La Mina del Eden

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Woke up in the same clothes I had on yesterday.  We didn’t plan on staying the night in Zacatecas but the night took a hold of us and kept us there.  We had nothing on us but the clothes we were wearing and our jackets. Had to purchase toothbrushes and toothpaste from the hotel lobby and brush our hair with spit and back out we were into the city by morning.  Dad takes us to eat tacos this morning again but these aren’t just any tacos they are “tacos envenenados” otherwise known as poison tacos.  It is a large corn tortilla filled with some kind of bean mix and deep fried in oil.  The tacos are half the size of my head and they are delicious.  Off to the next adventure we go, up the city streets exploring the city, the streets and the food.  We are on the way to visit “La Mina del Eden” or Eden’s Mine, but on our way we pass by the hospital where I was born.  Dad walks and talks telling us about how there used to be a Chinese food restaurant in front of the hospital and how my mother went there to eat right before her water broke. 

I was 6 when my father decided there was no more life for him in Mexico and took a risk at going to the promise land (the United States) in search of that American Dream so many people spoke of.  I remember my family, friends and my school but walking through this city seems so foreign, perhaps because it is.  I am 30 years old and living in the U.S. is all I truly know.  I know the government says that because I was born here in Zacatecas and speak the language it would not be an “extreme hardship” for me to have to move back to Mexico.  Never mid that I don’t remember this place or have any real ties here, to the U.S. government I am just another illegal, another wetback to the Republican Party.  Dad’s stories are touching and I can’t help but feel some irony that he’s the reason we ended up in the U.S. and now he’s our tour guide around this city that for him holds so many memories. 

Up a hill a few miles from our journey we arrive at La Mina Del Eden.  It is an old mine that was harvested for its rich minerals, gold, copper, zinc but mainly silver.  The city has a rich culture built around this mine and its riches.  Stories tell that after Spanish settlers climbed the rich and fertile mountain they noticed an entry into the mine from the top of the mountain.  When they saw all the minerals inside they said the mountain was the entry into the forbidden place of Eden.  After we pay our entry fee we are greeted by tour guides that instruct us to put yellow helmets on our heads and find a spot on the train that will lead us into the heart of the mountain.  The clear doors to the train close and we ascend into the mountain.  There is a rock museum filled with beautiful rocks and rock formations from that mine and from other caves around the world.  After several miles of our journey by train and by foot we arrive at the highlight of the mine a night club like no other in the world.  Capacity is a few hundred and the nigh club is deep inside the mine, with a see through floor that highlights the water hundreds of feet below the night club.  The view is breath taking, but once again we are reminded by the ugliness that lives outside of the mine.  The nightclub remains close according to the tour guide due to “construction” but what was told to us off the record is that the nightclub is closed until the local police sees it fit to be re-opened.  Due to all the recent violence in and around the city unwanted individuals have made their way into some of the “fun” places in town, fights and shootings have erupted and innocent people have found themselves the victims of these criminals.  Such beauty made ugly by so much violence.  In the mine we are reminded that the world has so many wonders left to be seen by the human eye and that I have so much to see and experience either in this country or in another but it should be my choice, my decision of what I see and when.