells me that he started doing small tasks in the boot making process, polishing, buffing, but now he is one of the bookmakers himself. In
Two tone
Fine leather and hand-stiching pictured here is but one example of the work in Pastores this shop there is a collection of stunning pieces of art that combine leather with indigenous Guatemalan fabric. The upper part of the boot is a spectacle of woven color, or huipil, the lower is a soft creation of white stitch and brown leather.
The next shop has more of a factory feel. A handsome man with a wide smile stands behind a glass topped counter doing some handwork. Another sits at a low table behind a jumble of tools. I begin to blather on about the beauty of their work. They smile at me and say nothing. Undoubtedly they have seen this display of incredulity from big pink people before. I am wearing flip-flops. I must look like a homeless man in a Brooks Brothers store.
The next shop is large, and feels more like an outlet store by comparison. But the work is no less fantastic. Here there are also finely stitched and buckled leather bags, belts, and wallets. A woman greets me. Children are laughing in the back room. She asks me what kind of boot I prefer. I am silently stroking the leather, the suede, the stitching. She leaves me alone.
I step
A man and his tools
A craftsman at his table in one of the small workshops outside and wait for an impossibly chromed bus to throttle up the inclining road to Santa Lucia.. I cross and enter the no nonsense workshop of Jose Rafael Sicajau Caal. Jose, an amiable man, has the most incredible display of pointy-toed boots one could imagine. Some have wooden extensions at the tip, for what reason I cannot decipher. But this is fashion, isn’t it? He tells me he can make me a pair of boots in 5-8 days, depending on the design, my own design.
“Any combination or style that you want,” he says. “I just have to take the measurements, and we can design your boots, huipil, leather, whatever you prefer.”
I am saddened to think that I am flying away too soon for this to happen.
Back in the street I wait for the bus back to Antigua. A man sitting on the concrete steps next to me asks me about our new President.
“We’ll see,” I say.
He squints out into the stark Guatemalan sunlight.
“Ah, yes,” he says, “You don’t know what’s going to happen until you get on the horse.”
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