After watching "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" on DVD I spoke to my friend, Terry, about the movie and he recollected that the man who wrote the book was connected to his old friend Henry Schnautz indirectly. Henry was born in 1910 and still lives in Evansville Indiana. Terry met him when Terry was in his twenties and the sixty year old Henry could keep a crowd of young men spellbound with a wide ranging curious mind, an adventurous life, and an ability to tell a good story. As I told Terry about the documentary at the end of the movie describing the odd author B. Traven, Terry recalled that Henry was engaged to the writer's daughter. Her name was Esmeralda, or maybe it was Esperanza, he wasn't too sure, but he decided to find out on the internet. There were many questions about who B. Traven might be, whether he was an American or German. If an odd little man called Hal Croves could have been the author or if he was as he claimed to be, just an agent for the true author. John Huston seemed to be undecided about Hal Croves. The internet had a number of blogs on the topic which just whetted our curiosity, because what Terry learned seemed to corroborate some of the storyies Henry told him many years ago.

In 1940 Henry decided to take a bus to Mexico. (Link to Bus story) Henry was a tireless worker for the socialist party and he knew that Trotsky was exiled in Mexico. He had read about an assassination attempt made on Trotsky's life, and he believed that since he was a large brawny young man and he was also a pretty good shot, that he could be useful to Trotsky as a guard. Earlier he had sent a letter giving Trotsky his qualifications as a guard but had not received a response; nevertheless he decided to go to Mexico. (Link to journal entry) Henry did get on as a Trotsky guard, but 5 weeks later Trotsky was assassinated. Henry stayed on after Trotsky's death working for Trotsky's widow Natalia. (Links to life on the Trotsky compound)

From reading on the internet, Terry discovered that B. Traven had a literary agent named Esperanza, and he wondered if this was the woman, to whom Henry was engaged. She was never described as Traven's daughter, although some biographers insinuated that she might have been his lover. She at one time was given rights to Traven's royalties which, made it seem possible, there was a closer relationship than was acknowledged. There was another small consistency that in one of the Spanish blogs on the net, it was claimed that Esperanza was adopted. It seemed that we were on the trail of a little bit of information that had not been available until now. Terry had pictures of Esperanza and Traven and there did seem to be some resemblance.

Like many B. Traven scholars, we got hooked on the mystery of B. Traven. There was so much to look at because the more Terry searched the more we were connected to historical names. Names like: John Huston, Adolfo Lopez Mateos one of Mexico's presidents and Esperanza's brother, Gabriel Figueroa, Esperanza's brother-in-law and also her cousin, who was a famous cinematographer both in Mexico and the United States, Trotsky, Diego Rivera, Diego's wife Frieda Kahlo, Frieda's sister Cristina, a personal friend of Henry's, and then there was the mysterious B. Traven. Who was he? Terry bought every book he could find on B. Traven and began reading, and he went to see Henry's wife Donna to see if she would let him search through Henry's old correspondence.

Henry at this time is a very old man (since deceased), and he has lost the capacity to recall most of the events Terry wanted to know about. He now lives with Donna, but most of his papers are still in the old family farm house where he was raised. The house has been unoccupied for several years, and it has been invaded by squirrels and raccoons. Terry found deteriorating negatives and damp moldy papers and letters in old suitcases that were never unpacked; some of them were stuffed in boxes that reeked from squirrel and raccoon feces. Henry probably wouldn't have ever thrown any of his correspondence away but much of it had already been thrown out before Terry got a chance to look. Still he found some interesting information. Some of it was private and some of it Terry didn't think he had a right to know.

What he learned was that Henry fell madly in love with Esperanza Lopez Mateos. At the time they met Henry was thirty years old and she was his first love. While he lived in Mexico there are several letters that he wrote and never sent or drafts of letters. There is also a journal and quite a few pictures. It is a cryptic journal that notes down letters that Henry had received and where he spent his money. He writes in shorthand the times and places that he met Esperanza. We know that he first met her at the library, and she becomes his tutor. She is teaching him to speak Spanish. We know that she is married to Roberto Figueroa. This is in some way a marriage of convenience, because either her husband is an invalid or Traven's wife speculates that he is a homosexual. It is never clear from the letters that were found. Henry writes to his mother about Esperanza and we learn that Esperanza takes very bad pictures, but that she is very beautiful and that she is his fiancé. (Link) Henry and Esperanza have a tempestuous relationship. Henry accuses Esperanza of being "bourgeois", because she will not consider leaving her family for him. (link) Henry seems to be under the impression that Esperanza is not political although Heidi Zogbaum in one of her papers on Traven indicates that Esperanza is involved at a high level in a communist publishing organization.(Link) Henry is either unaware of Esperanza's political activities or Zogbaum has this wrong. Esperanza is said to speak French and English, but while her letters in English to Henry are fairly fluent, any translating from Spanish to English she may have done would have required heavy editing. Henry came from a family where German was one of the languages spoken. I don't have any idea of his fluency in German, and I'm certain he learned to speak Spanish but probably was never fluent. In the beginning of their relationship her letters are in English, but later when he has moved to New York she writes only in Spanish. From Henry the impression is that Esperanza's feelings for Henry are either very passionate, or she is trying to run away from him. At one point she writes him a letter to let him know that she must go off to the jungles of Oaxaca to take care of the "old one". (Link)This is B. Traven aka Hal Croves although she never addresses him by name. The "old one" is at death's door and she goes to his side nurses him and then brings him with much hardship back to Mexico City, it is then that she seems to have learned according to Henry that B. Traven is her father. Heidi Zogbaum is suspicious that Traven's wife or the woman he lives with at the time would allow Esperanza to do this. Is this story completely made up or is it just an exaggeration of something that actually happened? Was this supposed trip an effort to get some space between herself and Henry? It has the kind of over dramatic hallmark of a B. Traven story. We know about this episode from a letter Henry writes to his mother.(Link)

There are several biographies on the identity problem of B. Traven, and from them it seems that it would be very difficult for B. Traven to have sired Esperanza in Mexico. There is good evidence that B. Traven, at the time Esperanza might have been conceived, was going under the name of Ret Marut, a writer and publisher of a periodical called "The Brick Burner" in Germany. He did not come to Mexico until 1924 well after Esperanza's possible birth. We don't know exactly how old Esperanza is, but it seems that she must be close to Henry's age. Henry gives an account of Esperanza's birth. He says that her father was German and her mother was English. That soon after her parents married her father went back to Germany to fight in World War I. He was a sea captain. Her mother died in childbirth. This is during a very unsettled period in Mexico, the Mexican revolution, and Elena Mateos takes Esperanza.(link to letters) Later Esperanza is sent to live on a sugar plantation in Chiapas. The sugar plantation is burned down because the fighting in Mexico is raging on, and she is rescued by Indian servants. She is raised by them until she is twelve, and eventually Elena Mateos finds her and takes her back to Mexico City. This story doesn't work with what is known about B. Traven from the biographies. It is likely that Esperanza never heard of Ret Marut. It is possible that she might believe that she is B. Traven's daughter. One thing that is bothersome about this story is Elena (Esperanza's adoptive mother) should know that B. Traven was not her father. Esperanza's birth story does not go well with the story Traven is trying to establish that he is an American. Might Traven have elicited a promise from Esperanza to keep this story secret to anyone else but Henry?

Is this story the one Esperanza heard from her adopted mother? Did Traven insert himself into it? Traven claimed to be an experienced seaman. Did Traven embellish the family story?

It has the ring of a B. Traven story somehow. One thing is obvious and that is Esperanza has the look of a Northern European, with her blond hair, and not that of a Spaniard or native Mexican and she looks like she could easily be the daughter of a British woman and a German expatriate. There is a letter in Guthke, one of the B. Traven biographers, that is from Traven to Esperanza about birthmarks. It is a purposefully obscure allusion to something that perhaps only Esperanza could understand, and Guthke seems mystified by what he is trying to say in the letter, but is this because Guthke isn't aware of Traven's efforts to establish a blood relationship with Esperanza? Another interesting fact is that Traven did insinuate himself into their family. Esperanza lived in a house with her husband and his brother, Roberto and Gabriel Figueroa. Traven was a frequent visitor, and he became the godfather of Gabriel Figueroa's son. This might be some sort of indication that they believed Traven and Esperanza were connected by blood.

One thing that makes this idea awkward is how Esperanza and B. Traven came to meet. If B. Traven could be believed by Esperanza to be her father, it would seem likely that he would have been the one to search her out, which is what Henry Schnautz says, but the public story is the reverse. Esperanza had read one of the bootleg versions of one of Traven's novels, and wrote a letter to Knopf, an American publisher, asking to get access to Traven. They were interested in making movies from his books and Esperanza offered to do official translations for Traven. If the books were being bootlegged he might as well establish an official version and receive the royalties from the work. Translating the books German to Spanish must have been a frightening prospect for Traven, because this would bring him much closer than he wanted to be to his audience. She did a translation for him and Traven decided to let her become his official translator. It is a grand leap for Esperanza to accept the coincidence that he could also just happen to be her father.

Henry had a copy of Espernza's very first published translation, The Bridge in the Jungle, 1941. On the title page, there is a drawing of a disembodied head with a disembodied gloved hand covering the images eyes. There is a ribbon beneath her head that says Esperanza.(see link) It is a creepy image, and in a typical over dramatic Traven style. The image also suggests that Esperanza is blinded by Traven's disembodied hand; contradicting so much of what is known about Esperanza. Has Traven blinded her to the truth because Esperanza yearns for a familial blood connection? Esperanza is an intellectual, she is comfortable in the company of men, and she has an adventurous spirit. In the first year that Henry met Esperanza, she took him mountain climbing, Henry borrowed a camera to take pictures of the trip and he sent the pictures home to his mother. (link)

The one thing that is clear from reading the biographies of Traven is that he was extremely secretive about his past. He believed that his true identity must never be known. He started a diary on the wrong day in an attempt to cover up when he actually arrived in Mexico, (Guthke). He spent a lifetime laying false trails. So if becoming Esperanza's father took him further away from his true self, it is a certainty he would not hesitate to promote that idea. Any identity other than his true one was attractive to him. He could be an American for his German public or the lovechild of the Kaiser if that was what his wife Rosa Elena Lujan wished. John Huston said about him that he was a ridiculous man, and the sad thing was that Traven was aware of how ridiculous he was. Traven seems to exhibit some aspects of a paranoid schizophrenic personality, but somehow standing at the very edge of sanity. John Huston, along with Baumann, one of the most eminent Traven scholars, and my friend Terry, did not want the odd little man Hal Croves, to actually be the writer B. Traven. The protagonist in the books was a "man's man" who had been all over the world and seen and done so much. The books had to be written by someone who experienced some of what Traven wrote. People who have read the books in German talk often about the Americanisms in the book and believed the real author had to be an American like the protagonist Gales, but in the English translation the Americanisms sound comical like a foreigner throwing out a lot of slang trying to fit in. To give an example one of Traven's recurrent characters, Gales, is talking to Stanislav in "The Death Ship" and he instead of saying "Stanislav, Don't pull my leg" he says "Stanislav, don't pull my leg over the table." The books are filled with mistaken Americanisms, though perhaps they are the result of some very bad translations. Will Wyatt produced a documentary on B. Traven and also wrote a book on him. He believed he tracked him back to his birth as Otto Feige in Poland and Wyatt's evidence is very compelling. Baumann, tried for years to find an American that Traven might have stolen the manuscripts from, but had little success.

Another theory could be that Esperanza knew she was not his daughter but promoted this idea to Henry. Esperanza committed suicide in 1951. There is no doubt that she had mood swings toward Henry. She has a pattern of getting angry with him, pushing him away, and then luring him back. Sometime after she nurses Traven back to health, she wants Henry out of her life. This is when he writes the drafts reminding her about the love they shared, but if these letters were sent they probably spurred her to an extreme agitation, because she writes a letter to Henry's employer, forcing Henry out of the country even sooner.(link) It is a terrible betrayal to Henry. Henry has already made arrangements to leave. He seems the low man in the guard pecking order and is relegated to taking care of the chickens and washing dishes. Esperanza was the only reason he stayed. The thing that is difficult to determine is her feelings for Henry. Perhaps she is a very worldly woman when Henry meets her. He is a naive farm boy from Indiana with beautiful blue eyes. She has an affair with him that she never intends to be anything other then a physical relationship. She plays along with him, but eventually she wants the relationship to end and she lies to him about her trip to jungles of Oaxaca, to give herself some space from him and to try to end it. One thing is certain and that is Traven was not her father. The question is did she know he was not her father, or did he have her fooled into believing that he was.

After Henry left he went back to Indiana and then on to Chicago. Esperanza wrote Marie, Henry's sister, and asked Marie to give her Henry's address( link). She wrote him a patronizing letter insinuating that Henry had some sort of mental disorder and offered to find him a good neurologist. Another complained that he hasn't responded to her previous letters. Henry, despite her betrayal resumes correspondence with her, but he has also begun a relationship with another woman. Soon he is drafted into the army to fight in World War II. Most of the records that Henry kept of his time in the war are lost. Henry carries a camera after the end of the war and took pictures capturing the effects of the bombing. He seemed to be attentive to the fragility amid all the upheaval. Henry must have received many letters while he was in the war.

Obviously he and Esperanza still corresponded with each other while he was deployed in Europe, because soon after he returned to the states he makes a trip back to Mexico. Esperanza took him on an adventurous vacation and Henry brought his new camera. Henry saved the plane tickets to San Andreas Tuxtla in Vera Cruz. Much like the mountain climbing trips, Esperanza is the lone woman on the hunting expedition. There are pictures of them swimming, boating, and hunting. Henry forgot to bring his bathing suit and is swimming in his underwear, but he doesn't seem the least bit self conscious about it. There is an extended family in the pictures resting and feasting and at one point Terry thought that it was possible that Esperanza had taken Henry to meet the native family that took her in after the sugar plantation was burned down. There are inconsistencies if this is true, because they are not in Chiapas as depicted in the Esperanza origins story. The focus of all of Henry's pictures on this trip is Esperanza. She is front and center. (link) The pictures of Henry are of a youthful boyish young man, but Esperanza is taking on the look of a middle aged woman. These pictures led me to speculate that she might have been several year older than Henry. During some period of time while he was in Mexico, Henry may have met up with another Mexican woman named Elvira. It is unclear if he met her on this trip or if he had met her when he was in Mexico as Trotsky's guard.

Esperanza, it might also be inferred from this trip, believed they were going to get married. What makes this clear is a letter Henry received from Hal Croves.(Link) Croves writes in a typical florid dramatic style claiming to be Esperanza's father, telling Henry that he is not good enough for his daughter. Henry also said that Croves had him investigated. It is difficult to figure out what Croves wished to achieve with this letter other than giving Henry evidence beyond a doubt that he was promoting the notion Esperanza was his daughter, in as dramatic a fashion as was his wont. Croves said in the letter he didn't believe Henry was capable of keeping Esperanza in the style she was accustomed to, and indeed he had a point. Henry never had much more than a dime in his life. When he did have some money he gave it away. After the war Henry settled in New York and developed an interest in art and photography. Henry made a living for a while as a dock worker but was involved in an accident and lost many teeth.

Henry held fast to his friends. He loved writing and getting letters in the mail. Henry kept journals when he was living in New York, and they gave a fleeting idea of what his life was like. They mark the days when he received letters and the days he sent letters. They indicate items bought. Henry didn't spend his entire life pining over Esperanza, at the same time there were women who stood at his side during some very bad times in his life. Henry was for most of his early life a socialist and he suffered from his association with them. He also had a hot temper that could on occasion get him into trouble. He and Esperanza never married, and her later letters seem to wax nostalgically over their past romantic associations. She came twice to see him in New York, and at some point she may have had some sort of accident that caused her severe pain. She received possibly a botched operation that crippled her according to Croves, and since it comes from him it is difficult to know if he is telling the truth or caught up in a good story. There is a yearning sadness in the last letters she sent Henry. (Link) There is very little information in them other than the state of her emotions. They are wisful but don't give much indication she is suffering from severe depression. She wrote Marie saying that Henry's plans and her plan's did not agree.(Link) The pictures of her last visit to New York depict a very sad and unhappy face. She has aged drastically. It is possible that she has had the accident that caused her so much pain.

Henry received another Hal Croves letter, a very terse letter, telling him that Esperanza has died in 1951. Henry must have sent letters asking for more details. Again Hal Croves writes an angry dramatic letter to Henry, almost blaming Henry for Esperanza's accident and death. Croves says that Esperanza had a skiing accident when she was with Henry in the Alps. This doesn't seem likely. The only pictures that Henry had of the Alps are when he was in the War, not on vacation with Esperanza. He indicated that Henry was many years younger then Esperanza and that Henry was only searching for a mother. In the biographies on B. Traven it was stated that Esperanza committed suicide. It was unclear whether Henry knew that or not. Croves never said that explicitly in his letters to Henry. Terry said he thought he remembered Henry telling him she had died in a mountain climbing accident. Donna said she believed she died falling off a horse.

In 1992, Franz Friedrich, a friend of Michael Baugmann, wrote Henry a letter asking him what he knew about B. Traven and Esperanza Lopez Mateos. Henry believed he knew the truth about Esperanza and Traven's relationship. He wrote the account of Esperanza's birth in a manner that would have made B. Traven proud, as though he was writing a novel. (link) Terry got this letter from Franz, and the letter Michael Baumann sent back to Franz (link), explaining how it wasn't possible for B. Traven to have been Esperanza's father.

Although it is clear Traven was not Esperanza's father. It is not clear that Esperanza knew that. If it was a lie only for Henry's benefit, it is difficult to see much purpose in it. It also seems difficult to understand why Esperanza might have believed Traven. Perhaps there were times when she believed and a time when she didn't. Perhaps Esperanza was an orphan that wanted to belong to someone and ignored the inconsistencies in the story. What did Esperanza want from the young raw Indiana farmer? Was she confused or was she playing him? Henry writes a poem on her death in one of his little journals calling himself a plowboy and she a mermaid. Henry never married until he was in his nineties, but he always remembered Esperanza as the love of his life.