NOTE: You will need your passport, your FM2 or FM3 or Mexican ID card plus if you are Mexican I think a birth certificate, a bill no more tha three months old showing your name and current address (Phone bill, electric bill, something like that) and your CURP card. The card is free. Ask anyone where Quinta de las Rosas is, especially after you get to 20 de Noviembre and they will direct you. It's hard to miss. I have forgotten the little cross street.
At sixty-six, Jim and I are already in our "third age" which starts here in Mexico at sixty. One of the benefits of being old is that we are eligible for DIF cards, actually issued by the part of DIF called INAPAM, roughly, the National Institute for Older People which give us fifty percent off all bus fares and lots of museums and a number of other things. As you'll see, INAPAM also has an array of services and activities for older people as well. Yesteray we finally got around to getting the cards. We had made some initial exploratory forays to DIF offices in Xalapa, the first being when we found a small DIF office on a shady, quiet street which is where someone or other had told us to go. It was dark and looked empty, but it was unlocked, so we walked in. Perhaps it was lunch hour? Hmm.Too early We wandered from one empty office to another and looked at each other and said, We're not supposed to be in here. Outside again on the street, we were copying the information on the sign hanging over the door when a man came out buttoning his shirt, followed by another man. They were very friendly. Indeed, the office was closed. Although not a national holiday it was after all Cinco de Mayo and city and state offices were closed. They came out to wait for some other people who turned up to take them to a party at the DIF headquarters where they said, we could get further information, but obviously on another day.
So we headed up a day or two later to the DIF State headquarters which are in a large building on the far side of the hill known as Macuitepec. It was a busy, crowded place. After some searching, we found a woman who told us we had to go yet further, to La Quinta de las Rosas, which sounded quite intriguing. Since the hours we could apply were limited, we didn't have time to go to this third place. Instead we got back in the car and meandered down towards El Centro. And I mean meandered. Not the road not taken that we should have taken, but the road taken which we shouldn't have because it sure took a long time on a very hot day and we don't have air conditioning in the car. Normally this is fine, but Xalapa traffic is as jammed and gridlocked as traffic can be. And on a hot day in barely moving traffic the sun beats down and you cook. Jim thought to try some side streets....nothing goes exactly straight, nothing follows a grid in Xalapa. Normally you assume that going uphill is going north and away from the center and going south is going down to the center. Generally, if you are headed towards the center from the north, when you get a glimpse of it, Cofre de Perote will be on your right. However, lots of downhill streets seemed to end and we couldn't see Cofre. So we zigged and zagged for more than an hour through what is a very small geographical area.
But it's always interesting. Big box stores have not defeated the jumble of commerce that fills the streets: stores selling fruits and vegetables, selling wood, selling gifts, selling shoes and paper goods and meat and chickens and tiny restaurants with three tables crammed in them and nightclubs and bars and elegant second story restaurants with balconies and photo shops and copy shops and internet cafes and clothing stores and miscelanea stores and offices and plumbing supply stores and hardware stores and religious item stores and churches and chapels and clinics and labs and microhospitals...and people walking and talking and shopping and rushing and standing and watching fill the streets.
Yesterday we finally found our way to the right place and we had all the right papers with us. We had been given a tiny piece of paper with instructions which including arriving at 8:30 am. Well, we are old hands now, so we didn't arrive until 10:30. I mean to say, Jim and I are old hands at being late, whether it be in Mexico or elsewhere.
La Quinta de las Rosas is a beautiful and shabby place (most places here are shabby and many are beautiful). Quinta can mean a country estate or a small farm, perhaps, either of which these grounds might have been (or both). Today it still feels peaceful behing a great red wall that protects it from the cacaphony of the now-definitely-not-rural Avenida 20 de Noviembre.
On these grounds, all sorts of activities go on for people over sixty years of age, from classes and workshops to performances and church services and fiestas. There is a clinic with geriatric specialists and a dentist and a cafeteria. The food is inexpensive, the rest, I believe is without charge. In one classroom we glimpsed women dancing with vases. In others, it appeared there were people teaching, people discussing, who knows.
There are lovely peaceful places just to sit.
Here's an old fountain that looks carved out of volcanic lava.
The officewe were headed for lay at the very back of the grounds at the back of a patio which had large planters in the middle and along a far wall filled with roses in various stages of blossoming. People said "buenas días" as we passed, and we greeted them in return. Although it was obvious there were a lot of people ahead of us, we were directed into the small office to see if we had the right documents and to get numbers. There were two clerks taking the information and reviewing the documents and then entering the required data on each ID card via electric typewriters. It was slow, but everyone was amiable and patient. People came alone or with spouses or friends or daughters and sons and sometimes grandchildren. One of the grandchildren was a wiry, energetic child who spent the time making up games for herself, running and jumping and smiling to herself as she met some self-imposed challenge. There were country people and city people, people who looked like housewives and people who looked like teachers or clerks or businessmen. There were a couple of imposing, imperious looking women who followed their ample bosoms as they walked to and fro. There was a thin, elegantly dressed woman wearing high-heeled sandals who smiled graciously at people until her husband, a slightly plump, balding man in a guyabera jumped up, rushed into the office and back and scolded her for missing her number. A thin man with a very large belly who was dressed in tight black jeans and a black shirt and a cowboy hat and gold-tipped cowboy boots crossed the patio with great energy a number of times. One woman with fluffy hair and a flowery shirt sat with feet planted wide apart. She was wearing bermuda shorts, something you wouldn't have seen until quite recently.
Next to the patio was a pavillion which served for celebrations and also as a basketball court. As we waited, we could hear the music and speeches and the mass that celebrated a combination of Mother's Day and Day of the Teacher. I didn't take a picture of it, but here's a picture of the same place, though of a different celebration, that I have stolen from El Dictamen Online from the Fiesta de Alegría held at La Quinta de las Rosas to celebrate its twentieth anniversary this past April. This is how it seemed yesterday, too, though there were no beautiful young dancers. You can see in the picture that there are people of different ages. Yesterday, too. People of all ages tend to hang out together even at places for old folks.
After the mass and some speeches, a line of aging musicians passed by us to play. We heard the first song in a voice that had soured a bit over the years, but it hardly mattered. It strengthened and calmed as people joined in with the familiar words. That song was followed by what I think were boleros by the great Agustín Lara. Everyone knew them, everyone sang, everyone applauded. After what was meant to be the last song, a loud chorus of "otra, otra, otra" burst forth, Mexican for encore, and the band played on.
At one point, a woman maybe in her seventies, a bit stooped, a bit stiff, her hair in a whispy gray bun, came to go into an office next to where I was sitting. She couldn't resist the music and suddenly was dancing, light on her feet, smiling broadly at everyone, and everyone smiled back.. A lovely moment.
Across from where we sat, a somewhat bedraggled notice hung on a door:
It announced a writing competition in honor of the defense of the Port of Veracruz in 1921. It was called "Memories of Age and the Sea." The deadline for submission was April 21, the anniversary of the US invasion of the Port when Mexico's courageous defense of it began.
Just on the off chance you don't know about this invasion, in 1914, when the Mexican Revolution was overwhelming Mexico, the US invaded the Port of Veracruz. This was a tangle of nasty international interference in which Mexican naval cadets conducted themselves with great honor. For more, in Spanish, look here. It's a fairly long article appearing in El Diario de Xalapa, and it starts off:
"With the hope that the heroic acts of our military institutions are not forgotten and that new generations have at hand the historical facts of the defense of the Port of Veracruz in April, 1914, it is important to make known...the crucial facts of this event, one of the many interventions of the US in our country.
"In 1914 there were people who gave their lives to bequeath to us what we now have and which is lamentably deteriorating...."
So the writing competition. It is sponsored by The Secretary of the Navy of Mexico incelebration of the heroic defense of the Port of Veracruz in 1921.
The competition's objectives are "to draw people older than 65 closer to the sea, to our naval culture, motivating them to develop their capacity, through writing, to reate their experiences, their yearnings, and their anecdotes, having to do with the sea."
Some of the rules:
The contest is open to all who are Mexicans by birth and over 65 who live in the national territory of Mexico. They are to write a piece recounting experiences, yearnings, or anecdotes having to do with the sea. The work musts be original and unpublished. Participants should be lovers of literature, not professional writers, so that many people can participate.
Anyway, the contest is over, and there were three winners from each state, as you can see here. Forty six people submitted entries from the State of Veracruz.
And then it was our turn. The very friendly clerk went through our papers and asked a few questions. Suddenly, there was a howl from outside: the charming little girl who had been making up her own games, jumping and running here and there while waiting perhaps for an abuelita to get her card, fell and hurt herself. Our clerk jumped up and ran out and with a crowd of concerned adults took her over to the clinic across the patio. "She's fine," she assured us when she came back to finish up our paperwork. She made a typo on my card, putting an "m" in instead of an "n" and painstakingly corrected it by hand.
When we left, we said goodbye to the people we walked past, and made our way through the gardens back to the busyness of Xalapa.
Obviously a place like La Quinta de las Rosas wasn't built to house social services, and you didn't have to look far to discover its history. It is recorded on the General Directory, right at the entrance to the grounds.
It tells us:
"Don Miguel Viveros sold Don José Pérez Toledano a plot with a house made of planks in the Place of the Alameda, according to what is recorded in the first Public Record of the property, dated the 25th of June 1977 on which the seal of King Carlos IV can be seen in the margin. In 1890, the sale of the property by Don Isauro Conde to Don Agustín Muñoz was recorded. On September 8, 1895 it was recorded that Don Emilio Lendechy sold House no. 2...[on the property] to a British citizen named Eliza Felicitas Blackmore, originally from Bournemouth English. At the end of the 19th century, the property became the seat of the Consulate of Holland [it appears as a rental property], and it remained thus until the expropriation of the petroleum industry. Holland was one of the three powers which controlled crude oil in our country.
"On the 29th of July, 1924, Sra. Isa el Grace Blackmore sold the property to Don Rafael Murillo Camacho, a sugar producer and founder of the first banking institution in Xalapa. He constructed the buildings [perimetrales -- on the street side maybe?] on the land and, being a lover of flowers, baptized it "La Quinta de Las Rosas." The Murillo family inhabited the Quinta for many decades, and upon the death of Sra Laura Paniagua, widow of Don Rafael Murillo, the property was acquired in 1988 by Sr. Jorge Salda...a who sold it to the government of the State in 1990. Since September 7, 1990 La Quinta de Las Rosas has been used as the "Centro Integral para la atencion de los adultos en plenitude" (The Comprehensive Center for Attention to Adults in the Prime of Life -- now that's a great way to put it!) of The Sistema para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (The system for the Comprehensive Development of the Family, known everywhere as DIF), promoting the development of cultural and recreational activities as well as companionship and rest."