From Xico

Into Thin Air -- My Version, Part 3, Actually Out of Thin Air and Some Plants

The first time we ever went up to Cofre de Perote, we had to go through the town of Perote, the roads at the end of which were already rough.  The way up from the town was all rock and stone, rough.  The town of El Conejo, the last town before the top of the mountain, was tiny and not friendly to strangers, or at least not to us.  Two boys greeted us just outside the town on horseback and were very demanding that we pay them to guide us.  We made our way down that day by crossing over some very bad roa just outside of El Conejo to find ourselves on a road under construction which we followed to an old established road, and then to the highway.  Now that under-construction road is smooth, paved all the way from El Conejo to the main Mexico-Veracruz highway.  El Conejo now boasts some buildings housing university projects and a dental clinic as well as quite a few more houses and tiendas.  There's a post somewhere on this blog with pictures, but it will require some rummaging.  (Unlike WordPress, a lovely free blogging service to which I may be able someday to figure out how to transfer this blog, Typepad has no search capability.)

Anyway on this last trip, we decided to try the old road down.

 Rough to begin with, it has deteriorated significantly -- who  besides nuts like us would use it if you can go up a smooth road in half the time?  Erosion had washed deep piles of sand across long stretches.  In other places, rain had cleaned out all the gravel that smoothed the cracks between the cobblestones.  We saw one pickup and on battered old car the whole way.  Not much evidence of people living there or farming or anything except for the rows of agave lining one side of the road here and there.  This is not the agave used for tequila, but it is, I am pretty sure, used for making pulque, the traditional Mexican drink.  If I remember right, we saw an old man scooping the liquid from the dying base of a plant on our first trip up.

So here are some pictures of the agave.

The agave comes in a lot of varieties.  Blue agave I think is the main tequila version.  They have often been called century plants because it was thought they only flowered once every hundred years, but apparently twenty-five years is more like it.  The individual plants die after flowering, but they have sent out shoots which produce plants that replace them.

On our trip both up and down Cofre we saw a lot of thistles in flower and just past flowering.  They were beautiful and eerie, looking more like strange, aware creatures dancing slowly, or watching us  or gossiping in little groups than they did plants.  Here are some thistle pictures.

In the photos below one of the flowers seemed to be grinning because its face was half a circle wide.

This last picture was taken as the sun was disappearing.  It is looking I think northwest, definitely over the valley of Mexico.  You can see a lake under the clouds.

And this was the last picture I could take.  And we went home.

Into Thin Air -- My Version, Part 2

Here, still from the Cofre, is a view of clouds gathering around the other peak:

A view of the road to the other peak meandering to top left,  and the road down to the bottom forking  back to the right.

Looking back at the Cofre from the road to the other peak:

On Peak 2 near the edge.

A view of the Cofre from the edge of the second peak:


Looking off from the other side to a  small mountain lake.
(I can't seem to get rid of the underlining from here on in.  I did indeed try editing the html, but I'm not clever enough to see what I'm not doing.)

Next: Into Thin Air My Version Part 3, Actually Out of Thin Air

Into Thin Air -- My Version, Part 1

Cofre de Perote is the baby of the Mexican volcanoes that form an axis from east to west on a route that goes from Orizaba past Puebla and Mexico Ciy.  Cofre, Pico de Orizaba, the queen of Mexican mountains, and a range of smaller ones, provide a view that folks lucky enough to live here can see within a short distance of almost anywhere. 

Jim and I have been up to Cofre a number of times.  I had never climbed up the volcanic plug before this trip.  It's this plug that gives Cofre its name. You can see it from a distance in the picture below, which I took I think at around 12000 feet.  Cofre is around 13900+/- feet tall. 

Potato fields alternate with pine and fir forest on the upper slopes.

And there is a lot of evidence of reforestation.

There are actually two tops of Perote, the plug and across a shallow valley, a rocky outcropping.  This trip, we visited both.  Both harbor a great deal of communication equipment which upsets some environmentalists.  I guess if such stuff littered all the mountains, I wouldn't be happy, but it doesn't, and it is critical technology. And it is actually kind of interesting to see.

But first, one more photo from the trip up.  Clouds and fog and mists swirled around us and the mountains all day.  Here Cofre was enveloped lightly.

At the base of the plug there is a flattish area that almost has the appearance of a village street.

We parked in a little paved area to the right of what you see in the picture above. Just past this wall next to which we parked, there is a straight drop-off, obscured here by clouds. The hills  you do see are across a chasm.  The clouds are billowing
upwards.

Here you can see a rooftop dog on one of the buildings in the parking area.

You can see the steps we climbed up in the picture of the buildings above, starting just behind the top of the buildings to the right.  Below are some closer views as we climbed them.

Here is where we started:

Jim almost at the top:

Picture from above the stairs:

Some of the jumble on top:

Jim on edge looking out between two satellite dishes.

View from top across to other high point

Next: Into Thin Air, Part II -- Down and over to the other high point.

Independence Day, Mexico, September 16, 2008

Independence Day is a big deal here. Independence is. All of a sudden, green and red and white flags burst forth on buildings, whip around on slender stalks attached to car rooves, Bakeries offer pastries iced in patriotic colors. Bunting decorates official and unofficial buildings alike.  You can buy a Mexican flag, any size you want, on this street corner and in that gas station, or a t-shirt, or a corny Mexican cowboy hat. The streets feel happy.  Independence Day and the night before are times to party. 

The night before, we went to see our neighbor, Blanca, who is in her second year at Preparatoria in San Marcos, perform with her school's singing group again.  It was pouring rain so the event was held inside the town's social salon, a cavernous barn of a place, a bit unfortunate: they used the outdoor sound system and so everything was loud and echoing.  But it didn't matter very much: almost everyone was enjoying hanging out with friends and neighbors.  I recorded Blanca's group on my camera.  The image isn't good enough to post, but it's still fun to have, and this year, the singers sounded much better than last.

On Independence Day itself, once again the students in our Colonia drummed and marched.  This year there were a couple of bugles as well. They had practiced daily for a week at least.  The real parade wasn't very different from the rehearsals: the kids were disciplined and serious. 

Some snapshots I took from our corner:

Sometimes I think, this takes a lot of time from school work.  Other times, the value is pretty clear.  Our colonia is bound together by its celebrations and its rehearsals and preparations and feasts for celebrations, religious and secular. The whole colonia donates and participates. There's more to the good life, a life with meaning and connection, than good grades. This year, for Independence Day and La Fiesta de la Virgén de Guadalupe, it's hoped that each household will give a cooperativo of about thirty dollars.  Not cheap for most. 

Every community in Mexico big enough to call itself a community celebrates Independence at 11:00 pm the night of the 15th of September with El Grito, the shout, to mark Miguel Hidalgo de Costilla's cry to rally his congregation to revolt.   Hidalgo, one of many well-educated rural priests in Mexico, participated in the early uprising which took place in Dolores in the state of Guanajuato.  Tragically, this initial stage was particularly bloody with great loss of life on all sides.  It took eleven years and more for Mexicans to finally gain their independence, and tragedy has dogged the Republic since.

In Mexico City, the president of the Republic rings the bells of the National Palice on the Zocalo and offers the Grito at dawn, a huge and stirring parade commences to wind its way through the city and past the President and his guests.

This year, just after the shout echoed through the main square of Morelia, the capital of Michoacán and the fireworks faded, two as yet uncaught murderers hurled two grenades into the crowd.  At least seven people died, over one hundred were injured.  This hideous act cast a pall on the celebrations. Politics, however, never die.  Unfortunately, after President Calderón made a plea for unity against the continuing violence in that state, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and others were condemning him for trying to make himself the center of the efforts, and not the people.

Here in our Colonia, I had not yet heard of the attack.  I was heading into Coatepec to buy some pombazos for lunch when the president of the colonia waved at me from his balcony.  I got to enjoy some traditional pozole and beer with him and his family and to learn a little Nahuatl. I made it back in time for our own guests, our close friends Alberto and Jo. 

This year we noticed there were nowhere near the cohetes, giant firecrackers, of previous years.  We don't know why, but in a nation all too aware of violence, it seems a good thing they are diminishing.  I want to add, the Mexico we know is not violent. It doesn't seem filled with people angry at each other, people who raise their voices, who are rude and intolerant.  This mafia-like stuff is awful and it tears at the fabric of people who have suffered enough.

Movies Come to Xico

Xico is the little town that lies just southwest of us, as well as being the municipality in which we live.  ECO, the environmental organization which has its roots and hoe in Xico, has branched out a bit to start a Cine-Club. Sunday was the first showing.  We got to see a documentary called "Pasajero" directed by a Xico neighbor, Ricardo Brajos who produced it with Eugene Rodrigue.  It is one of a trilogy and has been shown on PBS.  The story centered on a group of musicians, young, middle aged and one older one from Mexico at Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in San Pablo CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area, not far from where some of our kids and their families live.  They had become interested in -- no, committed to -- learning traditional mariachi. The final touch of authenticity for their music came when the older Mexican in their midst who had already taught them much, led them on a trip back to Mexico to meet musicians who remembered "the old ways", to hear the music played in its homeland and to themselves play for Mexican audiences. It was wonderful to see the passion of the kids to carry on a tradition, to hear people speak of the importance of community and connection.  It was a lovely movie and I felt honored to have seen it.  It was also odd to be on the Mexico side of the border, to see the students coming to where I live, and then returning there, to the United States.

A few pictures. Please forgive the quality.  They were taken in the small back room of the ECO tienda/mercado.

Two Xiqueños give a sampling of the music before the movie.

A cat lover in the audience.  He makes outstanding chocolate salami, by the way .

The director, his wife, and adorable younger son.

Some audience members.

On the way home, we waited for a procession to pass.  Not an unusual occurrence.

Olmecs were people, too: update

This link provided by Joe in the first Olmecs were people posting provides some pretty interesting information.  Interestingly, both Joe and LTG referred to were-jaguars, which the "baby-faces" are not.  I'll look at them in another post.  However, here is a bit more about the"baby-faces" from Wikipedia.  I still would suggest that even if some of the figures appear baby-like, they might also just be very fat...others not babies at all.  This is really a stretch, perhaps, but maybe very fat people had some significance.  Years ago, in a totally unrelated culture, the Kabakas of Buganda, a kingdom in Uganda before the British took over, fed their wives to make them so fat they couldn't walk.  It was a sign, if I remember correctly, of the wealth and generosity of the Kabakas, or kings. 

Olmecs were people, too

When I used to think of old Mexican civilizations,  images of giant monstrous god statues, of large, impersonal temples, of STRANGE things would fill my mind.  But in fact the inhabitants and creators of these marvellous civilizations were, to use a worn phrase, people, too.  The Olmecs with whom I am going to spend a bit of time are still considered the creators of the mother civilization of Mexico, though they certainly weren't the only people around.  They lived in Veracruz and Tabasco (the state, which lies to the south and east of us) for the most part.  They thrived an unimaginably long time ago: from maybe 1350 BC to 300 BC, in other words, they emerged as an organized, complicated, sophisticated society during the time of the Egyptian pharoahs, at the same time Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, at the time of the emergence of the Upanishad tradition in India, at the beginnings of the Greek alphabet, at the time of the first Chinese dictonary.  They had lived in the area for some thousands of years before, or at least people whose heirs became Olmecs did.

So they were around as a major culture for around 1000 years, fifty generations.

The Olmecs didn't live right near us, more to the south and east, not in the mountains, rather closer to the coast, at lower elevations.  But all around us, people are still digging up stuff from them and from those who copied them and were their neighbors.

Back to the Olmecs being people.

Here in Xalapa, the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa (MAX for short) shelters archeological remnants of the Olmecs and the other groups in Veracruz.  Over the entrance to the gallery, it says something like, "Welcome.  This is your patrimony."

Jim and I took our cameras the other day to the Museum to try to capture some images for you.  The first ones I am going to show you are of people. I won't try to distinguish between places or between periods of time or their status. They are not photos of people but photos of sculptures, and very worn ones, so this is a little difficult, but see what you think these faces tell us.

These portraits are part of a collection called "baby faces."  It's thought that they are sculptures of children, but I tend not to think so. For one thing, at least some of them have teeth.  For another, the noses aren't, for the most part, baby noses.  More likely it seems to me is that they are smooth skinned because a lot of Mesoamericans were, and many of their heirs still are.  To me some look like they might be kids, but mostly they look like either young adults or adults of an uncertain age.

I'd be interested in your reactions.

NAFTA Causes Big Problems for Mexican Farmers

I suspect I shouldn't be copying the whole article but just giving  you a link, but if you have any interest in Mexico or Nafta or immigration, you have to read this.

"Mexican farmers suffer"

The Washington Times
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Although David M. Dickson cites arguments from both sides of the free-trade debate within the United States, he grossly ignores the social and economic effects of NAFTA in Mexico (”Free-trade advocates rally at RNC,” Business, Sept. 3).

Indisputably, since 1994, the flood of subsidized U.S. agricultural products into Mexican markets because of the North American Free Trade Agreement has caused a sharp decline in Mexico’s ability to compete in the agricultural sector.

Subsistence farmers in the south of Mexico have suffered most, with their traditional farming methods unable to compete with artificially cheap products from U.S. agro-business. This year, 18 percent of the Mexican labor force works in the agricultural sector, which produces just 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. In rural areas of Mexico, poverty levels have risen steadily since the inception of NAFTA, reaching more than 75 percent in the southern state of Chiapas. Thousands of Mexican farmers have had to sell their land at depressed prices and join the illegal trek north to the United States.

It is unwise for U.S. politicians to ignore such socioeconomic inequality in Mexico. With their livelihood in Mexico destroyed, these disenfranchised peasant farmers are forced to seek other opportunities for work. Forty-four percent of Mexicans who immigrate to the United States come from impoverished regions in the south.

For these people, NAFTA has meant the destruction of their livelihood and a savaging of their cultural heritage. They deserve to be addressed by our nation’s presidential candidates or, at the very least, to be mentioned on your news pages.

COHA Research Associate Mary Tharin
September 10th, 2008

Council on Hemispheric Affairs 1250 Connecticut Ave, N.W., Suite 1C Washington, D.C. 20036

The Magnificent Tenochtitlan

I am going to move back in time and move towards Veracruz after this post.  I debated whether to save this for when I return to the Aztecs, but I wanted to leave you with this image, an anchor, if you will, to hold you to remembering just how remarkable the world of Mesoamerica was.

What you see is a three-dimensional rendering of Tenochtitlan I THINK originally created by Miguel Covarrubias.  This is Tenochtitlan at its height, with a population of about 250,000 souls.  You can see the three causeways that connected it to the mainland, the dike called the Albarrada de Netzahualcootl and the ceremonial center.  All of this was built upon chinampas, those built-up beds for agriculture.  Like Venice, you could get virtually anywhere within the city by boat, for canals were as common as streets.  The big causeway, bottom center, is the one on which Cortés and his conquistadores entered.  The Spaniards razed it to the ground.

¡SUPER CHE!

For several months driving up Avenida Ruiz Cortines in Xalapa we've seen first demolition and then the frame of a large new building growing  -- a building large enough to completely enclose, with room to spare, a whole other building.  The building standing lonely but untouched was quite old.  Jim and I thought it was a church, in fact a church that had been enlarged.  We hadn't driven by in a month or so, but we did yesterday.  This is what we saw:
 

¡Yikes! 

We have mixed feelings about Chedraui supermarkets.  These Super Che's are, according to the Chedraui publicity, are meant to compete with the giant Mexican supermarket chains like Soreana.  But Chedraui is turning into a behemoth with heavy construction equipment.  They rolled their Cats through a protected area near the city of Veracruz; they are, as I've mentioned, in the midst of a mind-boggling, messy, noisy, inconvenient and extremely drawn out remodeling of the modest and seemingly just-fine supermarket in Coatepec where we are accustomed to shop for some of the things we can't buy locally (it's rumored they're putting in a movie theater in Coatepec.  I realize just how weak I am when I contemplate the pleasures of a movie theater closer to home than the ones we had in San Antonio.)  The mayor of Xalapa is now a Chedraui; people are accustomed to saying half of Xalapa is owned by the Chedrauis who at least are from Xalapa and not foreign invaders.

So I thought, well it's hideous, the above-illustrated Super Che, but at least they preserved a church.  But they didn't.  It's better than that.  The building nestled in the big store was......The Old Star Beer Factory  (Antigua Fábrica de Cerveza "La Estrella".)

According to the article in Cordobaenlinea.com (Cordoba here in Veracruz), today the formerly deteriorating remains of the abandoned building are the part of the Super Che where wines and liquors are sold.

A bit of history: the original factory was  located where it was because it was near a river which provided hydraulic power for the machinery; it was on the edge of the city when it was built, and it was on the Ferrocarril Interoceánico, the trans-Mexico railway that carried materials from Atlantic To Pacific.  The bulding was opened in 1850 and sold several times after that, although it always made beer, and later ice as well.  It was abandoned in 1990.  The restoration aimed to preserve and show the characteristics of the original building, not only the walls, but also the materials, the way it was built, etc. etc.  You can read more in Spanish here.