Darío Higuera Meza wanted to preserve historical knowledge and reenact his grandfather’s mule pack train in Baja Californa by traveling 200 miles in 20 days from an oasis in the heart of the Sierra de la Gigante to the city of La Paz.
Filmmaker Trudi Angell and her crew went along for that ride, and documented the old traditions Meza, 70-year-old traditional saddle maker, feared might be lost forever in the documentary feature “La Recua”. The film will be screened in San Diego AMC Mission Valley at the Latino Film Festival on March 18, 2022, at 6:35 p.m., or March 20, 2022, at 11 a.m.
When Meza turned 70 in 2018, he overcame hardships of health, rattlesnakes, and hot days on rocky and forgotten trails in order to honor the memory of lower California’s “long-haul” equine merchants “Los arrieros”, the muleteers of Baja’s mule pack-trains.
This was a mule pack traveled along the old El Camino Real trails with three generations of Meza’s family. Among the riders were Meza’s son and his grandson, Ramoncito, 8. According to Angell, traveling by mule has always been a part of the culture of small villages in Mexico because of the rugged mountain country, locals have no other choice but to travel by mules.
However, as technology continues to evolve, these traditions are dwindling. This film focuses on how Meza fears old traditions will eventually be forgotten and lost forever.
“He made equipment from this antigua (ancient) California knowledge that he had," Angell said. "He remembered these stories from around the campfire, watching his father his grandfather build those things when he was little. He has a lot of ingenuity.”
The trip took about a year to plan, along with gathering resources to execute Meza’s vision. According to Angell, Meza made old-style equipment from the knowledge he had to make mule pack saddles made out of straw and leather.
Angell shared that once the crew made it down halfway down the peninsula, they began to run out of funds, but a donation by Christy Walton, founder of the International Community Foundation, supplemented the crew to continue their journey. The crew decided to go down a piece of the original El Camino Real Trail which began in Loreto, Baja California Sur, and ends in Alta, California.
According to Angell, the trails were created by indigenous people that took them to waterholes even though they weren't nomadic.
“They didn't move because of animals or moving animals. They moved seasonally or just to where there was food, but of course water as well. Along those routes, so those original indigenous trails became the places where the original Jesuit California missions were started on the peninsula in 1697,” Angell said.
The team traveled along El Camino Real from a village in the Sierras, west of Loreto, the first original capital of California, and visited trails that went to the south that visited waterholes “because that was the key to the livelihood and the health and the survival of the indigenous people than the missionaries. Then the ranching culture that survived,” Angell said.
“He remembers his grandfather's, father's, and uncle's stories around the campfire, and feels that it's an important piece of history to capture,” Angel said.
The crew hopes to make an educational cut suitable for PBS or share the film with different history centers, like the San Diego Natural History Museum.
