On a trip into the lands of the native Ópatas of Sonora, Mexico, the adventurous traveler must cross four sierras by winding roads, conquer the Cruz del Diablo, survive the fiery affects of the bacanora, all with the hope of the being rewarded with the woven jewels of the ancient Ópata descendents.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

A group of concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of our desert areas.

I've heard it said that the hat makes the man or the woman.

In one case hats constitute the remnants of an entire culture.

The descendents of the vanished Ópatas of Sonora, Mexico, have been making fine hats for centuries, woven from palm leaves.

Ten years ago they were weaving the hats.

I want to go see if they still are.

There's only one hat store of any significance left in the largest city in the state of Sonora.

If anyone knows if Ópata hats are still being made, they would.

In the state capital of Hermosillo things have changed considerably in the last 30 years.

That time you couldn't walk down the streets without seeing a sea of cowboy hats, and the theme was cowboy and rodeo.

Today hats are pretty well gone.

The men go out in the hills to collect the palm fibers and the women weave.

So these hats are from Nácori, Buena Vista and Sauz?

Yes.

Sauz de Ures.

That's why we buy them to sell in our store.

They last longer and we take better care of them because they are works of art.

This hat was made from palma pelada while the hat you're holding was made from a native palm.

We are very concerned about strengthening the culture of these hats.

It's a means for the local people to sustain themselves economically, as well as preserve the culture and tradition the hats existed for many years.

Palm hats are the pride of Sonora.

Our wish is for every head in the entire world to wear one of these hats.

Now that I know that there are hats to be found in Nácori Chico and El Sauz de Ures, it's time to go there and find them.

My friend Alberto Burquez from Hermosillo has offered to take me on the long drive east to Buena Vista.

The Ópatas really were industrious, famous people all over the region and outside the region for their excellent crops and the use of them.

We've gotta go over this long-range drop down into the valley of the real Montezuma and then we go up again to drop down into the valley of the Bavispe, then we go really up through that place called the Cruz del Diablo, that's Devil's Cross and it's something.

We go up, up, up, and drop down to Bacadéhuachi, up again and drop down to Nácori Chico where we'll find the weavers.

Sierra after sierra after sierra, many ranges.

And the more you go to the east the higher the mountains.

Most of the Ópataria isn't this wet.

It was pretty deserty.

This is almost wet enough to be a tropical forest.

This is this valuable lack, is it not?

Yes, it's shellac.

It's a shellac but it's.

Goma Sonora.

In the past it was very common.

It was used for everything that needed a luster and highly protected finish.

It actually is an animal and what we use is the shell of the animal.

So the name shellac is very appropriate.

Cause it's a shell.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, upstream from here is where they had the very western bunch of the Ópatas had their villages.

And it's a very lush place.

It's mostly desert where they had their villages but this pass is lush.

This is one of the areas where tropical plants reach their northernmost distribution.

And many of these tropical plants don't go farther north.

Be that as it may, I look at these great trees, not a single palm here.

We've got to go to the different mountains to get the palms.

It is said that the Ópata was one of the primitive groups inhabiting Sonora.

And a portion of the tribe of this group called themselves Sonora so they embody the Sonoran traditions.

They lived in the desert valleys of the Sonoran Desert very close to the mountains in the Sierra Madre.

And they used both habitats.

They exploited the resources that the desert contained as well as the riches of the Sierra Madre.

When the Spaniards arrived, the Apaches were making warfare to most groups living in northern Sonora.

So the Ópatas decided to ally with the Spaniards and in doing so they signed their disappearance, they signed their doom.

The Ópatas completely disappeared.

And for sure if you look at the people in this area, they all carry the handsome mark of the Ópata culture.

Of the more than two hundred linguistically distinct indigenous groups in Mexico, a few have vanished completely.

But even they have left some traces of their cultures, like the palm hats.

It's not until we get inside Ópata country, the Ópataria, that we find the first palm trees.

This is the right size little palma.

Somebody's been in here, look there, macheteing.

Probably they've used these leaves for roof thatching.

Or else they needed a ramada.

A ramada, you bet.

This is what they call the cogoyo , which the ladies cut off to do their weaving.

The cogoyo is the leaf bud in the very early stages of development and it's very tender and thin.

The leaf is really nice to weave.

Oh, you can actually see the little sections of the palm leaf that haven't unfolded and that's why you call it a bud.

Right.

Of course.

Great.

Terrific.

This species of sabal is identified by the shape of this central vein, the structure where the leaf fans out.

In the date palm, each individual leaflet come out of this central vein.

So we have traditional usual form of leaf.

While the Washingtonia that grows in Sonora and Arizona has this vein much shortened and from this bottom it, the whole leaf fans out.

I'm going to try to cut a cogoyo here to take to the ladies just in case they don't have any.

Sometimes I know they're hard to get.

Let's see how hard cutting is.

Now you say that this stuff has something in it that dulls the blade?

Yes, most palm trees but particularly in this region, do have these silica deposits that will just tear off any blade.

Well, I hope not, although that blade is not the easiest thing in the world to cut.

Next time I'm bringing somebody with a machete.

For desert peoples, desert rivers are a matter of life and death.

The Bavispe River is probably the most important and reliable river in all of the Ópata country.

The Ópata villages along the river were founded more than 400 years ago.

Today they retain their old names even if the Ópatas are gone.

Places like Huásabas, Óputo, Baserac, and Bavispe.

The people have long vanished but their names stay on behind them.

Being so close to the Spaniards, the Ópata were slowly absorbed by the Spanish culture.

So their language vanished.

But they left many place names, many artifact names and a very rich culture, like the making of sombreros.

The date palm and the Mediterranian crop was brought by the Spaniards to the Americas.

It did not replace native palms.

Native palms offer much more than the date palm despite the delicious fruit that are dates.

Native palms offer leafs for thatching, prongs that are highly durable for construction.

They offer wonderful fibers to make hats.

So date palm could not compete with native palms.

Our first stopover on the way into the Sierras is in the isolated but renowned village of Bacadéhuachi.

The Jesuits were expelled from the New World in 1767 and after that Franciscans came in and it was under their leadership that the church here was built.

But it was with Ópata labor and the excellence of their artisan abilities that this church was really constructed.

And they're the ones I think that should get the credit.

Ópatas really added a lot of their perception of the world to the façade of this church that unfortunately was heavily affected by the late 1800 earthquake that toppled down several churches in the region.

I've driven a lot around Sonora, bumming around mostly, but I know that this is the road up to the Cruz del Diablo is probably known as the scariest ride in all of Sonora and your grandfather was in charge of building it.

He was head of the highway department at that time, about 50 years ago.

And he was very proud of being on enterprise.

This is the place where you make up your mind whether you're going to continue or not.

Wow.

Eh, it's a good thousand feet down.

This sort of feels like the end of the world, this La Cruz del Diablo, which means the Devil's Cross.

We're actually right in the middle of Ópata country.

So they had some pretty rough territory to deal with.

Once the Apaches started coming into this territory at the end of the 17th century, about 1690, they raided the Ópata villages just brutally and the Ópatas had to turn to the Spaniards for help.

And probably the reason the Apaches came is twofold.

The Ópatas worked in the mines, the Apaches didn't like the mines.

The Ópatas had horses and they'd make raids for horses.

It must have been really tough.

All the time you had to be on your defenses.

And that started for sure the decline of the Ópata, pushing them to integrate more and more with the Spanish society.

Yeah, exactly.

Become mestizos.

The imprint of the Spaniards remains not only in their architecture but also in the continued use of the distillation process locally honored in a moonshine called bacanora.

You can find some in every small town wherever you find guys hanging around.

We've gotta drive up the road a way to find the clandestine still that's still illegal to produce bacanora or this moonshine without a license.

And my understanding is that no self-respecting jimador, which is what they call the moonshiners, would ever get a license.

Why bother?

The whole fun of it is making it illegally.

This is the madre, the agave plant from which bacanora is made.

This year later on sometime, the plant will send up a shoot, it's flower.

The bacanora makers will come by and lop that shoot off before it gets very tall and then wait for a couple of years.

That concentrates the starches of the plant in the base.

They'll come along then, pry the thing out of the ground, cut off all the leaves and come away with a pineapple looking object that is the basis for making the best bacanora in the world.

The tradition of making bacanora comes from our ancestors.

The teachings have been passed down from generation to generation.

We can plant and grow corn in the fields at the same time that we make bacanora.

My father taught me.

I was just a young kid when I learned how to work the still.

It's a long process and takes many days to produce the first batch.

Before we can cook the agave in the oven, we let the pulp ferment in the barrels for up to eight or nine days.

Then we bring it over and fill up the oven.

We add a starter and then cover up the hole with a hollowed out palm trunk.

This is the cap into which we insert the culebra or snake.

The more patient you are, the better the bacanora is.

If you hurry, the end product usually isn't worth anything.

The production of bacanora is a lengthy process.

It starts by going to the field and collecting the agave plants, bringing them into the vinata, that is the place where bacanora is made, and then having several steps that involve crushing the heads, allowing the fermentation to proceed.

And the taste is a little sour.

Not the bacanora because it's very sweet, but the fermenting agave is sour.

And then doing the distillation and usually a second distillation.

What's coming out now is bacanora.

Bacanora, the good stuff.

Making bacanora is a long and complicated process.

Somebody has to come forth at the end and test the final product.

I volunteer.

Ah!

That's good.

Bacanora is a Spanish institution.

It's great stuff but I came all this way to find the remnants of the native Ópatas.

Buena Vista is an unlikely place to have, to be the sort of center of weaving.

It's gotta be one of the most isolated villages in Sonora.

Oh, it's a beautiful ride.

I can't imagine how people reached Buena Vista, say, one hundred years ago when Carl Lumholtz decided to come to this region.

Even now it's probably a six or seven hour drive from Hermosillo.

250 people in the town is what the census data says.

So it's way out here in the middle of nowhere.

I guess it's the only place where the descendants of the Ópatas still weave.

I think it's the only place in all of Sonora.

Because there is such a heavy demand on hats and I really wonder why it's not more widespread.

I don't know.

But I think most of the women weave here.

I've been here a couple of times before but not for a long time.

This is my first time in this town.

Being a Sonoran is really bad but it's so far away.

I feel so happy with coming to this fabled town where sombreros are made.

Because in Hermosillo people have pride in owning a sombrero from Buena Vista.

Doña Maria, the woman who first introduced the hats to me nearly a decade ago, is gone.

I was relieved to find that Doña Guadalupe, or Lupana as they call her, is still weaving with palm fibers.

I was very young when I began to work and I am still weaving to this day.

My mother, my older sisters and an aunt taught me how to weave.

It takes a lot of time to make hats like this one.

Just look at all the fibers that go into it.

The palms are harvested in the hills.

That's where we get all our materials.

This bundle cost me fifty cents.

If we don't go out and harvest ourselves, we have to buy from the vendors that sell it in the village.

People place an order for a hat or bottle covers like these.

This one here is the finest material we work with and this other one has a green stripe design from the same palm fibers.

When it doesn't rain, it's still very pleasant inside the huuki.

We moisten the ground inside to create a humid climate so the palm fibers get soft and pliable for weaving.

So, it's always nice and humid inside here?

Yes.

It needs to be because it's very dry outside.

But down here the fibers become moist and soft.

How long have you had this huuki.

Oh, many, many years.

You know when it rains here, I can weave inside the house because of the higher humidity.

But that doesn't happen very often.

My grandfather was Ópata.

My father's father, that is where, you know, the origin of this art form comes from, the Ópatas.

They passed on the weaving knowledge so that we would continue to weave, which we still do to this day.

Those are my grandchildren.

Hopefully they too will learn to weave.

Their mother weaves.

Can you imagine how much work goes into this?

Look at all these strands of fibers and I'm not done yet.

It is very time consuming.

And I still have to do my housework.

Here in the bottom of this hat is where I began and slowly I spiraled upward as it grew in shape.

Sometimes it takes up to fifteen days to finish a hat.

These guaris are for large tortillas.

This type of weaving is the easiest there is.

This is the only way I can climb out of the huuki.

Here is one of the bottles.

And here's the second one.

Is this guari for flour tortillas?

Yes.

Real big tortillas.

And here is some more threshers of Buena Vista.

The huuki is terrific.

It's warm when it's cold outside and it's very cool when it's hot outside.

When it's raining, she doesn't need to work in here because it's moist and she can work in the house.

She brings water into the pot form in the back, sprinkles it, it keeps the place moist.

She can work there all year round if she needs to.

And it's also, I'm sure, a refuge from all of the distractions and other things that might happen and she can get away from it all.

It's a great place.

To be courteous we should take off our hats before going inside the house and drinking the mescal.

I was here eight years ago and ten years ago and I wrote down quite a bit of what I was told here.

There's some that I didn't understand and there's a lot that I didn't get because I didn't ask the right questions.

It just goes to show that the only way to find about the life of the people in the Sierra and the Ópataria and the arts that we're loosing is to go there and talk to them and find out what's happening.

As long as the women can find a market for their products, they will continue to weave and pass this skill on to their daughters and granddaughters.

And this Ópata tradition will survive.

It is not unusual to find sand in a desert.

plenty of it too.

But white sand?

Or huge piles of sand?

.with aspen growing on them?

All a part of the unexpected world of sand dunes.

Next time on the Desert Speaks.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

A group of concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of our desert areas.