Life in troncones,
majahua & saladita

I first learned about Noches Lucidas in the summer of 2022, from some young surfers who said they were going dancing at Amor Tropical. A few days later they told me the music was fun and that they got home just before dawn. This year, during Semana Santa, two seventy-year-olds asked me how long the electronic music festival at Costa Brava was going to be around. They went one night and they loved it. I asked, “Which festival?” And they said, “Noches Lucidas”. Hmmm. Same event; same reaction from two very different age groups. What is Noches Lucidas? Answering that led me to its organizer, a DJ named Santa Maria. It turns out he lives in Troncones.

I first spotted Angie’s work at Hacienda Plaza in Saladita, her portraits of female surfers conveying a power that had little to do with surfing or beauty or sensuality—there was a presence to the participants that made them seem more like warriors, anything but laid-back “surfer girls”. After I noticed her work, I learned Angie called herself an “artivist”. I also started seeing her regularly at Hacienda Plaza, leading workshops and working on projects, by herself and with other people. We sat down together last week and talked for about an hour about her past and her present.

At the back of the Friday farmer’s market at Hacienda Plaza, you’ll find a tall guy with a wide-brim hat standing at a table labeled Las Huertas. That’s Arturo De La Barrera, one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet. Don’t let his intensity or his shyness fool you. Anyone who’ll take the time to make the hard clays of Saladita into better soil has to be patient, disciplined and exceptionally kind. Arturo’s growing organic produce and he’s experimenting with crops that’ve never been grown here before. He discovered farming when he wanted to learn how to better care for himself. Now, through the work he’s doing at Las Huertas Farm, Arturo’s looking to teach what he’s learned and create a different sort of farming community.

“It takes a village” is an old expression recognizing that a child’s upbringing is a community effort. That it takes more than just family and school. That expression is also true when it comes to finding the right mother to talk to about raising children in Troncones. I talked to a lot of people about whom I should interview. Those conversations led me to Sandy Lopez, whose teenage son Henry recently won an award for an academic achievement no one could describe to me. Many people knew it was in a specific subject, but not exactly which one. It turns out I know Sandy—she’s our landlord. She owns Casa Sandy, on the north side of the bridge, where the La Onda Troncones office is. She also knows what it takes to be a kid here, what it takes to be a mother here and what it takes to make a life here. Meet Sandy.