Slow Baja - Professor Paul Ganster A Half-Century Of Love For Loreto

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Paul Ganster began traveling to Mexico with his friend and former high school teacher, Harry Crosby, in the early 1960s. When Crosby landed his 1967 commission to photograph the El Camino Real, he asked Ganster, then a graduate student at UCLA, to make the trip with him. In retracing the original Portolá missionary expedition of 1769, Crosby and Ganster covered 600 grueling miles, mostly by mule. Ganster took trail notes, made detailed drawings and maps, and shot scores of photographs. However, no job was more important than feeding the mules. Each evening, he would climb the palo verde trees and use a machete to hack off branches that the mules would crunch on loudly. The trip was a life-changing trip for both men. Crosby's photographs from the journey were published in The Call to California in 1969. He often returned to Baja to photograph cave paintings and study early life in Alta, California and published several books on the subject. Baja figured prominently into Ganster's life as well. In his long career in academia, he is an acknowledged expert on the U.S.-Mexico border region. Currently, he directs the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University. He's recently edited Loreto, Mexico: Challenges for a Sustainable Future (2020, SDSU Press) with Oscar Arizpe and Vinod Sasidharan. He and Arizpe, a professor at the Universidad A. de Baja California Sur, collaborated on two earlier projects examining Loreto's sustainability. Check out Paul Ganster's extensive writings here. Purchase Loreto Mexico, Challenges for a Sustainable Future here. Email Paul at: [e-mail]

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Hey, I'm delighted to be here on Slow Baja with Dr. Paul Gansder. It is a beautiful home here in San Diego. We're sitting outside. It's a lovely warm day. You may hear some of the wild parrots flying by, and Dr. Gansler and I are sitting about 15 feet apart. We're being very safe in these COVID days, and I'm just delighted to be here, so thank you.

Well, thank you for coming, and I'm glad we could arrange this, and please call me Paul. Well, Paul, on extraordinarily short notice, Edy Littlefield Sunbee suggested strongly, strongly, she's a forceful woman that I get a hold of you, and I'm just returning back from a Baja trip, and you are kind enough to make some time for me, and she has been so kind to connect me to people that she feels have something important. to say about Baja, so I'm quite indebted to her to be here today. So let's get on with it. Tell me about your personal history and how you, how Baja came into your life. Well, I grew up in San Diego from the eighth grade on, and from day one,

ended up with various friends, relatives, going into Baja, California. Sometimes the typical tourism shopping in an Avenida Revolution, but more often fishing south of Ensonada on the coast. But in my junior year high school, I was at La Jolla High School, I took a class with Harry Crosby, who's my chemistry teacher, and he and I hit it off. I went on a couple of trips to northwestern Mexico with him, the foothills of Sonora, places that later you really couldn't travel to because of the drug cartels. And we got along very well.

I spent a lot of time at his house. I learned photography from him. He was just getting into becoming a professional photographer. I worked for him a bit when he was doing some furniture designing and manufacturing. And then I went off to college and didn't come back to San Diego really. a permanent basis for 20 years, but it always kept up with Harry and Joanne and his family. And after I graduated from Yale, I went to UCLA for my Ph.D. in Latin American history, and in my trips back and forth from Santa Monica to La Jolla, I'd always, in San Diego, I'd always see Harry and Joanne.

At that time, this would have been in 1967. He had arranged a commission to photograph the trail followed by the expedition of 1769 that went from Loretto and Baja California, mid-peninsula, overland up to San Diego, to establish San Diego, establish a mission and a percentage. And so he was talking about this and asked if I'd like to accompany him for part of it. So I took a couple of quarters off of my graduate education. And in 1967, we appeared in Loretto and arranged animals to transport us, found guides, at different places on the journey, and eventually ended up following the old El Camino Real up the peninsula and up the spine of the peninsula through the mountains

because that's where water is to eventually up to San Diego parts of it were covered by vehicle but most on animals where a vehicle simply couldn't get at that time and that was really an incredible experience. I had a strong interest in colonial history and the whole process of settlement and expansion of the Spanish Empire up to San Diego. Harry had a great interest in the environment, in the incredible scenery, and in the really fabulous people

that we met. The ranch families who really form a subculture that's, I think, unique in anywhere in the world of people who've been self-sufficient and very welcoming to outsiders. So in that trip, I got a really good sense of traditional culture in the mountains of Baja, California, and really made a lasting impression on me. And with Harriet, had an incredible impact. on his career because it led to subsequent efforts on exploring and documenting the great murals or cave paintings of the mountains of Baja California and led to a number of books, including really the most detailed, analytical, and well-documented study of the Jesuit period in Baja California.

He really started out to do a broader study, but realized he had to go back to the beginnings of Baja California, and that led to his archival research. And we interacted a lot on that because that was my field of study, the colonial empire in Spanish America. I ended up doing my Ph.D. research in Lima on colonial society. worked in the Mexican archives as well. So we always communicated on that. Anyway, fast forward, many years, really, sometime around 2000, I began to return more frequently

to the Loretto area, partly from interest, partly because I began to explore various research options in the region. By that time, I was a faculty member at San Diego State University, where I had been hired in 1984 to establish an institute dealing with the border region and the peninsula of Baja California. And so I had legitimate professional reasons, and I was always interested in Loretto. When we first entered Loretto in 1967, I remember very clearly. I don't think there was a paved road in town. The mission church structure was more or less intact. It had been

repaired in the late 40s and early 50s. But the settlement of the town was on a large square lots, a very non-dense settlement, and really little country ranchos in an urban environment. People had large lots, they all had animals, they had little kitchen gardens, there were mangoes and other types of fruit trees. But it was just a delightful place, and one could sense that there was a very strong traditional culture present there, so unlike what one encountered farther north in the peninsula in the very dynamic areas such as Tijuana, for example, which were just growing so, so fast. Well, so around 2000, I began to interact with colleagues I had met at various international

international conferences. And we started to think about some research on Baja California, the Gulf area. And my main collaborator really for 25 years has been Oscar Arispe, who's the head of a coastal laboratory at the Autonomous University of Baja California in La Paz. He's a marine scientist. scientist and I'm a historian but we worked together very well and found that combination

of our disciplines really gave us the ability to look at sort of human and nature and science and the interactions. So we have done a number of studies over the years and a couple of them have concentrated on Loretto. And what we did was to pull together researchers from the peninsula, from SDSU, and occasionally from other universities in the states, to look at different aspects of local reality.

And the purpose of these was to provide a basis of knowledge and understanding that could help inform decision makers in the community, hopefully the community at large, hopefully policy makers to help them better understand the challenges and opportunities that they faced in managing their region. Before we jump too much into Loretto today and the issues that we're going to discuss, you need to bring me right back to Harry talking to you about,

Paul, I want you to come down to Baja with me, and we're going to check out the El Camino, and how did you get to Loretto? Did Francisco Munoz fly you down? Did you take a boat? Did you take a car? Tell me about that part first. And then you glossed over 600 miles on mule,

and your documentation, your intimate, detailed documentation of that journey that's provided a lot of information for people who have had a chance to reflect on that. So let's not gloss over that. Well, when Harry and I were getting ready to go down to Loretta, where the Camino Real, in essence, began, because that was the head of the California missions and civil government in California, California at the time. We did discuss how to get there, and Harry decided the best thing to do would be to get a vehicle capable of moving across the difficult roads at the time.

There was no paved road going down the peninsula. So he basically built, and I helped a little bit when I had time, a modified dune buggy based on a VW. And the beauty of the VW base for traveling in Baja, California, is that they have good traction because the engines in the rear over the wheels. and they have four-wheel independent suspension. Now, if you were in a Dodge Power Wagon on a washboard road, it just shakes your teeth loose, and you can't go fast enough to bounce over the washboard ruts and smooth the ride out.

But a dune buggy will do that, faster, more comfortable. but we made the mistake of having it a semi-open arrangement. We did have some side curtains, but boy, to dust ever leak in, and boy, are the roads dusty some places in Baja California. Nonetheless, we went down and we actually went through Mexicali because there had been some winter rains and the San Quintin area had some road washouts and so on. So we went down through Mexicali, San Felipe, and South,

and cut over to the main highway, and then drove into Loretto in the dune buggy, which worked out just fine. In fact, I found some photographs of Harry with the dune buggy not too long ago, and it brought back interesting. memories. So were you camping each night or were you staying in a little whatever accommodations, Papa Diaz or whoever might have accommodations? What was your... Yeah, we did both. We, you know,

if we could find a convenient place to stay, that was fine. Otherwise, we camped out. In some of the small towns at different stages of the trip, we just ask around and it'd say, oh yeah, so-and-so, will rent out a room or a place to stay and so-and-so cooks meals and you can get breakfast. And breakfast was universally great, wonderful beans and tortillas, occasionally with a little bit of meat thrown in. But nonetheless, or cheese, nonetheless much appreciated. So really we traveled the way people traveled. I mean, there were commercial travelers that went up and down the peninsula. I guess we would have called them tinkers in the old days in the U.S.,

but people who sold dried goods and anything they could to make a living. And we did encounter a few of these. They went by the name of Fayoukeros. But places they would stay, we would end up staying. And of course, once we got off the paved road, then it was staying at the various ranches. And sometimes we'd put a tent up, but more often we'd sleep under a Ramada,

some kind of a shelter. but the weather was always wonderful in November, December, January, February in the peninsula, particularly in the mountains. Life on the trail was really quite fascinating because usually we were going with a couple of local cowboys and we had to find different cowboys as we traveled because they were going. tended to know only their region and they knew it really well and intimately but we'd began to get on the edges of territory that they really understood and we'd have to find someone else to serve as guides and to help manage the animals.

Paul do you have a do you have a an estimate on what their range is? Is it 30 miles? Is it 50 miles? Because I'd heard this before. from Trudy Angel as well as Edy, that these Vicaros, they know the place, I hate to use a cliche, like the back of their hand, but they know their portion of it. And what's your estimate on that, is it? Well, you know, I don't know. I couldn't give you, I hate to say it, but I think it depends. A few of the cowboys we'd encountered had, had

actually been involved in transporting animals or things for sale products into some of the towns that may be three or four days ride, and they knew those trails well. But generally, the cowboys kind of stuck around their ranches or ranches of relatives, and I'm guessing a diameter of, I don't know, 50, 60 miles, but I have no way to support that guess. Yeah, that's an awful lot when you're going on horseback or mule back or by foot. That really is quite a range, frankly. When you think about it that way rather than just an hour in the car.

Well, a good hard day's riding with pack animals, we could cover 14 miles depending upon the terrain and so on. Amazing. And we learned pretty quickly that horses were useless, and it was all mules. And the reason is that two reasons. One, mules could survive on the forage and the brush and the brows encountered along the trail. And secondly, when they were,

walked, they would put their rear foot exactly where their front foot had been. So they could pick their way through boulder fields and rocks very well, and horses couldn't quite do that. Also, mules, although difficult sometimes, tended to be a little calmer and didn't panic the way horses would sometimes. So you could actually have a mule roll over and do a turtle, legs in the air, and remain calm while you went up and took the packs off and somehow got them right it again. I'm not sure that could happen with a horse. On the trail, we get up early with the light and get something to eat. Harry and I brought a lot of oatmeal with us,

and the cowboys detested it because real men ate meat. And is that Machaca or something? They've got to have something to dry. Well, Machaca or dried meat or just fresh meat. You could take a slab of fresh meat and keep it covered for a couple of days, and it would just get tenderer and tenderer as you went along. You can't see me smiling behind my mask, but I'm smiling with my eyes. Yes, tenderer and tenderer.

And actually, by the third day, it was usually pretty good. I mean, just like going down to your local supermarket. Okay. And so, you know, we'd be up and off. Of course, coffee was critical, and coffee is a Baja California necessity. It's a social institution. In towns like Loretto historically, visiting for morning coffee was a major social event of the local people. And I remember walking around Loretto in the little time we spent there in 1967,

and you could just smell the coffee early in the morning. Really fabulous. And on the trail, when you'd pull into a ranch, the first thing they would do would be to pull out the coffee-making materials and everyone would have a cup of coffee while you've socialized. Let me interject there. That's ground beans and poured through a sock or you're in an enamel pot. That's pretty traditional coffee, right? Yeah.

You're not doing Nescafe. You still find some people doing it. It's basically filter coffee with a, using just a cloth bag. Right. And it's actually a similar method used in Costa Rica until relatively recently. But it produces a very rich coffee. Very often they would buy unroasted beans and just toast the beans and then grind them. and that would be the coffee.

I never saw them preparing cowboy coffee the way we do it by boiling the grounds and then just trying to pour off the coffee without getting too much grit. Right. And so the ranch coffee was pretty standard and pretty wonderful. One difference, though, is Harry and I like, black coffee and the ranch people tended to like it with sweets with sugar so we

always had a discussion about what coffee was best yeah I'm a black coffee drinker as well hey what was your role on that trip what did Harry sell you on what did you do because I know you produce drawings which you haven't talked about yet but what other what other duties did you have how is it broken down Was it broken down formally or just in? No, just, you know, we'd traveled enough together and we got on pretty well. So I just, you know, helped with everything. I helped the cowboys with the animals.

I'd climb up in trees of the machete and chop off branches and the Palo Verdes that the mules would crunch on all night. Like all Yale men. Right. You've got your machete and you can do any job you need to. Right. But, you know, I took trail notes. I took a lot of photographs. In fact, a lot of the photographs in Harry's books that are of him I actually took.

Can we talk a little bit about your equipment because I'm a photographer as well? And I think listeners would just be interested in, did you just have roles of triax in an old Nikon or a Pentax? or what gear did you have? A roloflex? I think for that trip, if I remember correctly, had a Bronica outfit. Wow. Not fooling around. Yeah, and Harry had a couple of different things. One of them was Hossoblot Super Wide Sea, and I'm not sure he took it on that.

But we both had what you'd call large or medium format cameras using the 120 film. And triac sometimes, but usually it was a slower speed, high resolution. So coda chrome in those days or ectochrome? Well, we did both. We did black and white and actually the color that I tended to use with ectochrome but also agforchrome. Okay. And I've noticed many years later, the agfrochrome dyes have held up pretty well,

and so some of them are still pretty vivid, the color shots. Well, you had to be very good as a photographer. I'm assuming you had a handheld light meter or something, but you had to really know your stuff in those days. Oh, yeah. To shoot with slide film in the field, not see it developed, of course, for weeks or months and transport it carefully, do what you could to keep it from baking in the sun. Yeah, we just accumulated lots of exposed rolls and then when we got back or somebody was going

back, we just took it in to be developed or we would process it ourselves if it was black and white. I'd done a lot of black and white lab work. I'd traveled, you know, many areas taking lots of photographs. So I was pretty experienced. At one time I thought about becoming a professional photographer, but interests led me in a different direction. In terms of transporting the stuff, we constructed special saddlebags to fit on the animals so we could actually access things on the trail, yet everything was padded with foam and protected

from banging into cactus and brush and that sort of thing. And what sort of attire, what clothing were you wearing? I imagine your jeans would have been shredded by the end of a trip like that. Well, I just wore jeans and... Did you have chaps? You know, cottonwork shirts. And... There are parrots.

And hiking boots of a sort. I didn't take cowboy boots because we knew we'd be a lot of walking, so I had something that's a little bit sturdier. and we both generally had leggings of one sort of another to keep thorns from penetrating into our legs as we rode through the brush. But, you know, things held up pretty well on the trail, and, you know, we didn't wear them out by washing them or anything like that. So I used to joke that after about two or three days on the trail, things didn't matter much because we smelled just like the mules at that time. Well, again, you sketched maps. I read here that you sketched maps that showed the complexities of trail and terrain.

Tell me about those complexities. Well, the method we used for following the trail was to, First of all, get the best topo maps that we could, and the Mexican government had a fairly decent series available at that time. And then we used the various descriptions that were available of the trail by members of the original expedition and by later travelers. And then in talking to the cowboys, you know, we'd describe what we had found, and particularly Harry had gone through and made a concordance of all of the different trail descriptions. We were able to talk to the cowboys about that, and they'd have a discussion and say, oh, yeah, that goes on that side of the peak.

it crosses the arroyo at that place, and then they talk about whether there were any obvious physical remains, because in most areas of the Camino Real, and remember, there are many branches of it, and some were used, some were renewed because of weather problems and washouts and so on. But pretty soon the cowboys with us learned

to recognize trails that had actually been built, particularly on the climbs and the downhill places where sometimes construction was necessary both to preserve the trail and to make it passable for mules. Or across some of the desert stretches, the Jesuits had gone through and it looked as though So they surveyed it and threw the rocks out to the side and ended up with a perfectly straight line across a broad flat mesa or broad flat arroyo. So discussions with the cowboys and local people about routes was always something that we engaged in and was complicated.

Occasionally we got led off course by a lazy cowboy, but we figured that out pretty quickly and would have to do some backtracking. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruisers out of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Your website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at BajaBound.com. That's BajaBound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, Bob, tourism is picking up, and our friends at the Animal Pad and Tap Act want to remind you when you're crossing the border, just say no to puppy peddlers.

I know they're cute, but the sooner we can end the demand, we can end the supply. For more information, check out theanimalpad.org and Tap Act on Instagram and Facebook. Well, we're back with Paul Gansder here in his house. The parrots are still with us. It's a beautiful sunny day. We're sitting in the shade, and we're just going to jump right back. back into we were talking about the El Camino. Paul, I don't think you talked about,

you've mentioned the Jesuits. That's Portola, as we say in San Francisco, Portola. Yeah, Portola. Portola. Portola. It should be in Spanish, Portola. That's the way those in the know in San Francisco state. Can you break down the Portola to Sarah

and how the mission period came and when it was at its peak, and then when it dissipated and they handed it off, and what happened with the El Camino? And lastly, your opinion on the El Camino's value of history? And quite early on in the 16th century, really by the 1540s, Spanish explorations on the land and on the sea had pretty much mapped out the north, and that includes the peninsula of Baja, California, and a bit of the California coast.

And they realized there weren't really any exploitable wealth in the area and instead concentrated on central Mexico. But the peninsula was important for one major reason, and that was the Manila galleon, the annual ship that came over from the Philippines loaded with Chinese products. It would go north along the coasts of Japan across the northern Pacific and hit the coast in northern California or Oregon

and then come down the coast to Acapulco. But by the time they hit the California coast, the crew tended to be in very bad condition because of months without proper diet and so on. And so they needed a port to refresh themselves, get water, and so on. And that led to the settlement of the Baja California Peninsula. Because it was such a godforsaken place full of rocks and thorns, as one Jesuit described it, The Crown didn't want to undergo the expense and instead worked out an arrangement with the Jesuits

to have that as their exclusive mission field to save souls with a little bit of support and the civil authorities, the Army as well. But in essence, the Jesuits undertook it as a project they financed through charitable contributions and they established their first headquarters in Loretto, and then went inland and south, and eventually occupied the southern part of the peninsula. In 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire for all of the political intrigue,

and the crown named the Franciscans to take over. But the Franciscans didn't want to just, take over missions that were declining and Indian population rapidly. And so they got involved in the thrust north and up the coast of California because the imperial authorities were very concerned that the Russians were coming across the Bering Strait and down into the north. And so there was a real competition for empire and there was a need, a need, a a political need to expand up the coast as quickly as possible.

So the Spanish government organized and authorized expeditions to establish mission, Presidios, eventually towns, going up California, and eventually they reached as far as Sonoma north of San Francisco. So the Franciscans undertook initially managing the Baja California missions, but once they got into California, they left the field to the Dominicans who came in later. So the shifting mission orders involved, and that was always an important part of the conquest on the frontier. And we, in Baja California, soar there's nothing left of the indigenous past other than

physical remains, cave paintings, and so on. The indigenous people were so hard hit by the European diseases and social dislocation that their numbers declined rapidly and very, very tragically. I just wanted to mention that life on the trail up the peninsula is very interesting because every so often you'd encounter petroglyphs obviously made during the mission period of crosses and so on. Constructed dams to hold water, little irrigation. canals, constructed roads, so the presence of the missionaries was palpable.

And then even more importantly, the presence of the colonial social traditions and culture was present in the ranch families in many ways. And finally, in the intimate knowledge of the landscape and the ethnobotans, the uses of plants and even the uses of animals. It was pretty clearly that a lot of traditional indigenous learning had been passed on to the natives, to what we call natives of the Mid Peninsula, the Hispanic descendants of the missionary soldiers. So all of these things became available if you thought about it on the trail, And there was lots of time to think on the trail because at night we hit the sack pretty early,

and I remember lying on my back in a sleeping bag. We didn't use tents because it just wasn't necessary. But looking up overhead, and with our bare eyes, we could see Russian satellites going north and south. They had satellites that went up the west coast to look. at our military, but being able to see those, it was kind of like looking from the 18th century to the 20th century at that time. It's interesting that you would touch on that because the knights are so inky black in Baja, and it must have been even more so then going back 50 years ago.

My experience is 80s forward. And to think about the new. newness of a satellite in space. There's not a lot moving around in the sky in those days. And to be able to say, hey, that's a Russian satellite going by. That's really astonishing. It was quite interesting. It's just something I've always remembered. Can I break you off of that for a second? I just had some thoughts. Again, I'm just back from a Baja trip in my 1990s. Normally I'm in my 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser, which is completely stock, and it's just a step up from the burrows that you were on. It really takes a toll on your body.

What was it like on your body? What were those nights like when you got off the burrow? How did your body feel? You're a young, young man. Look, I was 21 or 22, and, you know, I'd played football. I'd done a lot of hiking in the Sierra as a kid. was used to a pretty strenuous life. It's done a lot of diving and swimming and body surfing.

And, you know, it'd be bone tired at the end of the day, but still enough energy to climb up in the trees and cut down branches for the mules and help pack them up in the morning. And although some people don't believe it, Just sitting on a mule for 14 hours is a pretty big physical effort. It's got to be exhausting. Particularly when you're going across very rough terrain.

Your core just must be amazing, the toll on your body. Yeah, but, you know, look at the cowboys. They did this stuff all day, every day, and they're just fine. But sure, we're pretty sore for a few days, but then things. evened out and nobody didn't complain to so you just get on with it yeah we just got on with it and that's the way things were all right well let's let me

go ahead let me sort of detour back to a more modern time if that's okay I was just going to and contemporary Loretto although I love looking back and remembering what what the world was like in the 1960s and 70s. The Loretto today, despite growth spurts, still

retains a charm at a cultural sense and cultural traditions that harken back to the 18th and 19th centuries. And it's an existence

and really a social reality that's under threat by a couple of things. Probably most importantly is what I call the hyperdevelopment of major tourism development. The Mexican government in the 70s came up with a policy to develop tourism resorts to attract foreign people with hard currency, mainly people from the U.S., but also from Canada and Europe. And so they developed a model that we've all seen in Cancun or parts of Acapulco or the major coastal resorts. And that was the fate of Los Cabos, and they also attempted it in Loretto, but things never took off in Loretto for various reasons. And the problem with planting a large sand and sun development in a place like Loretto

is that it totally overwhelms local society and local culture. In essence, it erases it. And a unique thing about Loretto is its historical tradition and culture. And it's something that I feel is important to. be saved. In the early 2000s, the Mexican tourism group or Fonatur, again tried to stimulate massive development of Loretto, which started with a Canadian developer with some good ideas, but eventually they wanted to sort of treble the population. and build all kinds of dense coastal development.

And what saved Loretto from that was the recession of 2008, multiple bankruptcies, and so it attenuated development and slowed it down. However, now they seem to be making another effort, and we'll just have to see how that goes. fortunately or unfortunately Mexico is in difficult financial straits now because of COVID but also the policies of the new Mexican administration

which isn't so much concerned about development of big tourism areas but has a strong focus on social welfare which is fairly new. So Loretto does face the threat of development, and the natural resources of Loretto can only support a certain amount of people. Water is scarce, fresh water is scarce, and it's a constant crisis. And there's also something we call the view shed.

one of the values of Loretto is the wonderful views up to the mountains and out to the sea. But the minute you start putting up a wall of high rises along the beach, that's destroyed for everyone and can never be recovered. So in a sense, development is an existential threat to the traditional Loretto and people who live in Loretto, if not manned. properly. And for years it's been obvious to me and other researchers and people interested in sustainability that the path forward should really be looking at alternative tourism. Things such as what Trudy does, leading mule rides, having people visit ranches. It keeps the cowboys and the ranches in business. Ecological tours out to the islands. It employs the fishermen instead of depleting fishing stocks.

This type of tourism is generally run by family-run firms, income is distributed more evenly. It creates an economy where money recirculates and doesn't all go out to Mexico City or the U.S. And the Camino Real could be a very important part of that. If the Camino is declared a World Heritage Site and local tourism agencies, state, and federal do what they can to help organize the Camino Real as a tourism site and destination. And we have good examples of how this can work. For example, the Appalachian Trail,

the Pacific Crest Trail and the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. So there are some movements now to use this wonderful colonial resource, the Camino Real, as a tourism destination that would not only be historical, but goes through fabulous geology, through ecosystems of plants and animals that are just one. wonderful and very exotic. So the course of tourism for Loretto is, I think, very important. And Loretto has been named one of the magic towns of Mexico, small towns with traditional value. And if they can retain that, that's terrific, and not become a tragic town and go the wrong

direction. Loretto has a number of really, I think, existential challenges to worry about right now. Currently, COVID, which is a huge issue, and I don't think Loretto is managing it very well. People aren't wearing masks, they're not social distancing. I mean, to tell a large extended Mexican family to social distance, it's very difficult. It doesn't work in Loretto, it doesn't work in San Diego. People say, well, but it's family. How could that hurt? And that's really unfortunate. But other threats that are a little bit below the radar right now is climate change. In our recent book, my friends who are leading climate scientists and others point out that Loretto is already seeing effects of climate change through increasing temperatures, that means lower nighttime temperatures and higher daytime temperatures.

So things during the hot season don't cool down as much. Periods of drought tend to become a little more extended. Extreme weather will continue to be as bad or worse, plus sea level rise is particularly critical for Loretto. Loretto. If you look at the maps of the projecting what it's going to be like when sea level rises one meter or a half a meter, you'll see that large parts of urban Loretto in the old town will be inundated, plus a lot of new developments to the south and Nopolo will also have some problems. So you combine sea level rise with storm surge because sooner or later a hurricane is going to hit Loretto directly again, as it has in the past.

Caught us flooding in the Royos. That's a real disaster. And there are steps that can be taken. The municipality is aware of them, and some private groups are starting to do these things, such as restoration of dunes and vegetation, to really hold the coastal barriers. Another existential threat to some extent is water.

Loretto is always on the verge of running out of water, and they authorized development without really considering where the water is going to come from. And the aquifers don't replenish rapidly, so that's just a long-term concern. And desalination is one solution, but it's very difficult to discharge the highly saline remnants of that process into a national park that's an important marine reserve because those saline waters kill a lot of juvenile species. So that's a real difficult question that Loretto's are going to have to come to grips with. And also, phonature sends the wrong message because they still have medians and large areas of these new developments that are in grass that are water hogs. They look nice, and golf courses look nice, but.

boy, they use a lot of water, and that's really unfortunate. Paul, you've co-authored a book about this. You've been thinking about Loretto for more than 50 years now. Where are some positives? What brings you back to Loretto? What on balance gives you some hope? Because we just can't exist with full negative thoughts, even though they probably are correct.

What gives you some hope? Well, I think the positive of Loretto, they're a couple. I think first and foremost are what I call the human capital. The people, the culture, the historic traditions of the people in the region. And in a sense, that goes from even urban residents to, of course, the rural residents. just really wonderful and interesting people. Secondly, of course, the incredible natural scenery is something that can't be duplicated. A trip out on the bay in the early morning with dolphins jumping,

a walk around one of the protected islands, people who do scuba dive, enjoy that. Plus everything in the Sierra La Giganta, a fabulous natural region. I mean, those are some of the attractions. The unparalleled natural beauty of the region is certainly an attraction. And the absence of Cancun-type or Los Cabos-type development is a development is a a huge attraction as well. So we're going to wrap it up here. I'd like people, I'd like you to tell us about the book, the title of the book again, and where people can find it, and where people can find out more about you and your writings,

and if you want to be in touch, how that occurs, if that's indeed something you're interested in. Oh, okay. Well, the book that was published in 2020 by SDSU Press and is available through can be ordered through Amazon, either as a Kindle format electronically or a hard copy, is titled Loretto Mexico, Challenges for a Sustainable Future. And the chapters deal with things such as an analysis of Loretto Bay National Park. We have a study on local government, how it's structured and how it's supposed to work. A couple of colleagues look at the issue of electric power in Loretto.

There's no reason why Loretto should be burning dirty fuel oil for electricity. The solar resources are incredible. We look at economic structure and well-being in Loretto. What's the economic quality of life of people in Loretto? We examine small fishing and what fishermen or fishers are doing to earn a living now and how they've been able to link with sustainable tourism. Another chapter looks at the Camino Real

and the proposals to create that as a World Heritage Site. And do you think the odds are pretty good that UNESCO will move on that? I think so. I mean, it's an awfully bold vision, but I think it's a no-brainer. It is a no-brainer, but it's slowly moving through the bureaucracy. So you add the UN bureaucracy to the Mexican bureaucracy, and it just takes a little while. We also have chapters on climate change and the threat of mining, which has a potential to totally wipe out the sustainability in the region.

water resources, and then a final chapter tries to pull all that together and talk about the uncertain road ahead. And the basic message is, look, Loretto has this wonderful base of human capital and historic tradition. It's facing a number of very clear threats, and really people in Roretto need to become engaged and make the decisions necessary to to retain quality of life in the region. Well, Paul Gansder, you've been very, very, very generous on very short notice with some time and a lot of information and great stories about Baja and Loretto of Your and Loretto of today. So if people want to be in touch with you, do you have a public profile that folks can find,

or are you not playing that? Well, Google me and you'll track me down. Okay. And you'll find my email and all that kind of stuff. That's the easiest way. Well, I really appreciate you spending some time and talking about our mutual passion of Baja. So thank you very much.

Many thanks, Michael. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.