How to remain friends

Naturally there is a huge difference between the reality of life on a Mexican Rancho and the reality of life of a pioneering photographer.
Different cultures, different objectives and different traditions.

However, there is nevertheless a harmonious symbiosis working well due to mutual respect.
And by limiting the knowledge about the other party’s reality.
The Gonzalez do not know all the ins and outs of the practice of the photographer.
And the photographer doesn’t know too much what is going on in the family and on the rancho.

There are very few questions asked because the mode is to politely wait until the moment someone involved in the friendship feels it is appropriate and relevant to tell something.

This may sound like a superficial relationship.
While it is definitely not.
To the contrary.
Because most of the daily anecdotic stuff is not the subject of the communication, the sharing is of only essential words and feelings.

One thing the Gonzalez family did not have to inform about was their sudden passion for roosters.
Over the last two months cages were put near the house of the rancho.
In those cages roosters are housed.
By now there about thirty.


The Fuso Szulc is about 500 metres away from the rancho but every morning the roosters can be heard at daybreak.
A tremendous concert of thirty roosters trying to outperform one another by crowing as loud as possible.
And the Gonzalez do not seem to bother much about this rather overpowering way of the cocks waking up people.



There is a reason why they keep roosters these days.
They are used for cockfights, the new hobby of the young Ismaël Gonzalez and his oldest brother Juan-Manuel.
During the weekend they go with some of their roosters to villages and towns in the area where cock fights are organized.
If one of their roosters wins a fight, the brothers can earn as much as 30.000 Mexican Pesos ($ 2.060 or € 1.600).
A lot of money in a country where a construction worker makes daily 300 Mexican Pesos ($ 20 or € 16).

For the rooster it is a different thing.
The fights are about life and death.
If the roosters looses, it is because he died in the fight.
And the rooster that wins is probably so wounded it is also going into the soup pot.

In the USA and Europe cockfights are illegal.
Because it is considered a heinous blood sport due to the physical, always-mortal trauma the cocks inflict on each other.

Meanwhile, nearby the thirty roosters waiting for their life-ending fight lives the photographer that loves and respects animals.
Who is even a member of a political party in the Netherlands defending animal rights in Parliament.
Who is more concerned about the well being of animals than about the well being of the NATO-troops in Afghanistan.

The only way to live with this situation of 30 roosters at the rancho is not to have an opinion about these activities of the Gonzales boys.

Jiddu Krishnamurti explained that man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal.
These manifest as symbols, ideas and beliefs.
The burden of these dominates man's thinking, relationships and his daily life.
These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship.

So, the pioneering photographer observes the roosters without having a condemning opinion.
What Krishnamurti calls the “ choiceless awareness”.
And is therefore still friends with the Gonzalez.




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