"No, indeed. Every man here in San Marcos Churítzio concentrates on this one craft. It is the particular enterprise assigned to this village, as other villages of Utopia each produce lacquerwork or copperware or whatever."
"Why?" was all I could think to say, for I had never before known of any community devoted to doing just one thing and nothing else.
"Go and talk to Padre Vasco," said Erasmo. "He will be happy to tell you all about his engendering of our Utopia."
"I will do that. Thank you, Cuatl Erasmo, and mixpantzínco."
Instead of saying "ximopanólti" in farewell, he said, "Vaya con Dios,"and added cheerfully, "Come again, Cuatl Juan. Someday I intend to learn to play music from one of these things."
I trudged on westward, but halted in an uninhabited area and went among some bushes to change from my mantle and loincloth into the shirt and trousers and boots I carried in my pack. So I was Spanishly attired when I arrived at Santa Cruz Pátzcuaro. On inquiry, I was directed to the small adobe church and its attached casa de cura.The padre himself answered the door there; he was in no wise so aloof and inaccessible as most Christian priests are. Also, he was dressed in sturdy, heavy, work-stained shirt and breeches, not a black gown.
I made bold to introduce myself, in Spanish, as Juan Británico, lay assistant to Fray Alonso de Molina, notarius of Bishop Zumárraga's Cathedral and said I was presently engaged, at my master Alonso's behest, in visiting Church missions in these hinterlands, to evaluate and report on their progress.
"Ah, I think you will give good report of ours, my son," said the padre. "And I am pleased to hear that Alonso is still toiling so assiduously in the vineyards of Mother Church. I remember the lad most fondly."
So I and my prevarication were instantly accepted, without question, by the good priest. And good I found him truly to be. Padre Vasco de Quiroga was a tall, thin, austere-looking but really merry-humored man. He was old enough to be bald enough that he required no tonsure, but he was still vigorous, as was attested by his work clothes, for which he humbly apologized.
"I should be properly cassocked to welcome an emissary of the bishop, but I am today helping my friars build a pigsty behind this house."
"Do not let me interrupt—"
"No, no, no. Por cielo,I am glad to take a respite. Sit down, son Juan. I can see that you are dusty from the road." He called to someone in some other room to bring us wine. "Sit, sit, my boy. And tell me. Have you yet seen much of what the Lord has helped us to accomplish hereabouts?"
"Only a little. I talked for a while to an Erasmo Mártir."
"Ah, yes. Of all our skillful guitarra makers, perhaps the most skillful. And a devout Christian convert. Then tell me also, Juan Británico. Since you are named for an English saint, are you perhaps acquainted with the late saintly Don Tomás Moro, also of England?"
"No, padre. But—excuse me—I was given to understand that the men of England are white men."
"So they are. Moro was this man's name, not his race or color. He was but lately and unjustly and vilely slain—his Christian piety his only crime—executed by the king of that England, who is an odious and despicable heretic. Anyway, if you do not know of Don Tomás, I suppose you do not know of his far-famed book, De optima Reipublicae statu..."
"No, padre."
"Or of the Utopia he prefigured in that book?"
"No, padre, except that I heard the artisan Erasmo speak the word."
"Well, Utopia is what we are trying to create here, around the shores of this paradisal lake. I only wish I could have undertaken it years ago. But I have not been that long a priest."
A young friar came in, bringing two exquisitely carved and lacquered wooden cups, clearly Purémpe products. He handed one to each of us and silently withdrew, and I drank gratefully of the cool wine.
"For most of my life," the padre went on, sounding contrite, "I was a judge, a man of the legal profession. And any practice of the law—let me tell you, young Juan—is a venal and corrupt and loathly occupation. At last, thanks be to God, I realized how I was so foully defiling myself and my soul. That is when I tore off my judicial robe, took holy orders and eventually was ordained to wear the cassock instead." He paused and laughed. "Of course, many of my former adversaries in the courts have gleefully quoted to me the old proverb: Hartóse el gato de carne, y luego se hizo fraile."
It took me a moment to translate that in my head: "The cat got a gutful of meat before it turned friar."
He went on, "The Utopia envisioned by Tomás Moro was to be an ideal community whose inhabitants would exist under perfect conditions. Where the evils bred by society—poverty, hunger, misery, crime, sin, war—would all have been done away with."
I forbore from commenting that there would be some people, even in an ideal community, who might wish to retain the right to enjoy sinning or waging war.
"So I have repopulated this pleasant piece of New Galicia with colonist families. Besides instructing them in the tenets of Christianity, I and my friars show them how to use European tools and how to employ the most modern methods of agriculture and husbandry. Beyond that, we strive notto direct or meddle in the colonists' lives. True, it was our Brother Agustín who taught them how to make guitarras. But we found elderly Purémpe men who could be persuaded to lay aside old rivalries and teach the colonists the age-old Purémpe handicrafts. Now each village devotes itself to perfecting oneof those arts—woodwork, ceramics, weaving and so on—in the finest tradition of the Purémpecha. Any colonists incapable of learning such artisanry make their contribution to Utopia by farming or fishing or raising pigs, goats, chickens and such."
"But, Padre Vasco," I said. "What use have your settlers for such things as guitarras? That Erasmo to whom I spoke, he did not even know how to play music on it."
"Why, those are sold to merchants in the City of Mexíco, my son. The guitarras and the other crafted objects. Many of them are bought by brokers who, in turn, export them all the way back to Europe. We get handsome prices for them, too. The bulk of our farmers' and herders' produce also is sold. Of the money received, I pay a portion to the village families, equally divided among them. But most of our income is spent on new tools, seeds, breeding stock—whatever will improve and benefit Utopia as a whole."
"It all sounds most practical and laudable, padre," I said, and sincerely meant it. "Especially since, as Erasmo said, you do not make your people drudge like slaves."
"¡Válgame Dios, no!"he exclaimed. "I have seen the infernal obrajes in the city and elsewhere. Our colonists may be of an inferior race, but they are human beings. And now they are Christians, so they are not brute animals without souls. No, my son. The rule here in Utopia is that the people work communally for just six hours a day, six days a week. Sundays, of course, are for devotions. All the rest of the people's time is theirs to spend as they like. Tending their own home gardens, private doings, socializing with their fellows. Were I a hypocrite, I could say that I am simply being Christian in being no tyrannical master. But the truth is that our people work harder and more productively than any whip-driven slaves or obraje laborers."
I said, "Another thing Erasmo told me is that you allow only men and women already married to settle in this Utopia. Would you not get even more work out of single men and women, unburdened with children?"
He looked slightly uncomfortable. "Well, now, you have broached a rather indelicate subject. We do not presume to have re-created Eden here, but we do have to contend with both Eve and the serpent. Or with Eve asthe serpent, I might better say."