From Xico

How I'm learning to love not driving

I had a couple of minor accidents about a year and a half ago.  The result of one or the other or both is that I have some minor problems with stability that are not serious but could be dangerous if I'm driving, so I don't  drive. if I were disciplined about the prescribed exercises, I might overcome them, but I'm not.  I used to be disciplined about a lot of stuff I no longer am.  ANYWAY, so I don't drive I take taxis which I mostly get from a company in Xico called Impala.  My friend Cristy chose the company because its rates were not the highest.  Also, their taxis are not the newest, but they are fine and the drivers are generally quite friendly (not too).  Their rates are going up because the price of gas here is going up rapidly as is inflation.  This is fairly easy to see not only because you can tell it is quickly in stores but because more people are starting to sell things out of their houses, among other things,  

So what I like is that I learn more about where I live not only from taxi drivers but often from taxi drivers.  Yesterday I had a driver I've had before.  He is from Xico and likes me because I live in Xico and really see no reason to live any other place.  So we talk about, for instance, the people of Xico, whom he says are really good people because they still have a strong sense of community and family, are kind and don't fight and don't use guns. And we talked about all the fiestas and the food and what you'd probably expect.  He said that he bet there was nothing about Xico I didn't like.  

I had to tell him I did NOT like the cohetes, the fireworks, which can sound like bombs.  My big dog, my grandote, my protector, I said, hates them so much that if I am home, he has to be right next to me touching me.

Well, of course, he lifted his eyebrows and looked at me disapprovingly.  "But they are part of our tradition!" 

"But they weren't always this way when we came.Now they seem to go off every day even when it isn't a feast day!"

But as I knew and rediscovered, many, many days are saints' days.  Today, for instance, May 15, when we have been having a cohete symphony, is the feast of Saint Isidore, the patron saint of farmers, an important personage around here.

Anyway, being the kind person he is, he agreed that it was too bad my dog was so easily frightened and we agreed to disagree on the frequency of reasons for cohetes.

 

 

 

 

 

Humboldt and Pomagranates

Thanks to Susan Mills, I learned that today is Alexander Von Humboldt's birthday.  Von Humboldt was what we might call a Renaissance man.  He didn't follow a single, narrow field like geology, but rather looked for connections across the natural world.  I don't know why he isn't famous in the United States as other 19th century pioneering scientists, like Darwin, are.  Maybe teachers want their students to specialize and are afraid of wakening too much curiosity!  Just joking.

Anyway, here is a link to a short biography from a blog at the Library of Congress. In it, the Port of Veracruz is mistakenly located in the west, not the east of Mexico.

Today is Mexico's Independence Day so here are a few photos to show our local celebrations.  They seem muted this year.  Few houses had decorations, and, more noticeable, there were no cohetes -- fireworks -- last night.  

The left hand photo is of the tail-end of the Independence Day parade in our Colonia.  It's put on by all the schools here.It is a big parade with drums and horns and dancers. Chedraui, the supermarket, brought dancers from Ballet Folklorico de Coatepec to their lobby yesterday.  The dancers were excellent, my photos not so much. Three groups performed traditional Jarocho dances.  They were not only exellent, but they radiated joy and energy.  I am really disappointed that I don't have more to show!  A couples dance was especialy charming, but my photos are very blurry so I left it out.  You have to imagine the men in fringed leather jackets and cowboy hats and jeans and the women in gorgeous, brightly colored skirts with almost off the shoulder peasant blouses, swirling and stomping and flirting a bit.  The right hand photo shows one chile en nogada.  This is the traditional Independence Day dish:  poblano peppers stuffed with shredded meat: beef and pork and chopped fruit drenched in a creamy sauce which includes ground walnuts.It's sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and maybe some parsley.  It's a sweet dish and I love it.  Dessert as a main course!   It is traditionally said to have been created by a group of Augustine or Clarisa nuns  in Puebla to honor Agustine de Iturbide after he signed the treaty ending the Mexican Revolution giving independence to Mexico.  Chiles en Nogada are only prepared in August and September not only to mark Independence but because this is the season when pomagranates are ripe.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Christmas in Colonia Úrsulo Galván

I approach Christmas with some trepidation (to say the least).  I'm one of the people they talk about who experiences anxiety more than anticipation, and so is my husband.  So this year I was surprised by the happiness that enveloped me when we went for a Christmas Eve cena, dinner, at the house of friends in the colonia with grandparents, mother and father, son and daughter in law and our favorite neighborhood little kid. The two other daughters were in and out with friends for much of the evening.   Everardo works in the fish stalls at the Coatepec market and brought up crab and maybe robano or bass which Doña J cooked into a delicious soup.  Everardo is endlessly curious about the United States so we regaled him and his wife with descriptions.  His grandfather had lived in the US, near Chicago and added his own memories, often confirming what we said.  We laughed an awful lot.  It seems odd here to people, almost unbelievable, that Christmas Eve isn't generally  celebrated so fluidly with people in and out and firecrackers going off and finally the the payasos, dressed this time in white and shaking their noisemakers as they danced down the street leading the final posada of the season. We left pretty early, at least early for Christmas Eve.  A lot of people would go to services at the church in the Colonia and then continue partying until early morning.  

Christmas Day is more a day of rest. The streets were quiet when we went to our American friends' house in Xico where we had late-afternoon jambalaya with enormous, juicy shrimp for dinner and plates piled high with sweet desserts.  The father of an almost adopted young woman and HIS father were there and so was Miguel, the now-famous-in-our-area dog trainer and his two sons and a cousin of theirs and his wife.  I know it was unusually warm on the east coast of the US, and it was here, too, with temperatures close to eighty, if not eighty, but it still felt a lot like Christmas.

Umm...Better late than never?

It sounds strange to say it, but Day of the Dead is a holiday that is really fun.  This is due in part today to the omnipresence of Catrinas, often life-sized dolls created by all kinds of people for display. The original Katrina was Jose Guadalupe Posada´s gift to Mexico. Posada (1852-1913) was a prolific cartoonist and illustrator who used
not just Catrina but skulls and skeletons of all sots and just about everything else  in his political cartoons.  Later nineteenth century Mexico, by the way, was home to quite a number of political cartoonists. Posada himself was a primary influence on Diego Rivera who hung around outside his studio in Mexico City to watch him work. Rivera included Catarina in his famous mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central.  

 In this section, you can see Diego, portraying himself as a boy, holding hands with Catrina and standing in front of Frida Kahlo.As were many of Posada´s cartoons, this mural is satirical, a lightish portrayal of social classes in Mexico.

Below are some Catrinas we snapped fotos of in Coatepec.

A voluptuous (in a manner of speaking) woman in  an athletic costume with pink sneakers.  I really like the sneakers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Catrina in a  sparkly dress in a clothing letter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Catrina in an antique store, with a tricycle for some reason.

 

 A Catrina up on the 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

roof

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Catrina in a coffee shop.

 

 

 

 

 

Cut-outs in tissue paper hang all over, too:

Jose Guadalupe Posada, artist and printmaker extraordinaire

 

November 2  was the official Day of the Dead here in Mexico.  For at least a week beforehand, people put up their altars and set out life-size Catrinas decked in fancy dress clothes.  There have been processions, too.  In our colonia also for celebrating a saint or two.  

La Calavera Catrina was a creation of Jose Guadalupe Posada, a printmaker who used her to satirize classist living in Mexico:  the rich clothes hang on the skeleton who spent her money on them and didn't have enough for food. Calavera actually means skull, but has come to mean the whole Day of the Dead ummm woman.  Posada himself was famous as a satirist of Mexican life as well as an illustrator and a major influence on the muralist Diego Rivera. In the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth in Mexico there was in fact what I might call a movement of satirists and cartoonists who made fun of the government and society and everything related to them.  They were skillful artists, these cartoonists.  The tradition continues today, though I think in somewhat muted form.

Posada was not just a political cartoonist, however.  He made thousands and thousands of prints about all kinds of Mexican subjects.  He was enormously skillful.  He used a number of methods to make his prints including lithography, and to speed up his work, he developed a process of using a special ink directly on a metal plate.  His first pictures appeared when he was still a teenager in a journal in Aguascalientes, his hometown, called El jicote.

A self portrait.

And below a sampling of his work.

 

Posada and the catrina.

 

Revolución (Mexican, of course)

 

[I don't know the title of this one]

I don't know whether this was a cover of a book or what, but it sure wasn't pro-Spanish.

 

Some thoughts on this print can be found at this link.  If you are interested in Posada, this is a site worth visiting.

 

I'll conclude with this, the central panel of Diego Rivera's mural, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda (Park).  Catarina has one arm through Posada's arm and with her right hand, she is holding the child Diego's hand.  Behind Diegoyou can see Frida Kahlo.  

There are hundreds and hundreds of images of Posada's creations on Google.  Because he worked mostly in black and white, the computer screen is okay for looking at his pictures.

A Shocking Death in Our Colonia

December 12, the Feast Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, is also the Feast Day in our colonia.  La Virgen is the patron saint of the community, and over the years we've been here, the accompanying fiesta has grown so that even outsiders come to enjoy the revelry, for that's what it is. Men in the colonia make arcos for the capilla of the Virgen, for the main church, and for the arco at the bridge next to the entrance to our little village. Our main street gets a beautiful sawdust carpet. People have parties in their houses, booze is plentiful. There are booming cohetes for days before and during the celebration, and parades.  

Yesterday it all came to a sudden, screaming halt.  

As the small bull run was ending, a red chevy pickup ploughed through barriers and into the crowd, hitting a spectator and dragging him along the street for a fair distance. Hopefully he died on impact. Two women were also injured.  You can read about it in Spanish here.

We had almost stayed to watch these festivities, but had decided not to and returned home.  Shortly afterwards, we heard the ambulance.  The colonia fell silent.

We went up to have cena with our neighbors not knowing what had happened.  There were a lot of people there, all very subdued. Many of them had seen the full fury of the truck hitting the man and two women.  They were stunned.  They couldn't stop talking about it in hushed tones.  A dance had been scheduled for the evening, and for sure more cohetes, but last night fell silent in the soft rain.

 

Yoga and Jesus

There I was in my yoga class lying with my heels together, yanked as close as I could get them to my groin with a strap which is olive drab and makes me think of  military training camp equipment) with my eyes closed, a cloth covering them, trying hard to relax  when all of a sudden the room shook (I swear) with the explosion of a bottle rocket, a cohete, which sounded like a bomb exploding right outside the front door.  "Holy cow," I gasped (I still say holy cow),"What was that?" I half sat up (I couldn't sit all the way with my feet strapped).   The other student and Luana, the instructor lay like corpses. Another explosion. I managed to keep my mouth shut.  A long pause, long enough that I actually relaxed and  then, just as my back sank onto the floor, the biggest boom of all.  "Jesus Christ," the name burst full-force out of my mouth.  You don't hear that a lot here, though you hear all kinds of other profanities.  Anyway, it was loud enough to rouse my fellow students.  Luanna looked at me blankly. "Are you all right?"

"Didn't you hear that?"  

"What?" I swear she said "what."

She and the other student were now sitting up.  I was at a disadvantage, only able to get half-up with my hands supporting me and my heels still practically tickling my crotch.  

"That explosion. It sounded like a huge cohete right in front of your door!"

"Aren't you used to them yet?"

I had to assert my longevity in Mexico.Of course I was used to the cohetes.  "Well, yeah, but not right outside my front door!"

My front door is behind a wall.  Luana's is right on the sidewalk of the main street of Xico.  As she said, she hears them all the time.  Every church has a patron saint, the calendar is filled with holy days.  The class ended and we stepped outside onto the sidewalk to see a procession filling the street, a cohort of masked clowns twirling in their wide-legged costumes, their tall, conical hats swaying, their glittery noisemakers crackling rhythmically. Then came a seated Jesus high above us on a litter borne by eight or ten men and, finally, a large mariachi band. 

 

When we first came to Xico years ago, such processions were a bit more ragged, but with the growth of tourism and the consequent attention, they've gotten much more polished.  Maybe it's a good thing.

Which brings me back to Luana's yoga classes.  I have to mention again that she is a wonderful teacher of the Iyengar branch of Hatha yoga.  If you live in the greater Xico metroplex, you should give her classes a try. She is at Hidalgo 100 in Xico, her cell phone is 228 111 7647.  You can find her at facebook at Yogatlán.  Classes are on Monday and Thursday from 7:00 to 8:30 pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9:00 to 10:30 in the morning.

 

 

 

 

The News and the rain which fell during but did not dampen El Grito

For a couple of weeks I have been translating parts of columns and news articles to post here. What happens is that I start one, don't get it quite finished, then something else develops out there in the world, and, I think to myself, that's more interesting, so I start another one. Events seem to be tumbling over each other.

Government proposals for reforms in education, energy and taxation have stirred the political pot.  I reckon everyone I know, and that covers quite a spectrum, has ideas on these.  And the icing on the cake -- the melting icing which has spilled out of its pot in way too much abundance -- is the weather.For us here in Colonia Ursulo Galván, it's been almost unceasing rain for days and days and days.  We haven't had much flooding where we are, but probably as dangerous are the mudslides and landslides of various sizes.  On our walks, even along shortish roadcuts not covered in dense vegetation, there are minislides, one after another.

The worst problems have occured in the State of Guerrero, where Acupulco dwells. Acupulco itself has virtually been cut off from the rest of the country, the main highway, in what now seems an ironic name, the Highway of the Sun, to Mexico City being closed as is the airport. All runways were flooded.

A street in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, drowning in mud.  From La Jornada, 16 de septiembere, 2013

Forty thousand tourists have been stranded, there is no phone service, no internet, and in some places, no electricity.  And, I gather, virtually all streets have been flooded.  In 

A street in Acapulco. Photo from La Jornada, 16 de septiembre 2013

Guerrero, things are especially bad because two storms blanketing much of Mexico, Ingrid and Manuel, seem to have collided. The clouds just stay and stay, dumping what I believe are record amounts of rain.

Here in our area, a friend says in July we had 20"of rain, in August, 25".  I think we've already had more rain in September than in either of those two months, but I'm not sure. I do know that roads and walkways are slick with slime, mold and mud are crawling up outside walls, paint is blistering and peeling. Seeds have swum out of our garden to find other homes. Our clothes are damp in our drawers, too, though this happens every rainy season.  

The teachers' strike, for which I have a lot of unposted stuff, went on through the rain, and schools were closed not only in Mexico City in protest, but here in our area, too. Today everyone here was going to go back to school , but the governor has ordered theschools closed because of the weather.  The strikers more or less (some dispute about this) left the Zocalo in Mexico City in time for El Grito which is given in pueblos large and small all over Mexico at around 11:00 at night on the 15th of September to mark the beginning of Mexican Independence Day.  The Grito in Mexico City is given by El Presidente, and no matter what you think about current politics, it is quite a wonderful and stirring ritiual.  This link should take you to a video of it.  I am too lazy to embed it at the moment. The Mexican Revolution is said to have begun in the pueblo of Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo) in the State of Guanajuato when the local priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla who was involved in a plot to overthrow the government, and some criollo associates first freed a number of prisoners.  Afterwards Hidalgo ordered the church bells rung and gathered some parishioners on the steps of the church where he urged them to revolt.  They still ring the bells as part of El Grito and call out the names of the heroes of the Revolution.  You really ought to watch the video. For a pretty concise version of El Grito, look here.

More soon. In closing, I would just like to say that I HATE Windows 8 which I have on my new laptop.  It complicates even the easiest tasks.

A Snake, Dia de la Vera Cruz, a Walk with Graciela, Carrots and Flowers

Yesterday we saw the first really scary looking snake here.  It was dead, it's head having been removed.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so you'll just have to believe me.  It was probably closer to three than to two feet long, skinny, striped black, red and white (I think).  The (I think) white stripes were jagged, like lightening looks in comic books.  The deadly snake in our area is the coral snake.  They are relatively shy and not aggresssive and rarely seen.  I don't know how this one came to lie across our path, but I do know it wasn't a coral snake.  I came home and looked through dozens of snake pictures and didn't see one just like it.  Maybe my imagination was playing tricks with me and maybe the white stripes didn't look like lightening bolts in comic books.  I stopped looking at the pictures because I didn't want to end up dreaming about snakes which are not my favorite animals in the world.  If this description makes sense to any of you and you could offer an identification, I would really like to hear from you.

Friday was El Dia de la Vera Cruz, the Day of the True Cross.  The capilla of the True Cross is located behind our neighbor's house.  It is only used on this day.  For the celebration, it is cleaned and decorated and looks beautiful.  This year it had its own arco.  In addition to the misa, there is often an effort to have a fiesta of some sort.  One year it was very successful with all kinds of activities for younger people as well as music.  For this year's celebration the community hired a DJ for a baile, a dance, at night.  I don't think too many people came, but I couldn't swear to it because it is also the holiday outside of La Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe that has the most cohetes and the biggest ones, and these ones are fired off right around us and these big nearby ones still make me VERY nervous even after all these years, so I hide inside.

Here is a picture of the capilla all decorated:

There were a number of very pretty hanging decorations:

Here is the interior:

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Moving right along....

Much to my amazement, the carrots we planted in the garden at our other little house actually grew into real carrots!  I still am amazed when stuff actually comes up, especially stuff I've not planted before, and carrots seem particularly miraculous.  These came up (or rather, went down) full-sized, crisp and flavorful!

Last week our young neighbor Graciela went on a walk with us.  She has the other afghan hound in the neighborhood.  It is also a found afghan.  This one was at one point the dog of a neurologist who lives in Xico.  The guy tried to keep the dog without a fence! So of course it wandered.  His wife tried to bring it back quite a number of times, but they finally gave up. (This according to our friend and vet, Marco Antonio)  Kids in our neighborhood saw it and thought it was ours.  Anyway, it ended up with Graciela and she and the dog (now tied up) adore each other.  So she came on our walk.

Graciela has eagle eyes.  She saw a snake in the grass which she repeatedly pointed to while making alarmed little noises. Finally I saw it as it scurried away, and at long last, so did Jim. It was a slender green grass snake. She also was the first to notice a clump of tiny, shiny black worms  inching its way across the path.  Each worm must be about a quarter of an inch at most and quite skinny.  Each pile of them must contain a couple of hundred.  She showed us that when you see one clump, you will see more.  They tunnel and come up.  And sure enough, we saw a trail of them, spaced apart. She also saw wild cilantro which doesn´t look at all like the cilantro we are accustomed to.  The leaves are clustered around a center, like dandelion leaves.  They are fairly narrow and have pointed edges which are sharp.  You have to cut off these edges to use the leaves, but then they not only smell and taste just like cilantro, according to Graciela, but can be used just like regular cilantro.  She collected a bunch for her mom.

Below are some leaves I picked.  I didn't have my camera on the walk so these are on our table.

And finally, yesterday Doña Gloria came over with a beautiful bunch of roses for me.  Today is Mother's Day in Mexico, and she brought them "as one mother to another" so I wouldn't feel too lonely with my kids far away.  We sat and had coffee and commented on the weather which has gotten a bit May-like: no rain, dusty air, and a lot of humidity, although this year the temperatures have been pretty mild.  So she told me about the Fiesta of San Isidro which is coming up and will be celebrated in Xico and I think in our Colonia.  She said that on this feast day, people carried a gourd upside down to show there had not been enough rain.  They pray to San Isidro for rain, and if all goes well, it will rain shortly thereafter.  

And that's all for now.  El Pacto por México pronto. Maybe.

 

 

 

Disney and Dia de los Muertos

I don't know if this made it into the US press or not, but Disney was planning to trademark "Dia de los Muertos" and use it to market a movie and a whole bunch of Disney merchandise.  It also planned to prevent  people from using the name without applying for copyright permission!

Fortunately, the effort failed. There was a LOT of protest, so Disney withdrew its plans.  I would say this is chutzpah, but maybe not in the US.  Next thing, corporations will be buying rights to name cemeteries! How about Panteón Lala?  By the way, I looked up chutzpah to see if I could find a Spanish equivalent.  I came up with frescura, descaro, desparpajo, desfachatez, and desenfado.  

Hmm. About the Border Patrol and Santa and Not Serious