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.

 

 

 

 

 

Day of the Dead Edition

Note: I threw my camera into my backpack and when I got it out, it was not the same cqmera I had put in.  I forgot that there was sand in the bottom of the pack from my various collections.  I cannot get it clean.  I am very sad.  I will get another one, but for this post, what pictures there are will be from Jim and his camera.

Weather: Dreary.  We had a week or so of beautiful weather in the middle of October, and since then, we've had some sunny, crystally mornings, but by afternoon, we've settled into gray and rain of one sort or another.  This is a fairly normal pattern here, or it used to be, or it never was, depending on whom you talk to, though the relatively bright days of recent years are generally considered an anomaly.  I have a small treasure of a book called Leyendas de Xalapa: relatos y narraciones filled with small stories and descriptions and anecdotes provided by some Xalapeños in their tercer edad around 2006.  One is simply called El Chipi-Chipi.  We heard about chipi-chipi and experienced it on our first trip here which was in perhaps 1987 in November, just after the Day of the Dead when the golden cempasúchil (or any other number of spellings)which look like large, densely-petalled marigolds lay everywhere, wilted and smashed by passersby where the excesses had been abandoned by vendors, and drooped over the remains of altars and tombstones in panteones, or cemeteries and public places.  I had, at the time, little notion of the Day of the Dead and found all these flowers, now bedraggled and lost, puzzling.  Every day we spent here that November week dawned sunny and bright and ended gray, the sun and stars hidden in gossamer sheets of drizzly rain, chipi-chipi.  Nobody seemed especially bothered, there were few umbrellas.

This year's days of November rain and chill seem early to me, but apparently they are not.  In my small book, Sr. Carlos Álvarez Ramírez who was 66 years old at the time he recounted this, said that "the climate of Xalapa was very rainy by 1930, with many weeks and even months of rain, but they were powerful downpours in which there was much lightening and thunder.  The seasons of the year were clearly marked so that one could prepare for cold or warmth.

"At that time in this area the famous chipi-chipi predominated, which was a very dense drizzle, so dense that you couldn't see even a yard ahead of you, worse than fog, because the light from the cars which continued to drive....could not penetrate the thickness of the drizzle so typical of our city.  The chipi-chipi we have today is very different....With the chipi-chipi of old, one might not wear the same shoes for three days and then would find them full of mold....At night, the bed clothes were damp, the sheets felt cold because of all the rain."

This year we've had fierce storms and heavy rains and now, chipi-chipi, though lighter than that described above.  But shoes get moldy, and clothes in drawers often smell damp. And the fog and drizzle embraced us, too, on the Day of the Dead.  

A VERY few bits and pieces about The Day of the Dead you might or might not have known.

• It is not a Catholic holiday, nor does it have Catholic elements as any official part of it. It is purely indigenous, being most intensely celebrated in the south and east of Mexico (like our area).
• It is very old, having existed long before the Spaniards arrived.
• There are many variations, from group to group, area to area, and even family to family.
• It is a school holiday.  Mexico has very strong prohibitions against introducting religious matter into the public schools, but perhaps fifty or sixty years ago, it became obvious that this celebratiion was actually deeply woven into Mexican culture.  It used to be spread over several days for different kinds of people.  A friend said there was even a day for animals.  The Spanish moved it to November 1 and 2 to coincide with the Christian All Saints' and All Souls' Days.  Here, November 1 is for children who´ve died and November 2 is for everyone else, though the celebrations seep into the rest of the week (at least).
• Apparently the tradition of las calaveras, the skulls, exists because in some places people kept the skulls of their dead in accessible places.
• It doesn't celebrate saintliness; it isn't a time of commemoration.  Before Christianity, many groups held that the dead went to the underworld, not far from the living.  On the Day of the dead, they returned to mingle with their families and friends.  I don't think today at least people believe they can see the dead, but rather know they are there. Sometimes people eat the food on the altars knowing it pleases the dead to see them sharing in it.
• In our Colonia, Day of the Dead seemed a bit subdued this year.  I'm not sure why.  In past years, altars have blazed from most houses
• The cemetery celebration in Xico (which many people from our Colonia go to) takes place on the morning of November 2.  In some places, it is the night before.

On the Day of the Dead, we visited new friends at their rancho on a hilltop outside Xico.The husband is Czech, raised in Canada, the wife is Mexican.  The altar was Mexican and we had cabbage and mashed potatoes along with baked chicken and rice and peas and frosted cakes for the meal. The wife taught us a bit of Mexican dancing while she wore a beautiful traditional dress.  We toured the slopes of the ranch where animals roamed pretty freely.  The electric fencing kept them out of garden areas rather than within pastures.   

Below are some pictures.

Our hosts finish preparing the meal.

 

The meal almost ready

 

Our hostess teaching us to dance (sort of)

 

The Ofrenda, or Day of the Dead altar.

Not surprisingly, it was a misty gray day.  In real life, the colors seem deep and soft. Unfortunately it seems impossible to capture this lovely quality in photos.

We walk along the hillside from the  house to where the animals are.

This burro is named Lady.  I thought I'd gotten over being the city person who thought burros were "cute" and who wanted one.  Lady was cute and I want one again.

Animals grazing.  They are all mixed in with each other.  The horses don't have shoes because the owner believes they hurt the horses' hooves.  They seem very happy without them.

 

These pigs are domestic-wild (jabalina) hybrids

 

Domestic spotted pig portrait.  Pigs are pretty cute.

 

So are goats.  All the animals were treated lovingly, and it showed.

 

Turkeys (obviously).

 

You know what these are.

There were also sheep, but for some unkown reason I didn't get a picture of them (unless the goats are actually the sheep). The dueño buys and sells sheep for meat, not wool.  But they are happy until the end.

Returning to the house.  The white dog was an especially charming one.

We say good-bye.  The host and hostell and dog outside the workshop.  We hope to see them all often. 

 

 

 

 

 

Catholics in Mexico

http://mexfiles.net/2012/03/25/pope-porri/

This is now sliding into being old  news, but the Pope visited Mexico last week.  Richard Grabman wrote an excellent post on the visit, news coverage of it, and Mexican Catholics at http://mexfiles.net/2012/03/25/pope-porri/

I am going to expand a bit on the nature of Catholicism in Mexico because I think when people say things like Mexico is such a Catholic country they have in mind images from the movie Zorba the Greek where older women run around, dressed in black from head to toe; where women have ten children, where the churches are filled, where gloom predominates.

As Richard points out, the Catholic Church in Mexico was and is anything but homogeneous.  I can add just a few details. 

That Mexico, before it was known as  Mexico, before it had ever heard of Catholicism, had a long, rich, crowded history cannot be stressed too much.  And the longer and deeper archaeologists and historians explore, the more the truth of this becomes evident.  Obviously this long, rich pre-Hispanic history was not Catholic history.  The Spaniards came upon a world filled with people of different, highly developed, often somewhat related ethnicities, languages, architecture,  governments, arts, trade, warfare and religions.  The imposition of Catholicism on Mexico and the rest of Latin America is not a simple story partly because there were so many different circumstances, from local people who allied with the Spanish because they wanted to get the Aztecs off their backs to Conquistadors and church people who were unbelievably brutal in defeating local states and in instituting Catholicism.  Individuals were important: from friars who were champions of the indigenous to those who cruelly abused them.  The Inquisition existed in Mexico, too.  The results were and are kaleidoscopic. 

So as Richard points out, the Catholicism of Mexico is syncretic: it is a mix of what was here and what the Spaniards brought.  Not surprisingly, the most Catholic Catholics were the Spanish settlers, the rich Spaniards who were landowners and city dwellers  during the colonial era.  In the San Antonio Museum of Art’s Mexican wing, there is (or at least was) a gallery devoted to the  art of this period that hung in the houses and haciendas of the rich.  It is, if I remember correctly, a longish, dark gallery with dark walls in startling contrast to most of the rest of the Mexican art in the wing.  Still today, you can peak in big old mansions in Coatepec and Xico and see heavy overstuffed furniture covered with brocade and woodwork polished to a mirror-like sheens; you can see elderly ladies sitting and drinking maybe coffee with fuzzy little white dogs at their feet.

The rich weren’t all pure Spanish.  Hernan Cortez himself had heirs from his union with La Malinche who themselves had heirs who fought over possession of large amounts of land.  Many conquistadors were happy to marry the relatives of  Moctezuma since they regarded these Aztecs as aristocrats. 

I can sense myself going off on a long essay about classes and ethnicity in Mexico so I’m going only to say here that among these groups, the Spaniards, or those from Spain, the Criollos, originally those of pure Spanish blood born in Mexico, and aristocratic indigenous and Spanish mixtures were considered privileged groups – and the only privileged groups.  People will quite legitimately be able to argue with me about this.  Let’s just say this for now for convenience, though.

These privileged people would be the most traditionally Catholic and would be most closely allied with the formal Catholic hierarchy in Mexico, and to some extent they still are.  The alliance wasn’t and isn’t strictly religious. It involves social ties, property and money.  The Catholic Church, at one point the biggest landholder in Mexico, and the privileged were tied at the hip (so to speak) by loans and marriages and political alliances.  It was a tight group.  PAN, the political part currently in control of the national government, is the party of these rich people.  I am always amused when US officials seem to think they are speaking to people who represent a large proportion of Mexicans when they deal with President Calderón and members of his party.

I live in a colonia which, as I’ve said, is probably most closely analogous to a blue color town in the US, maybe in upstate New York.  People in the US seem to assume that these poorer Mexicans are more Catholic.  This is completely wrong.  I think a few fireworks went off when the Pope arrived, but nobody even mentioned it.  Maybe it was spoken about in church, but few people regularly go to church in our area. What really matter to people as a group are processions and fiestas, often in honor of saints of mixed heritage. And velarias for the dead, held in people’s homes.  Interestingly, in our area, holy women appear to be more important that Jesus.  The patron saint of our community is La Virgen de Guadalupe; of Xico it is Maria Magdalena.  There is another Mary whose title slips my mind as well.  These are the figures that dominate the home altars and the capillas.  Of course Jesus appears in the churches, often lower than the Virgen, and always as a suffering Jesus, whether dragging his cross on the road to Calvary or hanging from it, a bloodied, tormented figure.

I speak here as an outsider, but it seems to me that people pray, or talk, to the Marys and to Jesus asking for relief in this world, or comfort, for themselves and their families, not to seek salvation in the next.  Heaven doesn’t appear to be too much on their minds.  This is not the Catholicism of an angry or stern Catholic hierarchy but of people who know suffering in their lives and turn to their faith for comfort.  As I’ve mentioned, my close friend Doña Gloria lit a candle to La Virgen de Guadalupe for my daughter when she had cancer.  My daughter and I were very grateful.

Pope Benedict went to the state of Guanajuato which has been called the most conservative state in Mexico by some.  By conservative is meant rich and Spanish and Spanish-style Catholic.  Lots of people in Guanajuato are quite fair-complected. These are the people who might say they side with the pope on abortion and birth control, though even among the people I knew from this area, few had ten or twelve kids.  They are the ones who will be most likely to be vocally anti-gay.  But Guanajuato and the adjoining areas are, as I said, not all of Mexico, and the real head of the Mexican church is in Mexico City (he’s no flaming liberal either).   But Mexico City is a very open city with legal gay marriage, legal abortion, and BIKE PATHS for heaven´s sake.  Not to mention extremely modern art.  Its politics are definitely leftish.  I’ve mentioned before that Mexico has much stricter laws separating church and state than the US.  In Mexico City and much of Mexico, these laws are valued and upheld.  In PAN country, though the alliances may be unofficial, PAN and the church are close. 

So when you think about Mexico, think of a country that is regarded as a success where birth control is concerned; where the official high school curriculum teaches very complete sex education, where there are processions for somebody every day and fiestas and celebrations, and where the gloom of the old Catholic church isn’t characteristic, even in Guanajuato.

 

Coffee and the End of the World, among other things

Narcotrafico, border issues and immigration continue in the news up north.  While on that side of the fence we found ourselves often asked questions about safety, what was going on, etc. etc. We dont even bother suggesting that grandkids might enjoy a visit here anymore.  Obviously there are serious problems, but in this country of 106 million people, daily life goes on for ordinary folks pretty much as before.  We find ourselves not enjoying the view of large State Police pickups and even larger military vehicles loaded with armed police and soldiers patrolling the roads.  I am not sure what their purpose is, but they are intimidating.  I do wonder how much profits for US automakers and gunmakers have been helped by their addition to Mexican forces.  I don't really want to address these problems in the blog, at least not at this point.  I'd rather let you know of the other stuff that fill our lives. If you want some reasonably reliable sites for news of the uglier aspects, the Americas Mexico Blog is a good starting point. 

We are still struggling with Hughes satellite service for our internet so there still won’t be many (any) pictures for awhile.

While in big cities customs are fading, in our colonia they persist.  Yesterday was Three Kings Day., the traditional present-giving day and lots of kids were out showing what they’d received.  Girls got mostly dolls of all sorts.  Boys had trucks and cars.  There were a couple of radio cars, but mostly ones that were motorized by hands.  Two boys had trucks with horses in them.  Everyone looked happy.

I bought two  fruit called chicozapotes.  They are UGLY.  They were in the bin right under the bin for mamey zapotes. Mamey zapotes are sleek looking,with a rough light-brown skin, kind of egg-shaped with a point on one end.  They have a fairly sweet orange flesh which can have a touch of bitterness.  The chicozapotes were sort of round, sort of lumpy and  battered looking.  They had dirty orange flesh BUT tjhey tasted sublime.  They were a little more expensive.  You know that old saw, don’t judge a book….

As you mostly know, we  had a sad summer and fall with two of Jim’s siblings dying.  It is quite clear to us by now that at our age death has much more immediate impact: not grandparents or great-aunts or your parents friends or even your parents.  Instead, siblings and close friends and famous contemporaries whom you admire and are shocked to learn are gone.  Roger Ebert addresses this truth here as well as giving some insights into how one lives with it. Ebert’s blog is a treasure.

Guillermo is picking our coffee now and this year we are going to process some of it and try roasting it.  First batch has been processed and is continuing to dry.  Guillermo and his son took about twenty kilos up to a processor in the colonia yesterday.  The first step involves washing off the fruity top layer of the coffee bean.

There is a fair amount of noise about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world this year.  I have lifted almost all of an Aztlan listserv pos by David Hixon, PhD which provides good information.

"Dr. John Hoopes... has authored a well-researched and extensive blog entry regarding 2012.  We, the current moderators of Aztlan, have asked list members to refrain from back-and-forth discussions of the 2012 phenomenon on our list.  But we have promised to forward any messages that relate to solid research being published online or in print.  To that end, here is a link to Dr. Hoopes' new resource for both academics and the general public:
What You Should Know About 2012: Answers to 13 Questions
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-check/201112/what-you-should-know-about-2012-answers-13-questions

"He wrote, in part
"'[This blog entry] originated in my email answers to two international journalists, one from China and the other from Bulgaria, as an attempt to answer some of the most common questions that I've been fielding from the media over the past several years (my first interview on this topic was in 2006).  If there's anything in the post that you think merits correction or clarification, please don't hesitate to let me know.  I'm trying my best not to perpetuate any more disinformation on the topic than is already out there!  I keep hoping that providing basic information in clear terms will lead to more sophisticated and interesting questions about the Maya and Mesoamerica.  I've thought for a while now that the 2012 hype and the massive tourism that will accompany it will result in a watershed for quality knowledge about the pre-Hispanic Americas.'

"Please contact Dr. Hoopes directly with any comments or questions at:
 
"Hoopes, John W. <[email protected]> "

__________________________________________________
We have had very chilly weather recently. At least three people have died from the cold in our area..

Coffee and the End of the World, among other things

Narcotrafico, border issues and immigration continue in the news up north.  While on that side of the fence we found ourselves often asked questions about safety, what was going on, etc. etc. We dont even bother suggesting that grandkids might enjoy a visit here anymore.  Obviously there are serious problems, but in this country of 106 million people, daily life goes on for ordinary folks pretty much as before.  We find ourselves not enjoying the view of large State Police pickups and even larger military vehicles loaded with armed police and soldiers patrolling the roads.  I am not sure what their purpose is, but they are intimidating.  I do wonder how much profits for US automakers and gunmakers have been helped by their addition to Mexican forces.  I don't really want to address these problems in the blog, at least not at this point.  I'd rather let you know of the other stuff that fill our lives. If you want some reasonably reliable sites for news of the uglier aspects, the Americas Mexico Blog is a good starting point. 

We are still struggling with Hughes satellite service for our internet so there still won’t be many (any) pictures for awhile.

While in big cities customs are fading, in our colonia they persist.  Yesterday was Three Kings Day., the traditional present-giving day and lots of kids were out showing what they’d received.  Girls got mostly dolls of all sorts.  Boys had trucks and cars.  There were a couple of radio cars, but mostly ones that were motorized by hands.  Two boys had trucks with horses in them.  Everyone looked happy.

I bought two  fruit called chicozapotes.  They are UGLY.  They were in the bin right under the bin for mamey zapotes. Mamey zapotes are sleek looking,with a rough light-brown skin, kind of egg-shaped with a point on one end.  They have a fairly sweet orange flesh which can have a touch of bitterness.  The chicozapotes were sort of round, sort of lumpy and  battered looking.  They had dirty orange flesh BUT tjhey tasted sublime.  They were a little more expensive.  You know that old saw, don’t judge a book….

As you mostly know, we  had a sad summer and fall with two of Jim’s siblings dying.  It is quite clear to us by now that at our age death has much more immediate impact: not grandparents or great-aunts or your parents friends or even your parents.  Instead, siblings and close friends and famous contemporaries whom you admire and are shocked to learn are gone.  Roger Ebert addresses this truth here as well as giving some insights into how one lives with it. Ebert’s blog is a treasure.

Guillermo is picking our coffee now and this year we are going to process some of it and try roasting it.  First batch has been processed and is continuing to dry.  Guillermo and his son took about twenty kilos up to a processor in the colonia yesterday.  The first step involves washing off the fruity top layer of the coffee bean.

There is a fair amount of noise about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world this year.  I have lifted almost all of an Aztlan listserv pos by David Hixon, PhD which provides good information.

"Dr. John Hoopes... has authored a well-researched and extensive blog entry regarding 2012.  We, the current moderators of Aztlan, have asked list members to refrain from back-and-forth discussions of the 2012 phenomenon on our list.  But we have promised to forward any messages that relate to solid research being published online or in print.  To that end, here is a link to Dr. Hoopes' new resource for both academics and the general public:
What You Should Know About 2012: Answers to 13 Questions
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-check/201112/what-you-should-know-about-2012-answers-13-questions

"He wrote, in part
"'[This blog entry] originated in my email answers to two international journalists, one from China and the other from Bulgaria, as an attempt to answer some of the most common questions that I've been fielding from the media over the past several years (my first interview on this topic was in 2006).  If there's anything in the post that you think merits correction or clarification, please don't hesitate to let me know.  I'm trying my best not to perpetuate any more disinformation on the topic than is already out there!  I keep hoping that providing basic information in clear terms will lead to more sophisticated and interesting questions about the Maya and Mesoamerica.  I've thought for a while now that the 2012 hype and the massive tourism that will accompany it will result in a watershed for quality knowledge about the pre-Hispanic Americas.'

"Please contact Dr. Hoopes directly with any comments or questions at:
 
"Hoopes, John W. <[email protected]> "

__________________________________________________
We have had very chilly weather recently. At least three people have died from the cold in our area..

Coffee and the End of the World, among other things

Narcotrafico, border issues and immigration continue in the news up north.  While on that side of the fence we found ourselves often asked questions about safety, what was going on, etc. etc. We dont even bother suggesting that grandkids might enjoy a visit here anymore.  Obviously there are serious problems, but in this country of 106 million people, daily life goes on for ordinary folks pretty much as before.  We find ourselves not enjoying the view of large State Police pickups and even larger military vehicles loaded with armed police and soldiers patrolling the roads.  I am not sure what their purpose is, but they are intimidating.  I do wonder how much profits for US automakers and gunmakers have been helped by their addition to Mexican forces.  I don't really want to address these problems in the blog, at least not at this point.  I'd rather let you know of the other stuff that fill our lives. If you want some reasonably reliable sites for news of the uglier aspects, the Americas Mexico Blog is a good starting point. 

We are still struggling with Hughes satellite service for our internet so there still won’t be many (any) pictures for awhile.

While in big cities customs are fading, in our colonia they persist.  Yesterday was Three Kings Day., the traditional present-giving day and lots of kids were out showing what they’d received.  Girls got mostly dolls of all sorts.  Boys had trucks and cars.  There were a couple of radio cars, but mostly ones that were motorized by hands.  Two boys had trucks with horses in them.  Everyone looked happy.

I bought two  fruit called chicozapotes.  They are UGLY.  They were in the bin right under the bin for mamey zapotes. Mamey zapotes are sleek looking,with a rough light-brown skin, kind of egg-shaped with a point on one end.  They have a fairly sweet orange flesh which can have a touch of bitterness.  The chicozapotes were sort of round, sort of lumpy and  battered looking.  They had dirty orange flesh BUT tjhey tasted sublime.  They were a little more expensive.  You know that old saw, don’t judge a book….

As you mostly know, we  had a sad summer and fall with two of Jim’s siblings dying.  It is quite clear to us by now that at our age death has much more immediate impact: not grandparents or great-aunts or your parents friends or even your parents.  Instead, siblings and close friends and famous contemporaries whom you admire and are shocked to learn are gone.  Roger Ebert addresses this truth here as well as giving some insights into how one lives with it. Ebert’s blog is a treasure.

Guillermo is picking our coffee now and this year we are going to process some of it and try roasting it.  First batch has been processed and is continuing to dry.  Guillermo and his son took about twenty kilos up to a processor in the colonia yesterday.  The first step involves washing off the fruity top layer of the coffee bean.

There is a fair amount of noise about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world this year.  I have lifted almost all of an Aztlan listserv pos by David Hixon, PhD which provides good information.

"Dr. John Hoopes... has authored a well-researched and extensive blog entry regarding 2012.  We, the current moderators of Aztlan, have asked list members to refrain from back-and-forth discussions of the 2012 phenomenon on our list.  But we have promised to forward any messages that relate to solid research being published online or in print.  To that end, here is a link to Dr. Hoopes' new resource for both academics and the general public:
What You Should Know About 2012: Answers to 13 Questions
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-check/201112/what-you-should-know-about-2012-answers-13-questions

"He wrote, in part
"'[This blog entry] originated in my email answers to two international journalists, one from China and the other from Bulgaria, as an attempt to answer some of the most common questions that I've been fielding from the media over the past several years (my first interview on this topic was in 2006).  If there's anything in the post that you think merits correction or clarification, please don't hesitate to let me know.  I'm trying my best not to perpetuate any more disinformation on the topic than is already out there!  I keep hoping that providing basic information in clear terms will lead to more sophisticated and interesting questions about the Maya and Mesoamerica.  I've thought for a while now that the 2012 hype and the massive tourism that will accompany it will result in a watershed for quality knowledge about the pre-Hispanic Americas.'

"Please contact Dr. Hoopes directly with any comments or questions at:
 
"Hoopes, John W. <[email protected]> "

__________________________________________________
We have had very chilly weather recently. At least three people have died from the cold in our area..

The old year greets the new and flowers for breakfast

On December 31, our young neighbor Areli and I went to Coatepec to run some errands.  We had to go to an animal feed store for rabbit food and to inquire about baby pigs whose mother had stopped suckling them.  The store is opposite the market.  The owner is very knowledgeable and helpful.  Areli explained that one of the pigs in the small pig nursery behind her house had had three piglets die after our recent bout with cold and had stopped nursing the survivors.  The owner explained what the dueña of the nursery should do and prescribed some temporary food solutions.  Areli also bought food supplement for her two very healthy rabbits.  Most of the time, Areli and here sister walk down the road outside the colonia and select appropriate greens for the rabbits, but she said they also should have some supplement.

We then went to the market.  Areli and I both bought veggies, but Areli also had a special mission. Her sister had manage to get $70 pesos during Las Posadas in our neighborhood and wanted Areli to use it to buy her a shirt.  Las Posadas is when the neighborhood kids go door to door and sing for some small amount of money.  They bring with them a decorated branch of a special tree.  I always associate it with the Jesse tree, but I'm not sure I'm right. During Las Posadas, each main street in our Colonia sponsors a night. The people of the colonia sing and carry candles in procession.  They deliver to designated homes or capillas statues of Mary and Joseph who then remain till the next night.  They are awaiting the arrival of Jesus.  We paid for the piñata that was used for the Las Posadas celebration on our street. it cost about three dollars. Jim has some pictures which I may or may not put up in the future (he stores about 1000 pictures on his camera at a time so access on my part is a bit iffy).

Anyway, Areli and I went to a stall which sells a huge variety of t-shirts and blouses in the market and picked one out for Rosy.

On the 31st of December, groups mostly of boys and men gather together and go out to sing and dance and generally to behave in delightfully foolish ways. They dress as women and babies as well as old men.  The idea is to honor the old New Year, represented as not just one but many old men and to welcome the new, a boy with a diaper on.  The boys and men sometimes also dress as women.  As of now, I still don't get it all.

Here is a picture of some of the boys in a group in the mercado:

Here is a picture of the creche that was sponsored by the mercado.  It was quite large.

Kids and piñatas go together at most celebrations in Mexico, though I think Buenanoche, or Christmas Eve might be the most important.  On December 31 there were still plenty of piñatas for sale for New Years Eve.

The five-pointed star (which these are) is the most traditional piñata form.  It is descended from los Aztecas and probaby earlier people as well.

To change the subject completely, Jim and I were walking along the road from the bus a few days ago and saw that the flowers below had started blooming.  They are perhaps a quarter of an inch in diameter, a pure yellow, almost flat, most unusual.  I picked just a couple and put them in a vase.  

And finally, flowers for breakfast.  This is gasparito season.  Gasparitos are beautiful, deep red, dagger shaped flowers that people boil and serve in scrambled eggs, beans, and various other dishes.  So when Doña Gloria came by on Wednesday selling some, I bought them.  I buy them every year, but I've had no idea how to cook them, so unfortunately, they've gone to waste until now.  This year, Areli and her mother gave me cooking lessons.  Here are some pictures of the process.

Above you see a cluster of buds, the gasparito flower and the part you take out of the flower before cooking.  You eat the buds and the flowers.  The part you take out which I think is the pistil and/or stamen is apparently too bitter and tough to eat.  This is definitely not instant oatmeal.  It takes time to separate the flowers from their innards.

Here they are waiting to boil.

In the picture above, they've been boiled.  Next, you fry them lightly in oil and add eggs and scramble, as below

.

The gasparitos really don't have any flavor of their own.  Per Areli's instructions, I added a bit of oregano to the boiling water.  The gasparitos do add a pleasantly crunchy texture to the eggs (huevos revueltos en español), but no flavor. They are very popular, and they can be free, since all you have to do is walk into the country a bit to find them littering the ground at this time of year.  I wonder what nutrition they provide.  They certainly bulk up the eggs and, as I said, add a pleasant texture.

 

Puro México -- Marking the Centennial of the Revolution: Insight and Irony and Anger and Art

Along the iron fence enclosing the grounds of the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa hang sixty posters in an exhibit called 30x30.  

Below is the curator's statement, my translation:

30x30: An Opportunity for Reflexion

[The statement opens with the following quote:]

"The circus is on fire and the owner, instead of rescuing the midgets sells tickets for the next performance."

  -- Jacobo Jabludovsky [Very little is simple or exactly as it appears in Mexico.  This incredible quote which seems to summarize perfectly both the events of the Bicentennial and the Centennial was made by a Mexican journalist who himself was long a mouthpiece for the PRI, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, and a corrupter of the news on the party's behalf. He is more than that, and not all of it bad, but a lot of it quite confusing to me as a foreigner.]

The statement:

This year of 2010 we Mexicans are witness to two historic events important in the life of the country: the Bicentennial of Independence and the Centennial of the Revolution.  For those who are lovers of opportunism, this will provide an excuse for vulgar extravaganzas rich in advertising but poor in ideas. For the rest of us, all the way to the farthest corner of the country, these events will provide a great opportunity to indulge in ardent and sincere patriotic fervor.  However, the economic crisis (more than fifty million Mexicans live in poverty), the millions of unemployed, the insecurity, the violence, the corruption, the impunity and the discrediting of authorities oblige and will continue to oblige our collective imagination to reflect and to reconsider what should be celebrated, what should be commemorated.

The poster, the thermometer of society historically has been a presence and a comrade -- an accomplice at times in social struggles and demands.[Mexico has a rich history of political art: posters, cartoons, paintings, music.]  For this reason, and to mark these days, the Instituto de Artes Plásticas de la Universidad Veracruzana brought together 60 graphic designers to express their ideas, their points of view, their feelings, through this medium.  Thirty of the posters are dedicated to the theme of Mexican independene and thirty to the theme of the Mexican Revolution.  This is how the exposition got its name, 30-30 which also alludes in passing to that short-barreled rifle better known as the carbine..... [Carbines and other guns made by Remington started arriving in Mexico in the second half of the nineteenth century.  I'm taking a wild guess here that carbines were the signature guns of Pancho Villa's crowd and maybe others during the Revolution.]

Jose Morelos, Curator

September, 2010

****

Jim and I had parked across the street from the museum and had no idea these posters were on the fence.  We'd come to see something else entirely. We realized later we missed all the posters addressing Independence and saw only those marking the Mexican Revolution.

Below is a sampling of those latter posters. They are wonderful and surprising.  And disturbing and moving and sometimes funny. As people like to say, there is no cause for optimism, but hope remains.

 

The poster above says: Revolution 1910, Regression 2010.

Celebrating with the loot from their conquests

Energy resources - lands - public education - workers' rights

The structure in this poster is the enormous Monument to the Revolution.  I don't know the signifiance of BIBI in BIBICentenario, but under that it says suckling public funds.

The legend of the beginning of Mexico is that the people who were to become the Aztecs were poor wanderers making their way south.  They would know they had reached the place they were meant to settle when they saw an eagle on a cactus with a serpent in his beak.  This poster is a play on that legend and that image which is seen all over in a more benign form.  Here you can see the implication that modern Mexico has been built with weapons and blood.  The quote is from a poem by Ramón López Velarde, now considered one of Mexico's greatest and most characteristic poets.  Called "Suave Patria", or in the translation I use, Sweet Country, it is a poem celebrating Mexico's blessings and condemning its sins.

In the translation written in 1921 by Margaret Sayers Peden. the verse says:

Patria, I give the key to happiness:

be faithful forever to your likeness:

fifty repeats of the Ave are carved

on the beads of the rosary, and it is

more fortunate than you, Patria suave.

When I was taking my Diplomado en Estudios Mexicanos at the school for foreign students of UNAM, I wrote a paper about López Velarde.  He was from the state of Zacatecas and educated in the north of the country.  We visited his childhood home in Jerez, near the city of Zacatecas, where unfortunately in the past year or so narcos shot each other up in the streets.  Lopez Velarde was involved in the writing of the Plan of San Luis Potosí in which Madero, the leader of the revolutionaries in 1910 called for the government to be overthrown.  I just have to mention that some of that revolutionary work and writing was done in San Antonio, Texas.

López Velarde made his way to Mexico City to write and to involve himself with the very active circle of intellectuals there.  Although after he died, his talent and contributions to Mexican letters were recognized, while he was alive and trying to make it in Mexico City, he was sometimes looked down on and considered a provincial.  He also remained a strong practicing Catholic which the intellectuals who were involved in other philosophical movements derided.

Anyway, I don't entirely understand the verse above, either in Spanish or in English, except that along with much other literature and art in Mexico, it acknowledges that the beautiful and blessed land of Mexico is also cursed, at least at times, by the deeds and greed of its own leaders.

The Mexican Revolution overthrew Porfirio Diaz who started out a progressive leader and turned into a dictator.  The Revolution itself lasted for at least ten years and devolved into a civil war.  The victorious PRI -- Institutional Revolutionary Party -- became a group dictatorship that lasted seventy years, some of them better than others.

Below are two humorous posters with which I will close this post.

It has to be love, it has to be the Revolution.  It's the same story.

 

 

 

 

 

December in Our Colonia: The Feast of La Virgen de Guadalupe Approaches

A frente frio, a cold front, is scheduled to slide across our area today. This one is to be fairly gentle with little rain and temperatures in the fifties and sixties. The rough one is not due till Sunday, the Feast Day of Our Virgen de Guadalupe. When I came out of the bedroom early this morning, Acamalín, the little mountain directly across from our house was enshrouded in fog, invisible. The sky towards the east was a deep rose color. The fog has pulled away, but has left a shawl of puffy gray around the mountain’s midsection. Even as I write, it, too, is vanishing, the rose has paled to pink washed with white and now to white stippled with gray.

In our Colonia, this is a mysterious, noisy, and for me, edgy time of year when reality seems to let in strange drifts from uncommon realms. The nights and sometimes the days are filled with the boom, the blast of cohetes, rockets, going off in spurts and clusters, in cadenced cycles and at random. There is sometimes sense to when they are set off. Sometimes they announce that people are to gather, for instance to leave for the Shrine of La Virgen in Mexico City to gather holy flame for our own Capilla; sometimes a burst of noise marks the time they return. Some call people to gather to construct the arcos which will be borne in processions to the entrances of our main church and our capilla of the Virgen tomorrow night.

As night falls, processions begin.  There are some with people dressed as old men, sometimes they are old men. They jump and dance strange, twisting steps pulling their knees high. They gird their waists with cowbells which clank with their movements. In others, young men and boys dressed in elaborate clown costumes stomp and turn down the streets, the bells on their ankles  jingling rhythmically. Neighbors sometimes join in. Strings and clusters of explosions accompany the processions, sometimes exloding en masse from carts people pull alongside. The big rockets, when they fly up near our house, and sometimes they do right outside our wall, terrify me.  How can we not be under attack?. The dogs and Louie the cat and I huddle together in bed. Tomorrow will be the big procession of the arcos. My friend Tere will let us know when to be ready. I will try hard to get up my nerve to go out among my friends and neighbors and the strange, fearsome fireworks.

Clausura de fin de cursos: Areli

This past week marked the end of the school year in Mexico.  It also was a time of clausuras for a number of children in our neighborhood.  Clausura is the term used here for graduation, and it means closing in the sense of completion of, for instance, high school, and and also closing ceremony. Right in our corner of the colonia, there were three people who finished secondary school, one who finished her bachillerato, the level after secondary school, and one little guy who finished kinder -- the two years before primaria.  We went to the ceremony for Areli who finished her bachillerato, the three years post-secondary school which prepares kids for higher education, and to her party.We also went to her party and the others' parties, too.  Areli, whom I've written about on the blog before, has decided she wants to be called Areli, her middle name, rather than Blanca.  

When I first got to know Areli, she was a sad child of 13 who had threatened never to go back to school after a bout with the flu. She had been at the receiving end of bullying because she came from one of the poorest homes in the community, had no extended family here and, perhaps the crowning blow, was extremely bright.  After managing to test out of all secondary school requirements except math, she ended up transferring to the somewhat bigger and less intensely local school in San Marcos for her bachillerato.  She is now a lovely 18 year old who has just graduated from the bachillerato program in San Marcos and is going to start training to teach in an underserved rural area as part of a program that is like perhaps a combination of Vista and Teach for America in the US.  She will serve for a year, possibly two, supported by the community she is assigned to with the government providing her with a scholarship for university or other study when she has finished. 

So we went to the clausura as her invited guests while her mother stayed home to prepare the post-ceremony fiesta.  We took pictures so Doña Viki, Areli's mom, and Rosa, her younger sister, and other guests at the post-ceremony fiesta  could get a good idea of what happened.  

Below you see the opening ceremonies in the large covered space which serves the San Marcos schools for ceremonies and sports.  On the left are the students in the lower levels of the bachillerato program; at the back you see some of the white-covered chairs awaiting the graduates with faculty behind them; to the right are some of the family and friends.  

 

The color guard and the singing of the national anthem.

 

The graduates enter.  Areli is third young woman from the right among those entering.  As  you can see, they are all dressed in shades of purple and lavender, a bit distorted on the screen I suspect, formal and semi-formal dresses for the young women, ties and shirts for the young men. No robes here.  They come in to slowish dance music and walk in rhythm and in step.

 

The school's dance group presented two different dances.  The first, a melange of music from the fifties to the present.  They dropped their skirts at one point to dance in shorts of a modest length. Shorts are quite new here.  Tight clothes aren't.  But somehow modesty prevails for most of the girls even when they wear tight pants and low-cut tops.

      

The second dance had an indigenous flavor.
 

Areli in the second row, middle, smiling.

 

Areli was a member of a singing group at the school that blossomed over her time there.  At this point, it not only performs at the school but in regional competitions.

 

The speakers' and honored guests' dais, at the front of the ceremonies.  The speeches stressed the need to work hard for family, community and country.  Some points included the importance of not giving up in the face of adversity because indeed there would be adversity. And counter to that, the fact that hope was the best defense against adversity.  One of my favorite parts was when a speaker said that the students were never alone because they were surrounded and supported by all of history and only had to look around to find Socrates and Jesus and Leonardo and a whole bunch of other people who could provide them with comfort and guidance and ideas and hope.

 

If you look hard, you can see that AREli is getting her diploma.  Another student is walking towards her comadre -- her sponsor who presents her with flowers and sometimes a gift and escorts her to have her picture taken and then back to her seat.  

 
 At the end of the ceremony, the graduates perform a dance.  This is true of every graduating class in every school, I think.  Here Areli is with her novio Valente.

 

After the ceremony, we went back to Areli's house for the party.  More on parties later.
 

 
 
  
 

Being Old Americans in Mexico -- We get our DIF cards

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."