Mention the word cueva (cave) to the average Mexican ranchero and almost certainly a gleam will come into his eye. "You know," he will likely say, lowering his voice and drawing a little nearer, "a famous bandido hid all his gold in a cave not far from here and - some years ago - a fellow stumbled across it. There were sacks and sacks of gold coins! But then this man heard a voice reverberating and echoing through the cave's long passageways:
"‘Todo o nada! (All or nothing!),’ wailed the mysterious voice. Well, this poor devil actually believed that ghostly warning and attempted to carry out all the gold at once, but with the steep climbs and the darkness and losing his way, he never had a chance and he stumbled around that cave under that heavy load until he finally dropped dead from pure exhaustion.”
The Treasure of Sierra Madre
Exactly how this particular tale reached hundreds of thousands of ranchers in the most remote corners of Mexico is not quite clear, but the story is so widespread it probably influenced the tale of greed by B. Traven which eventually became John Huston’s film, The Treasure of Sierra Madre.
Mexican Cave Wind
An experienced Mexican cave explorer might add that the tragic hero of the All-or-Nothing story was lucky to have gotten beyond a few steps into that cave, because other Mexican legends speak of a mysterious aire (air or wind) which inevitably and at the worst possible moment, blows out candles, torches and, yes, even flashlights.
Without a doubt, carrying spare batteries has brought cavers south of the border good luck, because the celebrated aire never seems to blow out their electric lights and they manage to visit and map hundreds of caverns in every part of Mexico, although not one of them has yet reported finding a cache full of gold.
Tomb Raiders
Apart from gold hidden by bandidos, treasure hunters also search high and low for pre-Columbian artifacts and -- judging from the pieces visitors are shown in many a rancho, they don't always come up empty handed. Country people often find obsidian knives, stone hatchets, jars, figurines, beads and much more. Mexican law states that all such items belong to the government, but that hasn't slowed down the tomb robbers a bit.
Near Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, for example, more than twenty unique clay models of the local circular pyramids were discovered. They show ordinary people dancing, playing ball or paying their bills and each model was found to be at least 2000 years old.
One by one, as they were unearthed, these artifacts were illegally sold off to tourists and today every one of these priceless representations of pre-Columbian history are found not in Mexico, but in the United States.
Fifty-Foot Shaft Tombs
One of the most difficult burial sites to rob in Mexico is the shaft tomb, a hole dug straight down as deep as fifteen meters (fifty feet) with filled-in, hard-to-find, lateral burial chambers. Although a great deal of effort is required to loot a deep pit like this, archeologists have been hard put to find many such shaft tombs intact. When it comes to motivation there's nothing quite like the smell of treasure.
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