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Published: February 23rd 2008
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Mexico is for a Californian surfer what the Wild West of old must have been for cowboys. It is a frontier land ripe for exploring. It also serves as the natural habitat in which they feel the most at home. Everything just seems to make sense. The winds blow in cycles - calm in the morning and getting stronger through the day as the morning chill turns to the late afternoon repressive heat. The tides wax and wane like clockwork and the swells repeatedly crash on the shore in predictable sets.
At least that is how I felt in my most recent trip to Mexico, and that was exactly what has repeatedly drawn me to Mexico. It is a homecoming as much as it is a vacation. In the sparsely populated areas of Central Pacific Mexico, one is left up to their own entertainment. The work day has been long since left behind leaving me to focus my energy and curiosity on the ocean.
A surf trip to Mexico was also a chance for me to connect with the roots of surfing in California - to feel what it must have been like to be the first Californians to
ride waves in places only populated by hermit crabs and seagulls. And to tap into that source of exhilaration and inspiration that has always been at the core of surfing.
In the 50 or so years since surfing departed from the graces of the Hawaiians and landed on the shores of California, it has grown at a torrid pace. What was once the leisure activity of Hawaiian royalty has officially reached the ends of the earth. Surfers have penetrated the Middle-East, riding waves in the Red Sea and Yemen. China, dubbed by Surfer Magazine as the “forbidden land,” is poised to become a popular surfing destination.
While the crowds at beaches in far off countries increase, my home beaches in Southern California are crowded sometimes past the point of enjoyment. On a given weekend in Los Angeles, I am used to finding 150 people in the water at Malibu State Beach. When the waves are good, I can usually expect that number to double. In such situations, the unwritten rules of surfing, and common decency for that matter, are irrelevant.
The 1970s and 1980s explosion of surfing into American pop-culture started the sport on a path towards
commercialization and spawned what has become the global multi-billion dollar surfing industry. Surf apparel companies - the most profitable segment of the business - have fallen in line with the rest of the textile industry to seek out comparative advantages in a globalized manufacturing and supply chain. Surfboards can now be shaped by machine and are produced in places like Malaysia and Thailand. One is lucky to even find a surfboard among the aisles of clothing in Southern California surf shops.
The sport of surfing and the culture of surfers is globalized. And in the process it has lost a part of its innocence and become another appendage of the global capitalist system - a system that has a tendency to homogenize local cultures into the mainstream. It can no longer be about pure enjoyment and leisure, but is inevitably implicated in someone else’s bottom line.
But I know that the discontents of globalization and capitalism are accompanied by equal benefits and opportunities. I remind myself that if surfing were not globalized, I probably would not even have the opportunity to go to a place like Mexico and surf. And in the face of homogenizing pressures, a diminishing
local culture can adapt and redefine itself as stronger and more secure.
In this frame of mind, I spent two weeks in the states of Guerrero and Michoacan searching for waves — and that part of the soul that has survived the challenges that globalization presents to localized cultures.
The physical beauty of the Mexican coastline can not be understated. Driving through the rolling green hills of Michoacan and turning off the main highway down a dirt road towards the beach, I imagine what the cowboys must have felt out in the Wild West gazing upon some virgin stretch of land.
The dusty pueblos off the main highway only help to perpetuate this image. There are some signs of modernization - trucks delivering gas for cooking and heating and even an internet cafe. But other parts of town seem to be frozen in the traditions of the past. As I make my way through one of these pueblos in the late afternoon, every store front is closed and the streets are deserted in observation of mid-day siesta.
The fishing villages that have modified to cater to the surf tourists are a prime example of this balance
Fresh Oysters
Cops love oysters between the modernizing influence of globalization and local traditions. In the village of Rio Nexpa, men are still up at first light to procure the days catch. Women still ready their children for school in the morning and tend to the home for the rest of the day.
But the influx of gringos has changed the face of Rio Nexpa. The long stretch of white sand beach is lined with bungalows for rent - each equipped with a gas stove, refrigerator and running fresh water. I wonder if the locals have access to such luxuries. One restaurant served Thai curries and Italian pastas along with the typical fish, rice and tortilla plates that had been my staple diet since arriving.
But the waves have not changed since time immemorial. They are the constant factor that unites a surf culture constantly under the threat of degradation — both environmental and cultural. Their journey is well charted and their predictable end destination is the reason that I was drawn to this place.
Out in the water, the line-up of people surfing tells a similar story. The mix of Western tourists, Latin American tourists and locals speaks to the distances
that surf culture has traveled and the extent to which it has become popular. At sometimes of the day, the locals far outnumber — and out surf — the gringos who first brought surfing to the local consciousness.
I am reminded again of the ironies of this age of globalization. Without the influx of surfers to this town, they would probably have never heard of surfing. Now the locals have taken this once foreign activity to be their own. Rio Nexpa is no longer a dichotomy of center-periphery (as the systems theorists would have it) or proletariat-bourgeoisie (as the Marxists would explain it) - if it ever even was.
It is a mix of cultures modern and traditional into a new form that combines the beauty of both. It transcends national, religious and racial boundaries and exposes the fact that a world of increased interconnection and interdependence means an almost limitless frontier of unexplored potential - if only the opportunity presents itself.
Surfers are the luckiest people in the world. Their pursuit is the pursuit of pure enjoyment, free from the burdens of everyday life. And it is a life-long affliction that becomes more and more part
of ones personality the more one pursues it. Often times, it seems like some parts of the world are lacking in this aspect of life - whether because of political oppression or the daily struggle to survive. But a peaceful world depends on the ability to smile once in a while and not take things too seriously.
If the global surfing industry can contribute to the enormously important task of spreading joy around the world, then it hasn’t sold itself out no matter how much profits increase. Judging by the cheshire-cat grins on the faces of my new Mexican surfer friends, the soul of surfing is still alive - in the most unexpected of places.
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