Reading Tristes Tropiques: Civilization, Culture, and Rivers of Encounter

Reading Tristes Tropiques: Civilization, Culture, and Rivers of Encounter

By Armando Ortiz

While scrolling through social media, I came upon a video of a man in Mexico City interviewing people at a book festival. A person he interviewed mentioned Tristes Tropiques by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. A seed of wonder was planted at that moment. So I began learning more about the author and the book. Unbeknownst to me, my friend Scott had a copy and gave it to me as a gift.

His introduction unfolds slowly, reflecting on life in Paris and the prospect of moving to Brazil. The chance to connect his studies with travel was a great opportunity. As he makes his way there, he talks about the French explorers who came to America in the 1500s. He also takes time to describe the oceanscape and life aboard a ship. Once in Brazil, an opportunity to explore further inland opens up. As he travels deeper into the interior, the people he encounters become increasingly varied: loggers, diamond seekers, immigrants, outlaws, and Indigenous communities.

He describes those parts of Brazil as an endless savannah of heat, with rains that flood vast stretches of the plains. In that environment he reflects on the lives of Indigenous communities living deep in the backcountry.

As I read his chronicles, I thought of how fortunate I was to have visited points of encounter like Lisbon, Portugal and Rouen, France. Those are places where people left their homes to explore new lands and returned with people, things, and ideas. As I read, I seemed to embark on a journey myself. The deeper his analysis became, the more his travels began connecting with places I had visited. The world that we inhabit today carries the consequences of those explorations and encounters.

Reading his chronicles, I suddenly found myself reliving my trip to Portugal, standing in front of the monument to the Age of Discovery. I recalled seeing South Asian people working in Lisbon. Lisbon was a departure point for many voyages of exploration, and yet the city itself had once been under Muslim rule. It makes me wonder how many untold stories a landscape can hold, and how many discoveries might still be waiting in places we think we already know.

I remembered the walking tour in Paris and listening to the guide tell us how Paris was divided into districts and how the floors of buildings reflected social standing. Then I also wandered through the old business area of Rouen where I saw a giant plaque dedicated to the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who sailed the Mississippi River. I thought about what he might have seen in North America–the markets, the people, and the interactions taking place around him. As I stood there, a Scandinavian tour group walked by, headed toward the town square and the cathedral.

Ideas Spread Like Fire:

Lévi-Strauss talks about the literature produced in France during the Age of Discovery. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was influenced by accounts of the New World and its civilizations. Although he never visited those places, he encountered their civilizations through the accounts he read. It also made me realize why I had unknowingly encountered Rousseau’s tomb when I went to see Voltaire’s. The torch he holds seems to me like a symbol of knowledge carried from one person to another. Ideas can spread like fire, and they can flow like water. They cross boundaries without necessarily respecting them, moving far beyond the places where they began.

While in Paris, we stood in front of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, the woman carrying the French flag rising above the crowd. Reading Lévi-Strauss made me wonder how much the accounts of societies in the Americas influenced European debates about society, human nature, and political organization.

The Americas contributed not only new vegetables and fruits to the world, but also ways of living and new ways of doing things. What kind of debates might have begun after Europeans learned that some Indigenous societies had councils that included women as decision makers. I also wondered about Voltaire’s story The Huron–what it meant to imagine an Indigenous character living in France, and what Voltaire himself imagined of America as he wrote that story.

It is a reminder that the seeds of civilization also originated in Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Amazon. The food we eat is not the product of one genius society or one culture, but the result of countless cultures sharing, adapting, and transforming what came before. Cultures themselves are full of seeds—ideas, food, traditions, stories—that travel farther than the people who first cultivated them. Their intended use might have completely changed over time. For example, in the Philippines there is a fabric called piña, made from pineapple fibers. The pineapple itself was domesticated in the Americas and later introduced to the Philippines by the Spanish.

Rivers:

Another connection I made was with his reflections on water and rivers, which reminded me again of the walking tour where our guide pointed out the difference between the left and right banks of the Seine River. One side of the river had been developed by the Romans and over time Parisians built over those vestiges. Later he explained that the city was designed to keep specific groups of people in certain places of the city. The river was a point of division, but that same body of water also carried voyages towards the Western Hemisphere.

Lévi-Strauss writes about people he observed in Brazil who organized themselves along a dividing line, describing where they lived, where they held their ceremonies, who sat where, and how that imaginary river divided the community. I began to wonder whether a river itself could become the basis of community organization, with families, clans, and tribes forming around it. At the river’s edge, people celebrated and battled with each other. Yet floods also divided people from each other, sometimes temporarily and at other times forever.

Deep in the Brazilian backcountry he watched children play with carved dolls. One was of a woman with two children, while another was an old man. Through those figures, children were taught a galaxy of ideas; they seemed to serve as memory tools. Interestingly, he noticed that a French explorer, about a hundred and fifty years before him, had observed similar groups using similar figurines.

I began to wonder if the river itself represented a woman, and the two banks were her children—clans and tribes—held together and separated by the same water. I was also curious to know what the old wooden man represented, whether he represented a shaman, an ancestor, or simply someone who had reached old age. I was left thinking about where I live and the importance of water as a life force and a means by which we travel. It gives life, yet it can also be a source of conflict.

Rivers, like springs and watering holes, are places of encounter. Although idyllic and verdant, they can also be dangerous places—as sources of food, celebration, meetings and conflict. Water is used to process food and give birth. It creates places of contemplation and meditation, and locations that are good for hunting. These places can become  marked with symbols–rock carvings, pictographs, and other traces of human presence. Bodies of water and their sources have been places where cultures are born, where they die, but also where they are reborn.

The Sun: 

Along his travels, he describes the heat he feels while crossing parts of Brazil. Yet he also takes time to describe the splendor of a sunset and the magnificence of a sunrise during his boat trips and expeditions. Although he does not dwell on it directly, the sun is everywhere in the landscape: giving life to plants, drying the land after the rains, and illuminating the world around him. The same sun that makes the journey exhausting also reveals the beauty of the landscape. A journey beneath the midday sun can be exhausting, even punishing. Yet sometimes it is in those moments, beneath the heat and glare, that new insights begin to emerge. Reading Lévi-Strauss had done exactly that for me.

A White Crane Performs: Free Verse

 

A White Crane Performs

By Armando Ortiz

A white crane stands on a hill

practicing tai-chi with the onshore flow

a performance as old as time

Feathers, filled with static energy

rise among the swaying orange poppies

that cover the ancient midden

A coastal gust lifts her wedding dress

she carefully steps over a branch

raising a black leg, keeping balance

A solitary figure

patiently searching

stealthily approaching

Neck swaying like a hypnotizing arm

emerging from the drying grass

creeping above the dune

Grey clouds block the sun

its body a snake above the brush

critters scurry, others motionless wait

Feathers flutter like tiny silk flags

flowers shudder at the waiting moment

the salty breeze reaches the hill

It meditates on the mound

Kali preparing for a dance

tall grass bent by the wind

The predator spirit repeats a pose

a Noh character on Nature's stage

the present moment becomes eternal

Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

Points of Encounter - Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

By Armand Ortiz

In December 2024 Yeny and I visited Portugal. We mainly went for the food, and because Portugal is relatively compact, we were able to explore several different regions in just a few days. I was excited to visit Lisbon because I'd already experienced the city through Fernando Pessoa’s writings, long before I walked its streets. Yet the things we saw and experienced, as I later reflected, came to mean much more than I had expected.

In Lisbon we took a walking food tour and tasted bifanas which you could lather up with spicy oil called piri-piri. We also ate the iconic bolinhos de bacalhau, which are toasty, crunchy, soft and chewy all at the same time. The hot chocolate was like none that I had had before: creamy, thick, and deeply chocolaty.

As we strolled along the edge of the Tagus River we were greeted by a giant monument dedicated to the Age of Discovery and the men that set off from Lisbon to explore the world. In their attempts to have direct access to goods and spices they first sailed along the coast of Africa, then rounded the continent on their way to India. As a result, Portugal became one of the earliest European nations to launch an era of maritime exploration. Standing before it, I admired what it celebrated, though I had yet begun to understand the larger story it represented.

We learned of Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan. The Portuguese also explored and colonized South America, creating new networks of trade and cultural exchange while also contributing to systems of conquest, slavery and forced migration. Brazil would become Portugal’s largest and most significant colony. In Portugal it seemed that everything had a story, and that story often led somewhere else– a spice, a crop, a tradition, or a person who had crossed an ocean.

We were fortunate enough to travel around Portugal, learning about its history and how its architecture, art, and cuisine were influenced by centuries of exploration and overseas connections. We visited places like Nazare, where a small chapel dramatically atop a coastal cliff. Today, the town is best known for the giant Atlantic waves that have made Nazare one of the world’s premier surfing destinations. At Sintra, we stopped to admire the architecture of Pena Castle, a building containing symbols of Portugal’s maritime history. Although we enjoyed every place we visited, Lisbon stayed with me the longest. It was also a place where a major battle between Crusader and Muslim armies took place, which reestablished a Christian kingdom in 1147.

At that time I had not fully understood the significance of our visit. It was not until we’d returned from our trip to France that things gelled in my mind.

A few months later we went to France, spending most of our time exploring different parts of Paris. Walking through the Luxembourg Gardens allowed us to experience a city shaped by centuries of artists, writers and revolutions. We dined at one of the restaurants Ernest Hemingway once frequented, and at times I felt that his descriptions of Paris and its people were on point.

We also took several walking tours. One was a guided tour that had us tasting foods as we meandered through the Montmartre neighborhood. The tastiest dishes were the rich beef bourguignon and the cheese board. By the time we had crepes, we were full but still eager to taste the savory pastry, all under the backdrop of the Sacre Coeur. The other tour started on the Ile de la Cite, which is the historical center of Paris and is located in the middle of the Seine River. We were taken to different parts of the island and given brief descriptions of how Paris grew and evolved over the years.

We managed to take a day trip to Rouen, a city along the Seine River where Viking, French and English influences converged. The city is closely connected to the Viking world and the Christianization of Scandinavia, and it is also remembered as the place where Joan of Arc was executed. From Rouen, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, embarked on the expedition that eventually led him to explore the Mississippi River.

The circle of discovery continued after our return from France. I thought that we had traveled to see places. Only later did I realize we had been walking through places where worlds had collided. Soon after, I began to understand that France and Portugal were not simply destinations but meeting points– places where people, ideas, foods, religions and cultures crossed paths. Through those encounters, history continued to shape the world we live in today.

Looking back, I remember standing beside the Tagus River watching small sailboats drift quietly across the water. Now I see these memories differently. Rivers, ports, and crossroads are more than places on a map. They are places where civilizations meet, where ideas are exchanged, and where the traces of those encounters endure long after travelers have gone.

The Things Left Behind: Overlanding Carrizo Plain and Prewitt Ridge

The Things Left Behind: Overlanding Carrizo Plain and Prewitt Ridge

By Armando Ortiz

This late March, we took a weekend trip to Carrizo Plain National Monument and drove to Big Sur to take a road up to Prewitt Ridge. The journey was enjoyable, but it also left me thinking about the people who had passed through these places long before us.

We left Los Angeles, taking I-5 north all the way up to Highway 166. In Maricopa we filled up on gas, food and firewood. Arriving at Carrizo Plain, the landscape was opposite of what it had been during our January visit. A series of storms had passed through then, leaving the road muddy, and the hills lush green. We visited Painted Rock, whose pictographs made the site feel less like an outcrop and more like a sacred chapel. This time the flowers had faded, the grass was turning gold, and we planned to explore deeper into the monument.

Countless tiny painted lady butterflies fluttered and zigzagged along the edge of the road. The rising dust behind the truck created a huge adobe plume. We arrived at Selby Campground to find it packed, and the only spot we found was littered with evidence of those who had stayed before us. The scattered artifacts included unfinished chicken wings, pistachio shells and fruit peels. A half full champagne bottle lay beside the brush. For a moment I wondered what people thousands of years ago left behind– milled grains, paint containers, water jugs or clay shards. It was too much to clean and the cell phone connection was a bit precarious. We turned back. On Caliente Mountain Road we stopped at a place we had visited on our last trip. This time we arrived earlier, the weather was warmer, and there was more daylight. 

We pulled out our hiking gear and headed to a cluster of weathered boulders that looked promising for signs of earlier visitors- like mortars, petroglyphs or pictographs. She didn’t feel safe, and turned around to wait for me in the truck. The trail I followed had become visible after a late Summer fire swept through the area a few months earlier. Broken sea-green glass and empty aluminum cans littered the trail. Last time, I’d found the weathered backbone of a deer. Going down the trail was exciting, though not without caution. 

The boulders were surrounded with knee high grass. I hiked down and explored one of the boulders. The thought of ticks and snakes made me walk cautiously. Climbing around the boulder, I discovered traces of pictographs tucked into an alcove a few feet above the ground, and immediately found myself wondering what those symbols once meant. To a person today, the eroding images might just be drawings or vandalism, but to the people that once walked through here and called it home it might have meant something deeper. I stood before a place shaped by people whose purposes I could only guess at. Like them, I was merely passing through. I climbed back wondering what the symbols once meant to them. We continued our ascent on our overlanding expedition. 

We kept climbing past scattered campers before deciding to stop at a turn out. The Caliente Mountain peaks were behind us and before us were the ridges of the Temblor Mountains on the other side of the great Carrizo Plain valley. The hills everywhere were becoming golden tan with patches of green. The wind was just right. Beneath a juniper’s shade we ate lunch while she caught up with her family and I finished Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight. After a while we pitched our tent, and lit a fire on the portable pit. We saw the constellations emerge from the night, and marveled at the sky till we were too tired.

These are the moments that make sleeping outdoors memorable. We rose early and watched the first rays of sunlight pierce the distant Temblor Mountains, their warm glow gradually bringing colors and shadows into focus across a landscape that stretched far beyond the horizon.

In the distance, a line of hikers wound across the mountainside before coiling in a circle. From afar it almost looked like prayer. As we packed up cars began passing by. The winds were calm so clouds of dust were almost nonexistent.

After oatmeal and hot coffee, we followed the dirt road back to Soda Lake Road and headed north to Highway 58. Our next destination was Prewitt Ridge – a coastal mountain top. We crossed undulating hills decorated with old oaks and rows of vineyards. We stopped at Paso Robles to refuel and stock up on snacks. Good music and the chaparral landscape gave the drive classic California road trip vibes.

From Paso Robles we climbed through Fort Hunter Leggett and into the Santa Lucia Range. Along the way, we stopped to take pictures and scout campsites for a future visit. Oak groves eventually gave way to a sun-baked scenery of burned pines and sycamores before we reached the turnoff to Prewitt Ridge.

The road wound through a blackened landscape before opening onto a mountain top crowned with a few weathered and gnarled trees. This was the place I had imagined reaching for years, long before I ever bought my truck. A puffy white blanket of fog covered the coast. Above it, the sun was bright, and the coastal breeze nearly perfect.

We ate lunch overlooking the coast as waves crashed below and trucks and SUVs came and went. Some travelers lingered to camp while others stopped only long enough for a photograph. The place felt larger–and more magical than it ever appeared in pictures. After we finished we drove back to the main road. Once down the mountain it was all coastal driving.

As we approached PCH, a layer of grey mist engulfed us, transforming the coastline into something that resembled a Chinese ink painting by Zhang Daqian. Through the fog we occasionally heard the crash of waves. A single coastal cypress stood nearby, an ancient warrior in a long battle against wind and time. Following the curves we drove by Plaskett Creek. A bit past Piedras Blancas Lighthouse we stopped to admire elephant seals who were sunbathing. By evening we reached Moonstone Beach and settled for the night.

Despite lasting two nights, the trip felt far larger than its time suggested. The next morning we walked all along the Moonstone Beach boardwalk where we saw pelicans glide over waves, while seagulls rested on island rocks. Next we explored Fiscalini Ranch Preserve where we discovered more evidence of those who lived here long before us. Mortar rocks with million dollar views of the ocean and coast lay exposed among the grass. I thought of the people that had walked this land long before we did and wondered how far they walked before reaching their place of sleep. Standing there among the mortar rocks, the coast, the mountains, the human artifacts, and even the dust trails behind passing trucks all felt temporary.

Hummingbird, Lingering: Free Verse

Hummingbird, Lingering

By Armando Ortiz

Humming hummingbird

where do you come from

and where do you go

you hover, pierce flowers

then vanish in a swirl

you rest on thin branches

flicker on by

coming and going

darting through silence

in a kaleidoscopic spin

humming hummingbird

ripe flowers nearby

under a city sky 

time slows as you hover above

tiny wings, a shimmering glow

zooming on down

shooting on through 

toward bell-shaped flowers

to drink their nectar

treasuring that open bloom

humming hummingbird

twitching and chattering

circling in a breath

dancing with yellow petals

brushing blue trumpets

where do you sleep

who makes your bed

two beings frozen in time

looking through my balcony door

your hum lingers in my ear

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

Reading One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta

By Armando Ortiz

Manlio Argueta is best known for his novel One Day of Life, a story centered on three generations of women from the same family. The men appear only at night or for a brief visit and then disappear into the mountains or the fields, leaving the women in charge of the daytime routines. Set during one of El Salvador’s most violent periods, the novel captures a country strained by conflict and survival. 

Argueta’s story unfolds over the course of a day, with chapters marked by the passing hours, each offering brief glimpses into what the characters do to survive and cope. At its center is the family matriarch, who rises before the rooster’s cry and quietly tends to her grandchildren and their home. 

The author also captures El Salvador’s natural environment, weaving bird sounds and landscape into the fabric of the story. Their presence is connected to religion and superstition, blurring the line between the natural and the spiritual. Nature becomes a character of its own–it sweats with its rain and breathes through the greenery. Within this living landscape, there is a tale of strong religious beliefs that struggle with ideological truths, and economic opportunity is very limited. 

Men on both sides are the aggressors. They are the ones trained to kill their opponents. On one side you have peasants siding with the guerrillas that hide in the mountains. On the other side you have the soldiers fighting for the country, trained to follow orders, and who also come from the same working-class background. In this way, the novel becomes a tragic drama—one in which a life of ease is denied to many, who instead endure a constant, daily struggle.

As I read the novel, I was reminded of Ulysses by James Joyce in its attention to the rhythms of a single day and the interior lives of its characters. Towards the end Mrs. Bloom becomes a principal character of the story, and her perspective is taken into account. But unlike Joyce’s work, Argueta’s novel is rooted in a very raw experience that many people live through today, the urgency of survival. This is not a story of reflection or wandering–it is a story of endurance.

The women at its center are not simply observers of life; they are its protectors, striving to shield the children in their care. Through their interactions and survival, you enter their minds briefly and experience what women endured during the civil war. The novel becomes a quiet, sorrowful symphony—revealing how ideology, myth, and conflict shape even the smallest moments of human life.

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

By Armando Ortiz

We left Los Angeles thinking Sedona would be good for hikes and photographs. Red rock formations. Winter light. Trails that look romantic even before you adjust the colors on your phone. 

That was the plan — make Sedona our base and branch out. On a map, everything feels close. In the desert, distance widens. Hours stretch. Roads thin out. A day can disappear behind a windshield.

So we narrowed the circle. We would stay with Sedona. Let it be enough.

We arrived the first week of January. Rain had passed through the night before, and the air carried that cold clarity that follows a desert storm. The red earth looked darker than it does in photographs. The silence did not feel empty. It felt layered.

At Palatki, cliff dwellings rest inside sandstone walls as if they grew there. Pictographs remain — figures, markings, a silhouette that held my attention longer than I expected. I found myself wondering who it represented. The not knowing felt appropriate.

But it was at the Crane Petroglyph site where something shifted. 

The ranger pointed to a series of etched markings along the cliff wall. At first they looked like many of the others — lines, shapes, fragments of intention. Then he explained that some archaeologists believe they functioned as a calendar. A way of tracking seasons. Movement. Planting cycles.

He said it plainly. Not as a grand claim. Just as possibility.

I stood there looking at the stone differently.

A calendar is not decoration. It is attention stretched across years. It is someone watching the sun closely enough to notice patterns, and patient enough to record them. It requires repetition. It requires memory.

On the walk back, we talked about it — about seasons, about how much observation it would take to live that closely with land and sky. The conversation was easy. But something in me had gone quieter. 

We use the word primitive too easily.

The ranger hadn’t argued that point directly, but the idea hovered there. Ancient becomes simple. Simple becomes inferior. Entire civilizations are reduced to survival stories.

Yet what I had just seen was study. Deliberate marking. Knowledge fixed in stone.

The next day, driving north toward Wupatki National Monument, the land widened into lava fields and open sky. In the background, the ever-present San Francisco Peaks rose like silent beings. The pueblos rise there from volcanic soil in a landscape of extremes — scorching summers, freezing winters, little water, relentless wind. Stone construction was not accidental; it was intelligent. It held heat. It endured. It answered the climate.

We admire the terraces of China and the agricultural engineering of the Inca Empire in Peru. We call those remarkable adaptations to demanding landscapes. Here too, there are traces of altered terrain and cultivated maize – signs of people working carefully with soil, shadow, and season.

At Walnut Canyon National Monument, homes carved into limestone cliffs stretch along what is now called the Island Trail. One dwelling becomes several. Several become many. What first appears isolated reveals itself as community. I imagined late afternoon settling into the canyon – smoke rising gently, hovering at the edge of the plateau, voices carrying across stone, the ordinary rhythm of preparing a meal, a child crying at a distance.

The ordinary is what endures. 

What unsettled me was not the age of these places. It was the quiet evidence of attention — architectural, agricultural, communal – embedded in them.

Sedona did not become a launching point for somewhere else. It became a place that made me slow down long enough to reconsider a word I had rarely questioned. 

We arrived looking for scenery.

We left still thinking.