In the blackest hours of the
night, a silent, intimidating figure sits on a coral outcropping at the ocean’s
edge. Cloaked in a black t-shirt and
dark pants, he patiently waits. What’s his story?
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| Ernesto digging out the baby turtles |
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| Ernesto, when he was about forty-two |
Born on Isla Mujeres sixty-something years ago, Ernesto had six brothers and four sisters, most of whom are still living. Married for fifty years to Teresa Gomez
Heredia, they had eight children. The
surviving seven children now have twelve offspring ranging in age from twenty
years to a few months old. Many of his two
hundred or so family members - brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, aunts,
uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins - frequently gather to celebrate birthdays,
weddings, Quinceaños, and other special events.
When Ernesto was a small child, he lived in Centro when there were approximately twenty families on
the island. Later, when he was a young
lad, he remembers helping his father farm a tract of land in Las Glorias,
growing vegetables and fruits without using any chemicals. He nostalgically speaks about the abundance
of fish, shrimp, lobsters, and conch in those years. Fishermen were able to support their families by fishing very close to home.
Unfortunately, with more people came a greater demand for seafood, and more
fishermen, that have dramatically reduced the supply.
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| Helping baby turtles |
A cheerful worker, Ernesto has
had several jobs over the years, including operating a small boat between
one of the local hotels and the mainland: delivering hotel guests and transporting
supplies. With his strong singing voice
and engaging personality, the hotel guests would joke that riding with Ernesto
was like being on a gondola in Venice, Italy.
When I went to the turtle farm
to chat with him during his afternoon break, he was busily digging up dozens of
hatched turtles in preparation for releasing them. The nests have signage indicating the area on
the island where the eggs were found, the date the eggs were re-buried, and the species of turtle. He casually and competently
dug through two feet of damp sand, sorting out the broken eggs and placing
the live babies in a big plastic bucket.
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| Some of the babies waiting to be released |
But, Ernesto’s
big hand carefully scoops them up, adding them to the collection of three or
four thousand that will be held for a few days until the next scheduled turtle
release.
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| Cookie bandits, and Ernesto, on the right |
When I went to chat with
Ernesto, I brought a dozen large cookies with me as a thank-you gift. The strange thing is – at the end of our chat, Ernesto’s co-workers had guilty grins and cookie-crumb smiles. The bag was empty by the time Ernesto thought
to look for a cookie. He laughed, a big
smile lighting his face, joking with his cookie-stealing friends.
He’s not such an intimidating
figure after all.
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