Zamora Epilogue: Elections of 1 July

One May Sunday evening, among the food stalls and children’s amusements in our local plaza, Jan and I met the candidate for the federal congress of the MORENA party, Yolanda Guerrero Barrera. We wished her good luck, but I assumed that in this conservative, deeply Catholic, part of Michoacán she could not win. After all, Zamora had long been a bastion of the conservative PAN (Partido Acción Nacional). I was wrong: Yolanda’s Facebook page now proudly declares her to be the representative of the 5^th District of Michoacán. Her rival, Sergio Flores, the PRI candidate, received 12,222 votes. Yolanda’s share of the vote was 49.6%.

Yolanda was not alone in her triumph. MORENA won 15 of the 24 seats of the state congress, including Zamora where the new congresswoman is Teresa Mora. PAN won the other nine seats. The PRI, which had run the state for much of the 20^th century could not win a single district. The PRI fared no better in the election of a new federal senator. Toño Ixtlahuac, whose retouched photo smiled at us from numerous billboards, was defeated by Antonio García Conejo, a member of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD: Revolutionary Democratic Party) allied with the PAN and Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizen’s Movement). García Conejo made his name by stripping off his clothes in the congressional chamber during the debate on energy reform, a policy designed to end the monopoly of the state petroleum company, PEMEX.

In Zamora, the new Presidente Municipal (mayor) is another MORENA candidate Martín Samaguey Cárdenas, who received 35% of the votes. He has promised to reduce municipal salaries, including his own by 50%. The municipal government will be responsive, with staff who are honest and committed to helping the citizens of Zamora. His immediate actions include buying 40 dialysis machines, and establishing a refuge for the homeless and a shelter for street children.

The story was rather different in Zamora’s smaller neighbour, Jacona. There Adriana Campos Huirache of the PRI received 7,512 votes, enough for her to become the first female Presidenta Municipal. Adriana has held several positions in the municipal government and was Jacona’s representative in the state congress.

The elections that gave Yolanda her seat in the legislature in Mexico City, were truly momentous. For a century Mexico was ruled by the PRI (or its predecessors), with a 12-year interlude from 2000-2012 when Mexicans elected two Presidents of the PAN, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. It is quite possible that the outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto, may be the last PRI politician to hold the highest office. MORENA, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) crushed the PRI’s candidate, José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, and the PAN’s Ricardo Anaya. Some 47 million Mexicans voted on 1 July and 53% of them (24.9 million) voted for AMLO. His predecessor received the votes of 15.9 million.

Eight of Mexico’s 31 states elected governors on 1 July: four of the states were won by MORENA, 4 by Pan or a party allied with PAN, none by the PRI. In addition, the new MORENA head of government in Mexico City (the most populous place in all of Mexico) is Dr Claudia Sheinbaum, by training a physicist and energy engineer (she received 48% of the votes). And it seems that AMLO’s colleagues will have a majority in both the Federal Congress and Senate. Since the end of the PRI’s one-party rule, no president has held in his hands so many of the levers of power.

All of this is an enormous change in the politics of Mexico. The real question is what it all means. AMLO ran on promises to end corruption and to improve the lot of Mexico’s poor. He promised respect for human rights and to combat violence.  Concerning, public safety, AMLO declared that the armed forces should not be deployed in “civilian functions” nor to suppress popular movements. The programme is expressed in quite general terms. We must wait to see what it actually means and how he intends to implement it. Those of you who can read Spanish will find the MORENA programme at: https://lopezobrador.org.mx/programa-del-movimiento-regenracion-nacional/

The response of the Mexican people is a huge cry of frustration and despair, directed against parties that have not effectively addressed Mexico’s many problems. The desire for change combined with a large majority of the popular vote, should enable AMLO to act decisively. It is inconceivable that the problems can be addressed in one six-year term, but perhaps AMLO can make a positive start on which his successors can build. The danger is that he has raised expectations that he may severely disappoint.

Finally, you may have noticed that several of the elected officials mentioned in this bulletin are women. Mexico has yet to elect its first female president (but then this is also true of its northern neighbour), but women hold political office from humble municipalities like Jacona to ministerial positions in Mexico City.

Lastly, since this is definitely my final Mexican bulletin, I hope I have told you enough of Mexico’s many wonders and its people to entice a few of you to visit the country. If you would like tips about where to go (or, alas, where not to go) feel free to ask me.

Inseguridad in Mexico

You will have gathered from the earlier bulletins that there is much to admire about Mexico and its people. In the 40 or so years since I lived there as a student, Mexico has changed for the better in many ways. Discrimination (on grounds of race, religion, sex and “for any other reason") has been banned by law and same sex marriage is legal (although not easy to negotiate in some conservative parts of the country). The single party system of the PRI, a sort of managed quasi-democracy/autocracy, has been replaced by a multi-party system that tolerates even independent candidates. Road transportation has improved considerably and cities and the larger towns are linked by modern highways. The economy is much more modern, although much remains to be done to address poverty and lack of opportunities.

However, on our way back to Zamora from a visit to Paricutín we drove through the valley of Nurío, whose wonderful church and huatapera I mentioned in the previous bulletin. As we approached town we were stopped at a retén (a roadblock) manned by the Ronda Comunitaria ("Community Patrol"): men carrying large firearms with a pick-up truck bearing the logo of the patrol. The driver of our mini-van was questioned and we were waved on. The same thing happened as we left town. The patrol had a good reason to check approaching vehicles: four days earlier four armed men in a pick-up truck had entered Nurío. The locals resisted their presence and in the resulting shoot-out four people died.

It is impossible to finish my bulletins without reference to a topic which we discussed with most of the people we met: la inseguridad ("lack of public safety"). Now, Mexico has never been an entirely safe place. In the 1970s I was aware of violence, official and criminal, but never felt threatened, nor did friends frequently mention security concerns. And it is just as well to remember that to Mexico’s north lies the world’s richest country where gun violence is a constant threat. But Mexico in 2018 is very different from the 1970s.

La inseguridad affects peoples’ lives in different ways, but it affects almost everybody. The most severe case we encountered involved a family that lived in a house in the country just outside Zamora. Michoacán had a particularly bad time several years ago when a criminal gang that called itself the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) controlled large parts of the state. One evening the mother of the family was driving home and was kidnapped by the Caballeros Templarios, who mistook her for their intended target. The hostage takers investigated, discovered their mistake, and released their victim. The family promptly moved from Zamora to a gated community in Morelia.

About two weeks after we arrived in Zamora, the police arrested a leader of a local crime gang. There is a standard response to the arrest of gang leaders: the narcobloqueo ("narco-blockade"). This usually involves blocking important roads with burning vehicles. On this occasion, the response was a variation on the theme: pairs of men on motorbikes or scooters fire-bombed some local businesses. One was our mini-supermarket, where the staff extinguished the flames without anybody being harmed. We were blissfully unaware of these events until a friend informed us. However, we frequently encountered our neighbour don Pepe reading the local newspaper: he would often comment “another murder”, in the remote neighbourhoods where the poorest lived. Disputes concerning territory for criminal activities would result in the death of a petty member of one of the organized crime groups.

In a smaller town in the hills near the border with the state of Jalisco, one person we met told us that the main drug cartel had set up a group of enforcers to keep its competitors out of the region. The leader of this group was his nephew. When a dead body is found, the local police chief contacts the nephew to find out whether the deceased is a member of the cartel’s local group. If so, the police do not investigate, but leave the matter to the cartel. If not, then the police investigate.

Other effects of la inseguridad are less dramatic. The Colegio de Michoacán has a prestigious anthropology department whose students carry out fieldwork in Zamora and nearby communities. The department now vets very carefully the communities where students do their fieldwork to minimize risk. Nevertheless, one professor in the department struck me as being exceptionally brave: she researches gender violence in the Tierra Caliente (literally, hot land) of the state of Guerrero, Michoacán’s eastern neighbour. This is an exceptionally lawless region. When the professor started her work, she would simply travel to the communities she studies. Now she contacts friends in the region to check whether there are any serious problems before she leaves. On the other hand, I met another professor in Morelia whose father owns a small farm in the same region of Guerrero. Because of threats, the father has abandoned his farm to live with his son in Michoacán.

At another level, everybody thinks carefully about travel and takes steps to minimize risk. A man in a small village in the hills told us that there has been no trouble in the village, but that the surrounding countryside is not safe and therefore villagers do not leave town after dark. I spoke to a shopkeeper whose son studies in Saltillo in northern Mexico. The family does not visit their son because they consider the journey too dangerous. A young student from Zacatecas told me that she was nervous about driving home to visit her family because the road is risky. An American neighbour sold the car he used to drive home to Houston because flying is much safer. We were advised to travel by day and to use first class buses, which make few stops and use main highways. We also checked with colleagues in the Colegio before making any trips to ensure that we would be safe. In some cases, we were advised to make sure friends knew where we were going and to ensure we had our mobile phones with us in case of trouble. In other cases, we were advised not to go.

In the 1970s I visited a doctor concerning a minor ailment. I mentioned to him that I was researching the Revolution in Guerrero. He called my landlady to insist that she stop me going to the state. There were parts of the state where I dare not go: the guerrillas and the army were both threats to my safety. Nevertheless, I was able to travel to most regions of Guerrero. I would not travel there now. The question is why things in parts of Mexico are so bad.

One explanation is that Ronald Reagan and Oliver North used the planes of Mexican drug barons to carry illegal arms to pro-American terrorist groups in Nicaragua in the 1980s. As part of the deal, the return flights were able to carry drugs to Mexico. Most of the guns used by the cartels are acquired easily in the USA (Mexico has quite strict gun laws) where they can buy guns as easily as chewing gum.

Under the volcano

It is said that, when the King of Spain asked Hernán Cortés to describe the Kingdom of New Spain, the conqueror crumpled up a piece of parchment. Much of Mexico is, indeed crumpled, by mountains of volcanic origin. The two most famous (and not easy to pronounce) volcanoes preside over the city of Mexico: Popocatépetl (smoking mountain) and Ixtaccíhuatl (white woman). Both are hundreds of thousands of years old.

Paricutín from a distance

The lava field

The youngest member of the Mexican volcano family was born in Michoacán. In February 1943 a farmer, Dionisio Pulido left his village named San Juan Parangarikutirhu to prepare his field for the approaching planting season. He noticed a crack in the ground that was emitting smoke and stones. Dionisio rushed back home to alert his neighbours. Eight months later a cone of ash 365 metres tall loomed over San Juan and a stream of lava moved slowly but surely down the slope to the now empty homes.

Jan and I joined an end-of-conference outing for a group of historical demographers. Their meeting was entitled Causes of Death in Mexico from the Colonial Period to the 20^th Century. They were clearly in the mood for some more light-hearted activity. Our mini-bus took us up some 900 metres to the Purhépecha meseta: large valleys and rolling plains fringed by mountains. In the towns, traditional wooden buildings (trojes) stand beside anonymous modern concrete buildings. Farming here does not mean the berries of Zamora, but livestock (cows, goats, sheep) and avocado trees. Every town seems to have a comedor comunal (community dining room), set up by the federal government as part of its Cruzada Nacional Contra el Hambre (National Crusade Against Hunger). For all their traditional architecture, indigenous traditions and beautiful landscape, these communities have lagged behind the economic development of Zamora or the factories further to the north.

The upper part of the façade of the church

Signposting in the meseta is non-existent. We were fortunate that Chantal, our driver, was familiar with the route. At Angahuan a hand-made sign points to El Volcán. From here one bounces along a narrow dirt road, manoeuvring round parked vehicles and oncoming trucks. Eventually, the road leads to the restaurant that offers views of the volcano’s cone and the lava field and the pine forest of the sierra. The round trip to the volcano is at least four hours on horseback, so we limited ourselves to the lava field. The homes of Don Dionisio and his neighbours lie under a thick layer of black lava, but parts of the church at which they worshipped remain. The façade is half-submerged in black stone, but the upper register and the towers (one not yet finished in 1943) stand alone in the lava.

Our lunch restaurant

Lunch is prepared

The church of St. James the Apostle

After a lunch of blue corn quesadillas of melted cheese and assorted additions (courgette flowers, crispy pig skin, mushroom, and chorizo with potatoes), we headed down towards Nurío, a purhépecha town in a long and broad valley. In the plaza stands the church of Santiago Apóstol ("St. James the Apostle"), built with Indian labour in 1639. The interior is a long and wide nave with a decorative wooden ceiling. Behind the altar is a retablo (altarpiece) in which stands a small statue of Christ. Above him is a rather more eye-catching statue of St James. More prominent still is a statue of the Virgin, depicted as a young woman wearing a white dress, a blue cape and a glitzy tiara. As the faithful enter the church they pass under a low wood-panelled ceiling decorated with painted angels with much gold detailing. This is the sotacoro, the decorative underpart of a choir balcony.

St. James The Apostle interior

 

The sotacoro of St. James the Aspostle

The huatapera chapel at Nurío

Behind the church is the walled enclosure of the huatapera (chapel and community centre, which in colonial times included a hospital). The plain exterior of the chapel of the Immaculate Conception belies the 17^th-century Baroque interior and altarpiece, rich in gold and statues of saints. In the early 19^th-century the painter Gregorio Cervantes and carpenter José Characu added a richly decorated sotacoro depicting the apostles. During our visit, a lady in traditional dress was giving young girls and a few boys a talk, in Spanish, about moral behaviour and the importance of avoiding temptations.

Church of St. Bartholomew, Cocucho

We moved on to another purhépecha town, Cocucho, renowned for its ceramics. The potters of Cocucho mould by hand clay mixed with volcanic sand to form large vessels. They polish them with wet stones or olotes (the core of a maize cob) before firing them under piles of wood. Maize dough mixed with water is applied to the hot vessels: the results are tones of brown, gold or black.

St. Bartholomew interior

The church here is devoted to St Bartholomew. The building is 17^th century, but the interior was much altered in the 18^th century. Here the sotacoro depicts Santiago Matamoros (St James the Moor killer) chopping up a Muslim. It is most unlikely that an 18^th century Mexican artist had much idea of what a Moor looked like: certainly, the dismembered Moors resemble St James and the Spanish soldiers carrying firearms. Around this rather disconcerting scene, angels play European instruments. Fortunately, on the day we visited, the people of Cocucho had their minds on something more positive than dismembering Muslims. The main street was blocked by a fiesta: we had some trouble finding our way out of town, but eventually descended to the searing heat of Zamora.

The sotacoro of St. Bartholomew

The Virgin, little devils and the Holy Spirit

When the Spaniards conquered ancient Mexico the land was peopled by speakers of many languages. The predominant language here in Michoacán was what we now call purhépecha. A friend from the Colegio took us to Ocumicho, a hill town above the valley of Zamora where most residents speak Purhépecha and/or Spanish.

Walking to the huatapera

The modest square at the centre of Ocumicho has the usual architectural features: a colonial church with a modern tower added, and a modest one-story town hall. To the left, a few metres slightly downhill is another space, the huatapera. The early evangelizers of Michoacán built hospitals as well as churches. The huatapera was originally a combination of chapel, hospital and communal centre. The Ocumicho community centre includes an open-air kitchen a meeting hall and a chapel. This place of worship has distinctly Catholic features, but no priest officiates here: the community runs all the services.

The courtyard of the huatapera

Interior of the chapel

The interior of the chapel would strike a good Anglican as very unorthodox. Colourful decorations hang from the ceiling. The altar is entirely hidden behind a mass of flowers and the figure behind the altar is the Virgin Mary wearing a necklace of US $1 and $5 bills. The crucified Christ has to be content with a secondary position on a side wall. He too wears a dollar necklace. Wooden benches along the side walls allow lots of open space for ceremonial activities.

When we arrived, a group of women in splendidly embroidered dresses were busy cooking. We were offered a bowl of beans to which we added chopped onion, tomatoes, chile and coriander. Quite delicious (áshpi in Purhépecha). The women invited us back at 6pm to see the Virgin being processed out of the church.

We returned promptly at 6pm to find that things had not yet started. A bit later a man rang the church bells, not to summon worshippers to church, but to the Huatapera. A customary rocket seconded the summons with a loud bang. After a while mothers began to arrive with young girls dressed in white carrying bunches of flowers. Older women also joined the group but no adult men.  When the chapel was pretty much full four men joined the throng. Meanwhile, a group of women lined up holding offerings: oil and vinegar, a chalice and other things. The younger women, in their traditional dress, wore high heels that would not be out of place in London or New York.

The chapel façade

The procession of the Virgin begins

As a female voice inside the chapel led the prayers, the young girls carried the flowers to the altar. Once the flowers were all in place, the girls led a procession outside, followed by a banner and then the Virgin carried by four young women and the rest of the gathering. The procession was short, accompanied by prayers.

The Virgin

 

The procession returns to the chapel

Octavio with one of his works ready for firing

Ocumicho is known internationally for its diablos (devils), colourful ceramic figures. We visited the workshop of Octavio Esteban Reyes. He showed us his range of merchandise: devil figures and masks, ceramic cars driven by devils, in contrast a tree of life with a nativity scene. Outside the kiln was heating up and pieces waited to be fired in the kiln for painting. Octavio learned his craft from his father, and other members of his family are involved in the devil-making business.

Diablitos

 

The kiln

The Holy Spirit emerges from the church

The weekend of 19 and 20 May was Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit: or Whitsun in the UK). Since this is the name or the parish church at the end of our street there were celebrations. During the week the bells summoning parishioners to mass were followed by ear-shattering rockets. Saturday evening after the last mass there was a procession. The priest brought out the Santísimo (Most Holy: the monstrance) from the altar and placed it on the back of a pick-up truck where a young woman held it steady.

The procession

The procession round the neighbourhood was accompanied by chants such as alábale (praise him), occasional shouts of ¡Viva Cristo Rey! ("Long live Christ the King") or ¡Viva la comunidad de Las Fuentes! ("Long live the community of Las Fuentes"). At the rear, one man carried a large bundle of rockets, another a portable wooden frame for launching them. Periodic booms punctuated our procession. Along our route many houses were decorated with balloons: these were burst as the procession passed, either by a young woman from the church who carried a pin, or by the residents. When the procession reached one of the several plazas in Las Fuentes, where a temporary altar was set up, the priest carried the Santísimo to display it to the assembled parishioners. More cries of ¡Viva Cristo Rey!, and a salvo of rockets.

Eventually, the procession returned to the church where a night-long vigil was held. At about 7am we heard the strains of a mariachi playing Las mañanitas (a traditional celebratory song) to mark the end of the vigil. Throughout Sunday more or less continuous masses were held, accompanied by much ringing of bells and more rocket salvos.

Tamales for sale

Cakes and jellies

Meanwhile, the large plaza was filled with food stalls and fairground rides. The equipment of a band was set up on the concrete platform at the far end of the plaza. By evening, masses competed with the smells of food, the lights and music of the fairground rides, and the plaza started to fill with people. In a taped off area that a British health and safety officer would consider far too small, the fireworks specialists started to construct el castillo ("the castle), with which all big celebrations must end in Mexico. We picked up some tamales (steamed maize dough filled with meat and a sauce) and two good slices of cake to eat at home before returning to the plaza.

Construction of the castillo

By now the place was crammed. The band was battling bravely against the music and racket of the fairground rides behind it. Everywhere people were eating, chatting strolling around (very slowly because of the crowds). At about 10:30 the band had yet more competition: the first fireworks of the castillo were lit. The castillo is a structure some 40 feet tall on which are strung a variety of fireworks. These are set off in sequence from bottom to top. On the lower levels large Catherine wheels fizzed, whirled and let off loud noises. The penultimate level was the real showstopper: a large white firework dove (representing the Holy Spirit) that turned counter-clockwise high above the crowd. Then followed the whizzes and bangs of the top level.

The band played on until midnight. We left for bed.

Another Mexico: cattle and cheese

This week’s bulletin is a portrait of another Mexico than the urban bustle of Zamora, and still less of Guadalajara. The Colegio de Michoacán was founded by a famous Mexican historian, Luis González y González. Don Luis is particularly famous for a history of his home town, San José de Gracia, Michoacán. His son, Martín and his wife Nora, took us to visit San José and the family home.

The drive to San José rises gently from the valley floor of Zamora, eventually reaching 1,900 metres above sea level. Here there are no “berries” cultivated under plastic covers, but a rolling plain of pasture land for cows – lots of cows. San José (population just under 10,000) was once part of the state of Jalisco, but the cattle farmers of the town disliked being ruled from nearby Mazamitla. After a long political tussle, in 1888 they established their own municipality and had the state boundaries moved so that the new town would be in Michoacán. The plan of the new settlement was traced by ox-drawn ploughs.

The González home in San José

Modern Mexican homes are flat-roofed structures of concrete and reinforcing steel bars. Many homes in contemporary San José are of this type, but this was not the architecture of traditional Mexican homes, as the González household demonstrates. The construction materials were simple and local: walls of adobe (mud brick), beams and columns of local and abundant timber, and a roof (with a large overhang to protect the adobe walls from rain) of ceramic tiles. No nails were used: sheer weight holds the timbers in place.

The current house retains three sides of the quadrangle (the fourth was sold at some stage to a neighbour). In the centre is a partly paved garden of plants (some for herbs) and trees (some for fruit) and a well for water. At the rear was once a garden or orchard and room for animals: a cow perhaps, and horses. The family cattle ranch was a short horse ride from town.

The González hom in San José

The González who built the family home had studied for the priesthood, but changed his mind and married, intending to have a large family. However, the only child was Luis, the future historian.

The González home in San José

Luis was only a year old when the Cristero revolt (1926-1929) broke out in western Mexico. When the Catholic church closed its doors in protest against the federal government’s policies, fervent Catholics in towns like San José took up arms. The González family did not join the guerrilla bands, but remained loyal to the Catholic church. In secret, they converted a room in their home into a chapel, complete with its retablo (altarpiece) and altar. It also had an escape hatch for the priest in case the federal troops surprised the family in worship. Eventually, the federal army advanced across the plains around San Luis. The population fled and the government troops set up their headquarters in the González’s home. Since the soldiers were good Catholics they left the chapel untouched.

Over time some innovations were introduced into the González home: one room was used to install a baño inglés (English bathroom), complete with a bathtub. In some rooms the original wooden beams were concealed by a large painted canvas called a tapacielos (literally sky cover).

An uncle, a local priest, took the education of Luis in hand and sent him to school in Guadalajara. From there the young González undertook his university studies and, after graduating, was sent to Paris to study for a PhD. War interrupted his studies and Luis returned to Mexico where he served briefly in the Mexican army. This was not a terribly dangerous occupation: Mexico joined the Allied forces but sent only a token number of soldiers and one air squadron.

Statue of Luis González

Luis longed to return to San Luis, but his career took him to the Colegio de México, the most prestigious social sciences centre in Mexico and home to many great Mexican historians. González was very well connected in Mexican academia and politics (in Mexico these two worlds are not at all separate). He used his influence to create in Michoacán an equivalent of the Colegio de México. The brand new Colegio de Michoacán opened its doors in 1979, initially, in a small house in the centre of Zamora, sufficiently close to San José for Luis to settle into the family home at last.

Behind the house, where once stood the odd cow, the horses, no longer needed in the age of the motor car, and the orchard, don Luis built a library to house his rather more than 20,000 books. Jan, ever the librarian, asked if the library was catalogued. Martín replied that the books are not exactly catalogued, but that they are organized according to his father’s interests. To wander the library is to walk through the long and dramatic history of Mexico and the many ways in which it has been interpreted.

Mexicans learn through their school textbooks and public celebrations a standard narrative of their history. The story begins with pride in the great indigenous civilizations and the Aztec’s heroic fight to the death against the Spanish conquerors. For the next three hundred years of colonial rule no heroes are identified but the struggle for Independence created some of the most revered heroes: such as the priests Hidalgo and  Morelos. Resistance to foreign invasions during the 19^th century raised more to the status of national hero. The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 made more worthy of statues in public spaces across the republic: notably the peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, or the rampaging general Pancho Villa, notable for being the only Mexican to invade the United States (actually just the small town of Columbus, New Mexico and for only a few hours).

Statue of Apolinar Partida

From the perspective of a small town of cattle ranchers like San José de Gracia, the history of the nation looks quite different. Revolutionary bands were usually bad news – there were no landless peasants here, nor greedy big landowners. The anti-clerical revolutionary governments of the 1920s were still worse. In May 1918 the forces of the ferocious Inés Chávez García, more bandit than revolutionary attacked San José. Apolinar Partida  led the defence and died defending his town along with all but one of his fighters, but not before gunning down between 70 and 100 of their enemies. A statue in the square commemorates his bravery. Another statue records the career of another Partida, Anatolio, "the valiant general who led the San José Division in the Cristero movement 1927-1929. One of his colonels was a certain Honorato González. Anatolio died in 1978 when the Cristero revolt was a distant memory in the nation's capital, but no in San José.

Statue of Anatolio Partida

Most Mexican towns have an obligatory statue of a national hero celebrated in the textbooks. Not so in San José de Gracia. Here, many are considered malign outside influences. San José honours those who have defended, or done important things for, the town. Two bronze statues are devoted to men who defended San José in battle, complete with rifle and belt of bullets. Two González ancestors flank the church. One is the grandfather of don Luis who met President Porfirio Díaz to persuade him to separate the town from Mazamitla’s control. The other is the uncle and priest who sent young Luis to school in Guadalajara. Luis himself stands opposite the church.

To Jalisco, home of mariachis and tequila

This week’s bulletin is a short travelogue. Chantal, a friend in the Colegio, took us on a journey through western Michoacán to the neighbouring state of Jalisco and its capital, Guadalajara.

The road from Zamora heads west along the valley into hill country with the odd small town and scattered farmland. After half an hour or so we reached a large sunken plain: this was formerly wetlands of Lake Chapala, drained by the owners of the Hacienda de Guaracha in the 19^th century to cultivate sugar cane.

Inner courtyard of the hacienda house at la Guaracha

Here the owners had their country house, chapel, workshops, a warehouse and housing for their managers and servants. The landowners ruled over a large population of workers. One of the pledges of the 1910-1920 Revolution was to break up the large landed estates to give land to the peasants. La Guaracha is now the Ejido Emiliano Zapata, named after the great peasant leader of the Revolution. The old hacienda house still stands in a rather dilapidated state as the village school. Nearby are the ruins of the sugar factory, including three chimneys, one of which was, in its day, the tallest in all Mexico. On a subsequent visit, when we stood on the roof of the old house the land, for as far as you can see (and beyond), once belonged to one family.

The land of la Guaracha was given to the ejido (land owned in common by the village peasants) by the revolutionary general Lázaro Cárdenas, former governor of Michoacán and from 1934-1940 President of Mexico. Cárdenas’ home town, Jiquilpan, is a little further along the old highway to Guadalajara. The general’s footprint is easy to see, even on a short drive through Jiquiplan: the Unidad Deportiva Lázaro Cárdenas sports centre was once the President’s country home. There is a museum, largely devoted to don Lázaro, and an obligatory statue. His sister’s hotel is still the best place to stay. On the road to Guadalajara there is a rather grand convention centre: one wonders what conventions are held in such an out-of-the-way town.

Lake Chapala from Petatán

We stopped for a late lunch of fried fish at Petatán, a tiny village on the shores of Lake Chapala, an enormous expanse of water shared by Michoacán and Jalisco. In the winter the lake is home to thousands of pelícanos borregones (literally sheep pelicans), great white birds, a few of whom remain in the summer to feed on fish scraps discarded by the fishermen. However, Chapala has a problem: an invasive Asian lily has covered large swathes of water. The authorities have introduced manatees which feed voraciously on the plants, but unfortunately local residents hunt the manatees.

A spectacular lakeside drive brought us to Mexico’s second largest city, Guadalajara, whose population of about 5 million makes it a rather mini-metropolis compared with the 21 million in the capital and its surrounding cities. Guadalajara was founded in the 1530s by the murderous Spanish conqueror Nuño de Guzmán. It was Spanish policy for Spaniards and Indians to live in separate towns. This was partly to protect the Indians from greedy, exploitative Spanish colonists, but principally to keep all the Indians in easy-to-identify places so that they could be taxed regularly and obliged to provide labour.

 

Plaza Guadalajara and Cathedral

A modern visitor can still see traces of this policy in modern Guadalajara. The centre of the city, where the Spaniards had the Indians build their city, consists of three large plazas: Plaza Guadalajara; Plaza Liberación (Liberation Plaza); Plaza Tatapatía (tapatío is the popular term for the people of Guadalajara). Many of the original colonial churches and government buildings still line the squares. There are more churches and monasteries in the surrounding streets: the church was big business in colonial Mexico. At the far end of the Plaza Tapatía stands the Hospicio Cabañas, an orphanage and institution for the destitute established by Bishop Juan Cruz Ruiz de Cabañas y Crespo.

Hospicio Cabañas

The eminent colonial architect Manuel Tolsá designed the Hospicio, including its imposing domed chapel. With an unfortunate sense of timing, the Hospicio opened its doors in 1810, just in time to catch the beginning of the wars of Independence and to be converted into military barracks. Today it is an art gallery. Its greatest attraction are the murals of José Clemente Orozco that cover the walls and ceilings of the chapel. In dramatic imagery, the murals depict Orozco’s radical nationalist interpretation of Mexican history. Rather immodestly, the artist portrayed himself in the dome as a man of fire who, by a trick of perspective, ascends to the heavens as the viewer walks round below the dome. The murals offended the governor of Jalisco, who refused to pay Orozco his fee. Orozco then painted a flattering image of the governor into one of the wall panels, collected his fee and promptly painted over the governor’s image.

The Indian districts of early Guadalajara were Analco and Mexicaltzingo. The native Indians of Guadalajara lived in Analco, across a river from the Spanish town.

Plaza and colonial church of Mexicaltzingo

In Mexicaltzingo lived the Mexica (whom we call Aztecs), Indians who helped Nuño de Guzmán conquer the region. A curious fact is that the Conquest of what we now call Mexico was largely accomplished by Mexicans, but the Spaniards took the profits. Mexicaltzingo was also separated by a river: the remains of a colonial stone bridge that linked the Mexica residents to the homes of their Spanish masters was recently discovered by archaeologists. Both Indian towns had large plazas of their own with splendid colonial churches: the Spaniards came to convert the Indian, not just to tax him and live off his labour.

If you ask Mexicans what they associate with Jalisco they will surely respond: tequila and mariachi. Tequila is made from the sugars of the agave cactus in a town called Tequila, Jalisco.

Plaza and church, Tequila

As you approach the town the land is covered with fields of the blue agave. We learned from our distillery tour that after some 6 or 7 years, the sugary core of the plant (the piña) is harvested by a worker called a jimador with a large hoe-like instrument. The piñas are cooked in large ovens for a few hours to release the sugars and are then pressed to release the juices. These ferment in great vats for a few days, after which the liquid is distilled several times to produce a powerful spirit, which is then diluted with purified water and aged in oak barrels for up to seven years. The youngest tequila is white, the next the golden brown reposado (rested), and then comes the añejo (aged).

 

Tequila bottles of many shapes and sizes

Mariachi bands vary in size but must include trumpets, violins a guitar and a guitarrón (a super-sized guitar) and possibly a Mexican harp. Many of the songs are jolly dance music: think of what we call the Mexican Hat Dance, which for Mexicans is the Jarabe Tapatío, or Guadalajara.  Other songs are more heart-wrenching tales of love betrayed by a treacherous woman (the women are always fickle), and a tearful lover who drowns his sorrow in plenty of tequila, possibly before going to his death in a shoot-out. For our more feminist friends the encouraging message is that you can reduce a gun-toting Mexican male to a tearful drunken heap with a dismissive flick of your hips.

A lunch time dance show in Tlaquepaque

The accompanying dances involve colourfully dressed women in skirts that whirl as they dance, and men in the traditional tight-fitting trousers and jacket, and the inevitable sombrero, all with much foot stomping (zapateado) to the beat of the music. We saw a spectacular show after lunch, with an all-female mariachi, in Tlaquepaque (another former Indian town, with its plaza and church, now a suburb of the city devoted to food, drink and selling Mexican crafts).

A female mariachi band in Tlaquepaque. Note the gentleman ignoring the performance

Billboard Toño, the "little chicken" and a clean sweep

I am writing again about Mexican politics, because one recent Sunday evening we met the local candidate for the federal congress of the MORENA party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

Yolanda Guerrero Barrera with her election certificate

The candidate was meeting voters in the plaza at the end of the street. Her name is Yolanda Guerrrero Barrera. She is the regional officer of STASPE, the federal workers’s union. She told me that she had studied for a law degree but had been unable to complete her studies, and had later acquired an accounting qualification. Yolanda told me that she has never held public office before, in contrast to her PRI rival, whom she clearly regards as her principal opponent: I think her chances are slim, but she seemed positive and energetic.

In July Mexicans elect their new President, who will take office in November. If the polls are to be believed the next President will be AMLO.

On the local level the smiling face that beams at us from most billboards is that of Toño Ixtláhuac, who stands for “A strong Michoacán with a future”.

 

Toño's billboard

Mexico is a federal republic. Under the 1917 constitution, the President is elected for a single term of six years. State Governors and Federal Senators also serve six-year terms. Diputados (congresswomen/men), state legislators and Presidentes Municipales (mayors of towns, large and small) are elected for three years. All are limited to a single term: nobody can hold the same elected office more than once, but they can (and do) hold many different elected offices in succession. The reason for the single term limits lies deep in the history of the Mexican Revolution: once the great dictator Porfirio Díaz had been toppled in 1911, no politician in the land dare ignore the revolutionary slogan “A free vote and no reelection.”

At least no politician dare contravene the “no reelection” part. The”free vote” has been much less well observed. From roughly 1930 to 2000, the election of the President was theoretically achieved by a free vote of the people. In practice, the ruling party (PRI: Insitutional Revolutionary Party) saved

A cartoon destape

the people from excessive choice by selecting the new President through an elaborate mechanism of internal negotiation and alliance-making. Ambitious candidates, business groups, union leaders, peasant confederations and the like jostled behind the scenes, finally to declare themselves enthusiastic supporters of the chosen candidate. The destape (“unveiling”) of the President-to-be was a national guessing game.

The system worked well for many decades. Mexico developed a relatively modern economy and, compared to other Latin American countries, enjoyed a degree of freedom, and an absence of nasty military rulers. However, by 1968 the system was under strain. In the year that Mexico hosted the Olympic Games, students decided to protest the limits of freedom in Mexico. The protests, conducted in disciplined silence, came to a violent end on the Night of Tlatelolco, October 1968. Students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (“Square of the Three Cultures”, on the site of the ancient city of Tlatelolco) were ambushed by the Mexican army. Nobody knows how many died. Many were arrested. Others went into hiding.

 

The Night of Tlatelolco 1968

For a time ,the regime remained strong enough to destapar (“unveil”) as the new President from 1970 to 1976 Luis Echeverría Álvarez, the organizer of the Tlatelolco massacre. However, on the night of the July 1988 elections, the counting system mysteriously crashed. The reason was simple.

Luis Echeverría Álvarez

The Mexican people had done something unprecedented: they had exercised their free vote to elect the opposition candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of Michoacán. When the system was restored to its proper working order, the people had, after all, chosen the PRI’s destapado Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In 2000, Vicente Fox, of the conservative opposition Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party: PAN), was elected. A new democratic dawn seemed about to brighten Mexican public life. However, like a time traveller arriving from a distant past, I have been observing the political scene from our provincial city: and it seems strangely familiar. Enrique Peña Nieto, a young and photogenic politican from the populous State of Mexico, brought the PRI back to power. However, the whiffs of corruption and cronyism, and a lack of solutions for Mexico’s social problems, have left many disenchanted with the PRI’s return.

Toño Ixtláhuac

This brings us back to the smiling Toño, 38 years old and currently a federal Congressman. To judge from his congressional photo and press images, the designer of Toño’s billboard decided to make him still younger. Billboard Toño is rather fairer of complexion, his hair less coarse, his teeth a radiant white.

Toño made a good start to his political career. He has been a state congressman in Michoacán and Presidente Municipal of Zitácuaro. He is very well connected: if he is elected he will replace his uncle in the Senate. However, Toño’s past is not quite as bight and shiny as his billboard image. In 2009 the Procurador General de la Nación (“Federal Prosecutor”) imprisoned him, accused of receiving 300,000 pesos (about £12,000) per month from drug gangs. Later, he was barred from office for three years in connection with the unexplained disappearance from the coffers of Zitácuaro of 12 million pesos (roughly £450,000). Fortunately, Toño was able to persuade a civil tribunal that he was only active as Presidente Municipal for a few months and was absent when the financial shorfall occurred.

Sergio's billboard

The candidate for the Federal Congress district that includes Zamora is Sergio Flores,whose slogan is: Juntos podemos, experiencia, compromiso y juventud (“Together we can, experience, commitment and youth”). Sergio is a native of Zamora and has a master’s degree in political law, public administration, prosecution and administration of justice. He is also the son of a powerful Zamoran PRI politician known locally as el pollo (“the chicken”). Sergio, in turn, is el pollito (the little chicken). He started his political career as the Michoacán manager of LICONSA, a federal agency that distributes low cost milk to poor communities. In short, like Toño, Sergio is a scion of a powerful local PRI family. He seems to be campaigning vigorously: meeting business groups, visiting factories, calling on market traders in the Mercado Hidalgo, and so on. We have seen Sergio’s pubilicity van touring our neighbourhood, and he and Toño dominate the billboards.

Since I have not been entirely complimentary about PRI politicians, in the interests of balance I should mention that Zamora’s most famous son (possibly second-most-famous if we include the footballer Rafael Márquez) was Alfonso García Robles, a diplomat and PRI politician, given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. He was a delegate to the founding meeting of the UN. His greatest achievement was the Treaty of Tlatelolco which, in 1967, established a nuclear free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean (the Cuban Missile Crisis had happened only five years previously).

 

Alfonso García Robles with his Nobel Peace Prize

The other Mexican recipient of a Nobel prize, in this case for literature in 1990, was the poet and diplomat Octavio Paz. In 1945 he published an essay entitled El Laberinto de la Soledad (“The Labyrinth of Solitude”) a wonderfully insightful discussion of Mexican culture and society. One of the most entertaining passages is his discussion of the immensely rich use of the verb chingar in Mexican Spanish. Those curious to know more must read the book (there is an English translation). I heartily recommend it.

A 2019 Update

I was wrong about Yolanda Guerrrero Barrera’s chances. She won her seat. Indeed MORENA swept the bopard in Zamora, winning all the office up for election. AMLO is now president. He won a landslide and now plays a strong political hand. It is too early to judge how well he plays it.