Story with graphics

  1969 Mexican Notebook

A Lost Journal, a Pirate's Ghost, Buried Treasure and a Magic mushroom Mountain.

Chapter One

A Pirate’s Angry Ghost and Buried Treasure.

The following is a totally true story.

In March of 2021, while preparing my library for archival at a prestigious academic institution, I found an old notebook. It was from a very memorable trip I made to Mexico in 1969. The notebook itself is almost empty. There's a few journal entries, a strange paragraph that I believe was dictated to me and two pieces of art created with new friends. And a lone sketch of probably a Mexico City street scene from my hotel window. However, the story behind this trip certainly deserves retelling. 

 

Itinerary of Trip

1.San Antonio  2.Monterrey  3.Tampico  4.Veracruz  5.Coatzacoalcos  6.Puebla  7.Huautla  8.Mexico City

Stephen Bornstein, 22 yrs. as he appeared in 1970

 

I was visiting Coatzacoalcos in June 1969. Staying with the Gorra Family, whom I had stayed with the last two years running. In 1966 on my first trip, I stayed almost three months. In 1967, I stayed with Barbara P. for a month and even built a palm fond shack. In 1968, we were on our way there in my newly acquired VW Bug, when we flipped over in Texacana. Barbara and I spent the summer on Allen’s farm instead. The family knew me well and trusted me like a family member.

The Gorra Family of Coatzacoalcos and Stephen B. during a 1979 visit.

So when I show up, unannounced in June of 1969, I caught them by suprise. At that time they were involved in a new commercial laundry business. They made their own machines using 55 gallon drums and gasoline motors. They were washing the clothes for several of the ships as they would come in to port and motels and even bordellos across the river in town. 

The Gorra Family Laundry two-sided business card.

 

 

Inside Gorra Laundry business card, talk about poor, NOTICE no address or telephone contact.

Back of Gorra Family Business card. very poor, no address.

This required a lot of water. And so they were digging this giant well themselves. Because they didn’t have drilling equipment, they had to dig a big twenty foot diameter hole in order to dig down to the water level. This was fresh water even though we were only 1,500 feet from the Gulf of Mexico.and 1000 feet from the River Coatzacoalcos. In another words, this well is located where the navigable River Coatzacoalcos meets the Gulf of Mexico.

A 1970 Bornstein sketch showing an idealized Coatzacoalcos, Mexico

Goggle map photo of Coatzacoalcos 2021. Area of compound was all sand streets and no electricity in 1969

The whole Gorra family was involved in the dig and would constantly be probing with a 20 foot aluminum pipe with a small hinged closing device as if they were trying to grab something deep under the constantly moving sand. It was strange how they were keeping it kind of secret.

photo of  present day Coatzacoalcos. In 1969 the other side of the river, called "Allende", was totally sand streets.and coconut palms.

Antonio’s Strange Angry Ghost Story

The following story is right out of a Blackbeard tale.

After I arrived a couple days, I noticed that Antonio Gorra, the family patriarch, had been wrapping his right leg in towels. When I inquired about it, he brought me into the house alone and this is the amazing story he told me:

The following was just between I and Antonio, alone, in his modest shack, among the palms and sand dunes. Photo 1979

Stephen's hand drawn sketch of Antoino Gorra's home in Coatzacoalcos

After starting the commercial laundry and fabricating his very primitive large washing machines, he realized he would need more freshwater than his hand drawn well would supply, even with a gas pump.

Not having the money for drilling equipment, they just started digging basically in sand, enlarging the circumference of the hole the deeper they got. After reaching the water table, basically now pure sand, they are now digging standing in water almost to their knees.

They decided to probe with a hollow aluminum pole and see how far they could go down before they hit bedrock. And they hit something. Turns out, they believe it is a wooden treasure chest. Buried by Emanual Garcia, a 17th or 18th century pirate and his pirate crew. They then killed him and threw his body in the pit with the chest.

A 2021 Goggle search uncovered this illustration:

 

This is EXACTLY the scene that Antonio described in 1969.

This close-up shows Garcia being killed by his men.

This close-up shows the exact position of the Gorra compound, on the river, within sight of the gulf.

When Antonio Gorra hit the chest while probing with the pole, they disturbed Garcia’s spirit, and then it came up the pole and into Antonio‘s body and down to his right leg.

Pretty freaky stuff. I must’ve appeared incredulous, which I was.

Antonio showed me a 20 year old Alarma, Mexico's most widely read tabloid, with his picture on the cover.

 He then digs in an old paper flour barrel where they kept important stuff away from the elements. He was looking for a 17 year old copy of the Alama newspaper. This is a cheap tabloid printed in its signature brown ink. It shows a lot of cadaver pictures from knife murders and car accidents. And there he is on the cover a much younger version of himself. The article inside details, how he was looking for water in the backyard of his property, when he lived on the other side of the river in town. All of a sudden he hears a gas hissing out of the pipe. He puts a barrel with a faucet on top of it and after allowing some gas to collect a little, he allows some to escape to an open flame. It goes pop. He discovered a natural gas source. He puts a pipe on it and run it into his little house and a two burner stove.

Somehow the authorities get wind of it. They informed him that he discovered a multi million cubic foot natural gas reservoir under the city. They show pictures of this in the magazine. His wife later said that if they charged 50 centavos for each person who came to look at it they would be wealthy now.

He believes the article demonstrates his bona fides for finding hidden treasure.

After much discussion about the phenomena and the validity of this buried treasure, he implores me to return to the United States and raise the necessary money he needs. The only way will he be able to release his grip from the Pirate Garcia is to dig up the chest and finally release his spirit. He asks me to take notes while he dictated the chest dimensions.

The ACTUAL page from the notebook written as Antonio dictated in that hot tropical afternoon.

This close-up from the 2021 Goggle search shows the exact chest Antonio described in 1969, in the exact position he said he located it???

A few days later, and much discussion, I decide to leave with the possibility of helping him find his financing in NYC, However, I was much more concerned with the metaphysical implications of definitely proving the existence of a ghost. I felt finding the chest would be proof of some sort of afterlife. I knew that this story sounded like the Classic Kabbalistic concept of “Gilgul Neshamot” transmigration of the spirit, “The Neshamah”

I needed to discuss this with Jerry Jofen, a trained Rabbi and Allen Ginsberg, very knowledgeable in spiritual matters.

On my way back to Mexico City, I meet three Mexican kids in Puebla and make a detour to the mushroom mountain also written about in this notebook.

Stephen B. discussing with Allen Ginsberg the Mexican priate treasure story in 1969 at his farm in Cherry Valley, NY.

Returning to the United States, I discussed this with Allen and Jerry and they both looked at me kind of askewed. I never brought the subject up again.

And when I returned to Coatzacoalcos next year, the hole was filled in, Antonio’s leg seemed fine again and we never discussed the whole story anymore.

Trip with new friends to the Magic Mushroom Mountain.

I was returning from having stayed two weeks in Coatzacoalcos. at that time, I believed I was going back to New York with the possibility of raising funds to look for a buried pirate treasure the Gorra Family claims they found in Coatzacoalcos.

Puebla is a great colonial town, and known for making visitors feel welcome.

One of my favorite overnight stops on the long bus trip to Mexico City, was always the City of Puebla. A city very much like Boston. An old, very colonial town with several major universities and a large majority of students. It’s also very cold, and everybody walks around with these thick wool sweaters. I used to find it very refreshing after living on the tropical coast without electricity for a couple weeks.

The Great Pyramid of Puebla, is the largest pyramid in the world. The Spanish unable to destroy it, covered it up, and built a church on top.

The city had a rich history and had been the site of a major Aztec ceremonial center with the largest pyramid ever constructed by man. In order to destroy the Indian culture it was covered over with dirt by the Spanish, and they built a church on top of it. The base of the pyramid has been excavated and can be viewed by tourists.

Puebla always been one of my favorite spots in Mexico. It also had a great Central Square. Very European. The square is ringed by open restaurants with tables under the colonnades. After a long trip on the bus up the steep ascent from the coast, I arrived and checked into an old Mexican colonial hotel by the central square.

The cafes on Puebla's Zacolo, where I met my three new freinds.

I decided to take a walk, passing by one of those cafés, I’m motioned by a young man to come over to a table with him and two young women. The three looked like a very attractive group and I gladly complied.

At this point, even though this was my third trip to Mexico, my Spanish was still very rudimentary. After introducing ourselves, the young man was Luis and the girls were Claudia and Rosa Maria, and after talking a short time, they told me they were planning to go to Huautla de Jimenez, the mushroom mountain in Oaxaca.

A well known celebrity, I had been listening to her Folkway Record for years.

I knew of the place from the stories of Maria Sabina, the Mazatec Indian “Sabia” (knowing one) that turned on Leary and many others to mushrooms. Many celebrities in the United States had made the trek to visit her. I don’t know if Allen had gone.

I always wanted to go, but was afraid to by myself. My Spanish was still nowhere sufficient to even try it.

I found both of these girls very attractive. Claudia was very Mexican. She was 18 years old from Mexico City. She was bit plump, with a cute very round face. The other girl, Rosa Maria, had a more angular face, a dark haired Mexican beauty. The young man, Luis, about 19, seemed like a nice guy, typical Mexican youth, loved American culture and was intent on learning English. He certainly spoke better English then I spoke Spanish. I just had been living two weeks in coatzacoalcos with speaking no English at all. I enjoyed speaking with them. They liked me and quickly invited me to come along.

After a few minutes of internal debating, I figured why not. And I jumped at the opportunity to accompany them up the mountain.

Especially, since I spoke little Spanish and I thought they would be of tremendous assistance communicating with the locals.

Little did I know, more about that later.

It was at this meeting that I learned the special nuance to waving hello to somebody in Mexico. If you do it the way we do it in the United States, it means come here. In Mexico you have to do a backward wave, as if you were waving at yourself, and say “Adios” or goodby instead of hello.

After checking out of the near by hotel, all my stuff and my hammock are carried in a knapsack anyway, I met them at a pre-designated spot near the bus terminal.

The trip was first in a standard second class Mexican bus to Tehuacan, A small also colonial city and the site of famous mineral Springs, their bottled water is consumed throughout Mexico. It has a popular spa resort.

The Mexican "Collectivo " bus is for more rural routes

The dirt road trip was straight up into incredibly lush mountains.

 

The road is now dirt and the terrain become very steep, very quickly.

 

From there we changed to a small 20 passenger "Collectivo" for a ride up the steep mountains. Practically all the other passengers were native Indians and were speaking in a native mazatec dialect. I recognized some of it from the Folkway Records of Maria Sabina and the mushroom ceremony that I had been listening to for many months. The cadence of the language reminded me of their chants and was like preparation for the totally immersive mushroom experience that lay ahead.

This the Folkway record, of Maria Sabina that I and friends in NYC listened to for months.

Click here or on record to hear

It took four hours straight up bumpy dirt roads following a rushing river along a road clinging to steep ravines, no towns, no sign of habitation, but lush green mountains with waterfalls everywhere pouring out of the rocks.

 

The water was literally pouring out gaps in the rocks.

 

 

 

Watch a 6 minute YouTube video of water falls and the river around the area where we stayed.

Luckily, a swig or two of Luis' French cough medicine made the trip feel like first class.

Stephen B. on five gaited mule in El Salvador, 1970

It was very crowded, people were even standing up. Luckily, I got to sit with Luis and there were even chickens clucking in the shelf overhead.

All of a sudden Luis shakes me out of my half slumber and tells me to get my stuff together we’re getting off the bus. It was rather unexpected, to say the least. I figured that we would’ve had some indication before we arrived in the town.

Here we are, standing literally in the middle of nowhere, by a bridge over a fast running river. There are only two concrete structures on either the side of the bridge visible.

Little has changed since 1969

The short, two lane concrete bridge spanning a modest river is facing a fork in the road leading to Huatla, 8 kilometers away. Luis explained to me, this is as far as we can go, it is too dangerous to go into Huautla. The police are roughly arresting anybody that looks suspicious for consuming mushrooms.

After Luis conversed with one of the men at the store at the end of the bridge, he returned to the group of us standing, cold and damp, forlornly alone, beside the dirt road now that the bus left.

 

We were cold and very damp as we trudged across the river in the middle of nowhere, on our way straight into the jungle.

He said he found a place for us to stay and we should follow him. In single file, we passed by few little concrete commercial structures along the side of the road. At the end of several, we left the road and turned towards the river.

All the adobe mud huts from 1969 have been destroyed.

Behind The concrete structures was a little hamlet of a dozen adobe mud brick houses with dirt floors and red tile roofs. Once we opened the door and went inside, we saw through the wood fire smoke about 15 people sleeping in hammocks and the mud walls were painted in psychedelic designs. You could tell that most of the people were tripping.

It seem like half were Americans and the other half were Mexicans from the city. After quickly introducing ourselves and kind of nodding hello to everybody in the room, we all looked at each other. It looked to all four of us, like we arrived at right place. Luis and the two girls nodded their approval. A local Indian, who had been leading us from the road, probably the owner, gave us a place to hang up our hammocks. Luis paid him a few pesos and we settled in.

Soon we had our hammocks hung and our few belongings hanging from the same hooks.

As we stepped outside of the hut, several Indian men approached and without speaking opened up several dripping wet banana leafs to show several fists of glistening, freshly picked tiny tiny mushrooms.

The head of these mushrooms were no bigger than a thumbnail and the whole mushroom was about the size of a digit on your finger. We’re talking small.

These Mushrooms are very small.

The men spoke very little Spanish, an indication of the difficulties ahead. After negotiating the best he could, Luis bought us a handful of mushrooms called “Derrumbe”. I later found out meant “collapse” in English .

They were little white stalks with a brown purpleish heads that looked a little bit like a penis. The purple color was already descending down the stalk from the head. This, I found out later was the actual psychotropic substance, psilocybin migrating down to the base of the mushroom until the whole thing turned purple.

Later, we found out where the Indians collect them. They wake up very early in the morning and follow the cow paths. And from under the cow dung the mushrooms would sprout overnight.

Mushrooms growing in the fresh cow dung.

They were best consumed fresh. You couldn’t immerse the mushrooms in water, the psilocybin is water soluble. All you could do is brush them off. The joke being passed around, was it was really the cow dung that got you high.

I ate about four little mushrooms shortly after arriving. Within 20 minutes it started working. Within an hour, I couldn’t believe that something so natural, so small could get you so high.

The trip is very natural, nothing chemical, nothing jolting. It was the Mexican rainy season. It rained at least half the time we were there. The sound of running or falling water was everywhere, made for a wonderful natural immersive experience. Half the trip we would spend in our hammocks and the other half wandering around in this magical setting. The Indians used large Banana leaves as ponchos. The sight of them walking around the hillside trails, blending in with nature, made us understand and feel like part of this miraculous surrounding.

My three companions were excellent tripmates. Although I couldn’t understand much that they were saying, they made me feel very accepted and comfortable, especially Claudia.  I remember we all did a lot of embracing, that was the extent of any possible intimacy that I had hopped for.

There was maybe 100 foreigners living in several of these mud huts. About half Mexican, half American.

It was from an Americans that I found out, that Mexicans from Mexico City, are considered by the Indians just as foreign as Americans. Everybody was slowly getting on each others nerves. Half the people were tripping, the other half were coming down. There were not many bilingual people among us. The delicate situation was further complicated by the fact that I was clearly with the “Mexican” group. Where I thought my friends’  Mexican nationality would help me, they were now considered just as foreign as I.

I told my three travelmates I was an artist, but didn’t have much work with me and hadn’t painted much in while in Coatzacoalcos.

This is one of the actual pieces of art we created

These are the actual magic mushrooms illustrated above.

One afternoon we sat around with my notebook and created a mutual piece of art as an enduring memory from our trip up the mountains. With no camera, we all knew that it would be my lasting piece of memory. Little did we image fifty years later it would be revived. It shows all the different mushrooms and everyone signed it.

This is the other page frpm the notebook. Everybody signed it.

One night I had an experience on the mushrooms that I remember to this day.

 

Luis told me that we were going to a cabin about a mile away where they were a bunch of people having a big party. It was pitch black. We had no flashlight. We were holding hands and following someone else as a guide on a thin mountainous path in the total darkness. In the distance I saw what appeared to be the brightest light that I had ever seen. I figured it had to be several car’s headlights on high beam. As we got closer I saw that it was the light of a single candle in the window.

 

What appeared in the darkness as the brightest light, was only a single candle in a cabin window.

Once inside, there was about 30 young kids packed in with hardly a place to sit. No one spoke English. They were all rich hippies from Mexico City. They were playing guitar music and eating mushrooms. I became convinced that I could mystically learn Spanish on the expanded mushroom consciousness. All I had to do is clear my mind. I did feet I was able to communicate with everybody, however it certainly was not by Spanish. We spent the whole night there and didn’t leave until morning. I was OK with that. I was cuddling next to Claudia and I wasn’t looking forward to the walking back in the dark.

Campers now pitch thier tents at the site of our Hippie Hamlet.

 

At the hamlet the only thing to eat was black beans, tortillas and occasional egg served at a little hut that severed as a restaurant run by one of the local enterprising Indian women. The Mazatec Indian women spoke even less Spanish then the men. They knew numbers. They were quick to anger and were definitely not as accommodating as the men. Without speaking their language, you could tell they were constantly complaining to the men about us. You tell could sense their patience was wearing thin. 

 

Within a few days, I was consuming handfuls of mushrooms and not getting high. Total tolerance is built up very quickly. The mushrooms were just no longer working no matter how much you took. Within a few days it made little sense to stay. I enjoyed the company, but all of us felt it was time to leave and I decided to continue my journey back to New York City.

Strange sketch from same notebook, obviously done under mushrooms, in the mountains, which are shown in the lower right.

My friends and I took the bus down the hill and back to Puebla. They gave me their addresses. I gave them mine. Claudia promised to write and so did I and we bid farewell.

I made my way back to Mexico City. All the young kids at the university were still on edge from the massacre the year before. The campus looked like a ghost town. Nobody would even gather in groups larger the three. I quickly decided, that in this unstable climate it was best to return to NYC.

 

Actual sketch from Mexican City hotel window. From notebook.

Claudia later sent me two letters in Spanish, I responded in English. she told me that about two weeks after we left, one of the Americans, obviously high on mushrooms, killed someone’s rooster who he thought was attacking him. I can totally envision this. Anybody familiar with rural Mexico knows how territorial and aggressive roosters can be. The Mazatec owner then killed the American, and the Mexican Federales came in and arrested everyone, including the Mexicans, deporting the Americans. 

Anyone walking around the Mexican countryside knows how aggressive their roosters can be.

The whole area became closed to foreigners. The Hippie Mushroom hotel was demolished. I never even went anywhere near it again.

 

Claudia was unhappy living with her parents, and wanted to come to New York City. Ironically, most of the Mexicans in New York are now from the Puebla area.

I returned to Coatzacoalcos the following year. The next time I came with Jeff W. in the VW camping bus. The Gorra Family had filled in the well project. The family was always afraid of the neighbors reporting them and then the government might evict them. The ghost departed Antonio’s leg. We never spoke of the treasure again.

Jeff and I discovered that mushrooms were growing many places in Mexico where the climate is right. One place we learned was Villahemosa, only a little over two and half hours away. There were no ethnic Indians to show you where to collect them, so you had to go into the jungle yourself, I got a scar on my ankle climbing a steep mountain that I still have to this day. We took several evening mushroom trips in our open camper beside the breezy Gulf of Mexico. After a few days we looked in the icebox to discover the remaining mushrooms infested with tiny worms. We wondered out loud if we had consumed them. We promptly threw them out.

Stephen B. at the wheel of his VW Camper, 1970.

Jeff W. and I continued our trip through Mexico, even searching the hidden lakes of Chiapas for for the elusive hallucinatory Lacondon Indian Red Algae.

 

 That and the rest of the trip to Central America is for another story.

Stephen B. in March 2021, Age 73, Austin, Texas

 

Full Length film about Maria Sabina, and Huautla.

 

 

 

Short Animated film about the greater effects of Maria Sabina's sharing scared rituals with outsiders.