FRANCISCO ZARCO, Baja California--After he retired from the mattress factory in Vernon, Calif., after his children grew up and attained happy American
lives, Gabriel Kachirisky moved back to Mexico and turned his life into a museum exhibit.
He began sticking little labels on half the possessions in his house. He went back to the dilapidated church that his parents helped build, restoring
it. He even went to the cemetery, pulling weeds from the forgotten headstones, lettered in Cyrillic.
Living among ghosts gives Kachirisky a strange peace.
The only thing that haunts the 70-year-old is a question that does not have an answer: ``When I die, who is going to take care of all this?''
A century ago, hundreds of Kachirisky's forebears--members of an obscure Russian Christian sect called the Molokans--fled from the outer reaches of
the czar's empire to the lush Guadalupe Valley 50 miles south of Tijuana. They built a bustling village under the hot Ensenada sun.
Wearing the garb of the old country, they grew alfalfa and grapes, cooked el borscht and los blintzes, and sweated together in saunas behind their
houses every Saturday night. On Sundays, they sang psalms and drank tea brewed in samovars brought from Russia.
But years ago, squatters came and took their land. Now, villagers say, fewer than 20 remain who claim ``pure Russian blood.''
Kachirisky and a handful of others have taken it upon themselves to keep alive memories of that way of life and a past that has all but slipped away.
The Molokans have gone into the heritage business. They greet the tourist buses that come over the bumpy road from Ensenada. They nurture and
scrupulously maintain two museums, right across an unpaved road from each other. And they operate many mom-and-pop enterprises, including one run by
Kachirisky.
For Kachirisky and others, it is something. But it's small solace, given the loss of the idyllic community of their memories. And the museums have not
always smoothed the path into the future--sometimes inflaming local debate over who owns the past, who has a right to claim it and make money off it
from tourists.
So Kachirisky pursues his historical restorations in this small town and continues to lecture visitors and tourists, not talking much to his fellow
Russian septuagenarians. Even though they are likely the only ones who can really understand.
``The pain of what happened affected us, all of us,'' he said. ``It makes us so sad.''
Kachirisky's wife of 47 years, Martha Lidia, is Mexican. She remembers how her mother-in-law taught her to make los blintzes and el borscht, which the
Molokans make without beets. Today, the results of those unions are everywhere. More than 300 locals claim some Russian heritage.
The farms prospered as well. Neat rows of alfalfa and grapevines marched up and down the lushly rolling valley.
Many families built saunas behind their houses, where men would gather to purify themselves each Saturday night before Sunday's visit to church.
The idyll ended in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hundreds of landless Mexican settlers streamed into town. They stormed up to the farms and
announced they were taking over, saying the Molokans weren't real Mexicans.
``They put on hats like Pancho Villa and carried signs that said, `Death to the Russians,''' said Augustin Lopez, who is part Russian.
The Molokans pleaded with them. They showed a signed proclamation from Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, granting their rights to the land.
``They didn't consider you a Mexican citizen,'' said George Mohoff, who was born and raised in the Guadalupe Valley, but now lives in Los Angeles
County. ``They said, `Why do you have so much and we have so little?'''
But the Molokans were pacifists, unwilling to use guns and fists to hold on to their land. The settlers kept coming, and the Molokans ``were left with
broken hearts,'' Mohoff said.
By the early 1960s, the minister--and formal Sunday church services--had disappeared.
Kachirisky was born here in the Guadalupe Valley. But he and his wife became part of the exodus, moving in the early 1960s to Pico Rivera in the Los
Angeles suburbs. He stayed there 27 years.
The little English he learned in America still comes out in a gruff voice heavily accented with Russian. But his Spanish has no accent at all, and
Kachirisky and his wife transformed themselves into Angelenos, like any other immigrants from Mexico.
He and his wife joined a Pentecostal church, put their kids in school and went to baseball games. They went back to the Guadalupe Valley only for
visits.
But by the late 1980s, a change in management had left Kachirisky unhappy at the mattress factory where he worked. He cashed in the equity in his home
and returned to the Guadalupe Valley. About the same time, a burgeoning eco-tourist trade brought visitors and museum money to the valley.
For a while, it looked like this would bring the community back together--although many had stopped practicing the religion.
The Russians collaborated to put together the first museum in 1991. They rummaged in closets and storage spaces, and came up with a vast collection of
dresses, photographs and samovars. They helped reconstruct a town map, showing where everyone had lived. Children even began learning Russian.
But in 1998, a dispute over how the museum was being run led its director--a Mexican married into a Russian family--to quit and establish a competing
museum. It is directly across the road from the first.
Although their exhibits are substantially the same--photos, maps, bright Russian dresses and samovars--many townspeople insist there are serious
differences between them. But those tend to have more to do with who put the museums together and how they profit.
Michael Wilken, an anthropologist who leads tours through the valley, said he believes the dispute stems from differing perceptions of who has a right
to claim the treasured past.
``Whenever I hear the argument, it seems to be that `So and so is making all kinds of money off this,' and `They're not really into it for the right
reasons,''' said Wilken, who said he has not taken sides in the fight.
``People can have conflicts,'' said Julie Bendimez, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Baja California. Her institution
helped found the first museum and continues to fund it.
``I don't want to continue the war between them,'' she said, ``but that's how it has evolved.''
Bendimez said she thinks the two museums ``complement each other.''
With the museums came busloads of tourists and students--up to 10,000 a year.
Soon, individual townspeople began catering to the tourist trade. Maria Samaduroff got a tourist certificate and, with her daughter, serves
schoolchildren cheese and lectures in her back yard.
And then there is Kachirisky, who has turned himself into the town's one-man curator. It started with displaying his possessions and serving tourists
blintzes.
Then, he turned his attention to the church, built in 1950. The roof had collapsed, and rainwater had poured down the walls and the floors. Somehow,
the Bibles were spared the mildew and rot, but almost everything else was damaged.
Kachirisky spent thousands of dollars and hours of labor, painstakingly putting the church back the way it was.
Dozens of teapots and hundreds of teacups sit on a musty shelf, unused since 1960. Alongside, sugar cubes rest patiently in their pink box, as they
have for four decades.
``Before, when you went on Sunday, it was so happy,'' he said. ``So much life--the boys and girls singing. Now when I come here, I just want to cry.''
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FRANCISCO ZARCO, Baja California--The Molokans split off from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 18th century. Their Bible-centered religion
emphasizes pacifism, and they rejected mandatory service in the czar's army. In 1840, many Molokans agreed to go to the Kars region of what is now
Turkey to avoid military service.
But by 1904, with those agreements set to expire, the Molokans began to emigrate. Many went to Los Angeles, some to Australia, and more than 100
families to the Guadalupe Valley--settling on 13,000 acres they bought communally, according to Therese Muranaka, a San Diego anthropologist who wrote
her dissertation on the community.
In carefully preserved photographs and home movies, the early decades of life at the colony have the appearance of a sun-drenched utopia.
The new settlers consecrated a church. Every Sunday, they came to worship in the simple wood room of plain white boards and softly filtered light.
They stayed for hours, drinking tea and eating borscht. The men wore high-neck shirts and the women covered their heads with scarves, just like their
ancestors. And though they learned Spanish, they spoke Russian to each other.
Weddings brought Molokans down from Los Angeles for song-filled feasts that would last for three days. At first, marriage to Mexicans was frowned
upon, but by the 1940s, it had become common.JESSE - 12-13-2002 at 03:05 AM
A very good friend of mine Natalia badan of Mogor badan vineyards, makes and excelent wine, i am fascinated by this story, i think is very interesed
and i am going to know a bit more about natalias ancestors.
i remember
Anonymous - 3-10-2005 at 01:35 AM
I wonder if my picture is there. I did help a little when i was very yung.
ivan k
a curious thing.....Alex's crew in A Clockwork Orange
capt. mike - 3-10-2005 at 07:42 AM
hung out drinking milk at "the Molokan" milk bar before they set out on their nightly rampages.David K - 3-10-2005 at 08:23 AM
In August of 2001, Fishin' Rich and I joined with elgatoloco, Baja Barb, and David Eidel for a day of visiting Guadalupe Valley where we visited two
museums there that had displays on the Russians. See photos at http://vivabaja.com/cabras/page3.html
[Edited on 3-10-2005 by David K]David K - 3-10-2005 at 09:39 PM
Here is a photo of a Malakan's immigration papers, in the museum...
Dave - 3-10-2005 at 10:17 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by JESSE
A very good friend of mine Natalia badan of Mogor badan vineyards, makes and excelent wine, i am fascinated by this story, i think is very interesed
and i am going to know a bit more about natalias ancestors.
Is she still growing her gardens? Is her mother well?
