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.

Children with disabilities by the Pacific

In 1964 John Huston chose a small fishing town on a bay on the Pacific Coast of Mexico as the location for The Night of the Iguana. The film’s male star, Richard Burton, rented a villa in nearby Puerto Vallarta, and another across the street for his lover, Elizabeth Taylor. Their affair made Puerto Vallarta an immediate international tourist destination: nowadays the town is just one of a

Sunset at Puerto Vallarta

succession of resorts around the Bahía de las Banderas (Bay of Flags). Dependably warm weather, a spectacular landscape and beautiful sunsets bring large numbers of American and Canadian tourists, escaping their frozen winters.

Tourism is one of Mexico’s main industries. It attracts wealth and provides employment, some of it seasonal or insecure, and much of it poorly paid. Nevertheless, tourist dollars attract workers from rural Mexico where employment opportunities can be very scarce indeed. During our visit our son David, who has an artist’s eye for well-crafted work, bought a cockerel made from recycled clothing from a man from Oaxaca, far to the south. His family sews the animals and he sells them to the tourists.

Tourist dollars, then, attract families, some of whom have children with special needs, for whom

The home of one of the Pasitos families

care facilities are scarce and, in any case, beyond the means of their parents. We came to Puerto Vallarta, partly to enjoy a few days of Mexican food and hospitality, but mostly because our eldest son, Chris, is moving here to work for a charity called Pasitos de Luz (“Little Steps of Light”). Chris worked at Pasitos as a volunteer six years ago and has been asked back to assist with communication and fund-raising, and to join the board.

Pasitos' old building

I visited Pasitos in January 2013. The charity was then based in a cramped building in an urban setting. The children could not go outside and lack of space limited the number of children cared for and the therapies offered. Fortunately, a Canadian couple raised sufficient money to construct a new building in a rural setting, which has now been in operation for two years. Pasitos can now care for 50 children, instead of the previous limit of 35, and offers therapy sessions to additional individual children in its former facility.

The needs of the children cared for at Pasitos are extraordinarily varied. Some suffer from considerable physical disabilities and would be confined permanently to wheelchairs if it were not for the physiotherapy and other activities provided by Pasitos. Others have learning disabilities and participate in classes designed to teach basic literacy and life skills. One parent told me that his daughter has speech impediments. Her state school told him that it could not provide support for her and that her parents would have to pay for private education to access support. They simply cannot afford that. Their daughter has attended Pasitos and her speech has improved considerably.

 

A music therapy session

Pasitos' new building

The new building was designed so as not to look like a hospital or institution. Above all, it has space and facilities much superior to the cramped spaces of the former centre. There are spacious classrooms for arts and crafts, basic literacy and numeracy, and some science. Another room is set up for teaching life skills and participation in family activities (making a bed, cleaning a room, going shopping). The children now have space for movement, singing and dancing. There is a dedicated room to teach personal grooming and cleanliness: one little girl delights in combing the hair of other children. A large, bright and airy room provides a pleasant environment for physiotherapy.

The kitchen and dining room are spacious and cheery. There is an area for brushing teeth after

Lunch is served

breakfast. Another area is equipped with new cots for a comfortable Mexican siesta. But perhaps above all, the children can experience things that were inconceivable in the former building. In the garden is a modern version of a prehispanic temazcal (sweat bath), in which children can relax under close supervision and participate in recreations of prehispanic rituals. They are then taken indoors to jacuzzis to allow their body temperature to reduce gradually. There are plans for an orchard and equine therapy.

We visited the new facility on the day of the party for national children’s’ day. A payaso (clown) showed the children magic tricks and led them in a dance around the front of the building. It was heart-warming to witness the smiles, laughter and

The party on Children's Day

loud clapping. The show was followed by piñatas. Children who needed support to strike the piñata had the first turns, followed by smaller boys and girls who displayed near murderous intent as they whacked away with the stick. After two piñatas had been thoroughly destroyed the dining room furniture was moved outside for al fresco dining: an experience that the children could not enjoy in their cramped urban neighbourhoods. The more mobile children played in a bouncy castle, despite the heat. During the festivities, a tall 16-year old boy hurried over to greet Chris: he told me that our son had taken him to the cinema for the first time, an experience he recalls with great smiles.

 

How to destroy a piñata

In round numbers it costs £10,000/US $14,000/Canadian $18,000 per month to pay the staff who care for the children at Pasitos. In British/American/Canadian terms this is not a lot of money, but in Mexican Puerto Vallarta it is a considerable sum. The charity has ambitions to provide more medical care and physiotherapy, and to become less dependent on volunteers and students. But such care needs people and more money.

One-year old Mia has Downs Syndrome

Imagine a single mother who lives on the breadline trying to take care of a little girl with cerebral palsy while supporting three other children. Then imagine that this whole family lives in a single room constructed from corrugated iron and cardboard. Pasitos enables this family to survive and provides a safe, pleasant and caring environment for the little girl, and experiences to make her smile.

Chris is moving to Puerto Vallarta to help Pasitos meet more needs. His family will support his work. If any of our friends and family feel moved to make a donation, you can contact Chris at: info@pasitosdeluz.org.

People and life in Zamora, Michoacán

This week seems a good time to introduce some of the people we have got to know here in Zamora.

Not long after we arrived in Zamora, we were returning from a stroll in the cool of the evening and met two of our neighbours strolling in the opposite direction. Don Pepe (Pepe is the familiar form of José. Don is a traditional title of respect mostly applied nowadays to older people) remarked Somos como novios (“We are like a courting couple”). When we asked for how long, he replied “68 years”. We estimate that Don Pepe must be very close to 90 years of age.

Don Pepe and his wife live in a very substantial house on the corner of our block. He owns other properties in the neighbourhood. He tells us that he has 33 grandchildren. Several other family members live in houses close by: we often encounter Pepe and his wife returning from lunch in a granddaughter’s home. Almost every day we greet one another, and occasionally stop for a chat. A few weeks ago, Don Pepe had a small patch of grass (about 1 foot by 6 feet) laid to brighten up the pavement outside his house. We often encounter him watering it of an evening. The family owns a “small piece of land” in the country and frequently holds gatherings there. On Don Pepe’s saint’s day more than 70 people gathered. In Mexico family and parties are very important.

Don Pepe’s prosperity was built on his shop on Calle Ávila Camacho, a short walk from home. He tells us that he opened it in 1969. The shop sells fruit, vegetables and chicken. His son José Manuel runs it nowadays. Manuel’s customers seem to enjoy his jolly manner, and we often exchange a joke. He tells us that he works twelve hours a day, six days a week. He certainly is the only person left tending the store late in the afternoon.

Another Zamora friend is Sergio, a vet. When he graduated, he was obliged by law to undertake six months of social service. He chose for his service a small town in the state of Oaxaca, Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz. Porfirio Díaz was a military man who was born in Miahuatlán. He defeated the French invaders at a battle there in 1866: a  proud moment in the town’s history. Don Porfirio ruled Mexico with a combination of pan y palo (bread and stick) from 1876 to 1911 when the Mexican Revolution sent him into exile in France.

 

The commemoration of the victory over the French at Miahuatlán on 3 October 1866

Sergio’s task was to visit villages in the region of Miahuatlán to inoculate livestock for a charge of 15 centavos. The first step was to visit the village authorities. Upon arrival, Sergio was offered a large glass of mezcal (a potent spirit). Being a conscientious professional, he politely explained that he was working and could not drink. The authorities then held a conversation in their indigenous language and the meeting ended with no animals inoculated. Once Sergio realized that he would not inoculate a single animal if he did not drink the mezcal, the inoculation programme progressed famously.

After completing his social service Sergio worked for the agriculture department of the federal government. There he developed a national system for tracing livestock movements. Now, in retirement, he is the only person in Zamora officially qualified to tag animals to meet the requirements of the movement scheme. He is much in demand.

Commemoration of the solar eclipse of 1875 in 2015

Miahuatlán, by the way, has a claim to fame in addition to being the birthplace of Porfirio Díaz and the site of his famous victory. In 1970 it was the place of maximum duration (3 minutes and 28 seconds) of a solar eclipse and was officially declared the “Scientific Centre of the World’.

Occasionally, we relax in a rather trendy café close to the Colegio de Michoacán with an ice cold frapé de chocolate. We are served by a cheery young woman who comes from a small village about an hour and a half from Zamora. Her family, including her husband, lives in Chicago. She had gone to Chicago to study, but after a time found employment. All was well until somebody in her workplace denounced her to the immigration authorities. Undocumented residents of America live very precarious lives. The US government increased the rate of deportations under President Obama and President Trump exploited fears of immigrants to win the election. In these circumstance, individual lives and facts matter little.

In a café on the plaza of Zamora, we met another Michoacana who lives in Chicago. She told us that she is one of nineteen children, born on a farm just outside the town. She lives in Chicago and runs a real estate business there: our brief conversation in halting English suggested that most of her customers must be Mexican. A few days later we bumped into the same lady in our neighbourhood. While we were choosing bread, she hurried home and came back with a gift of avocados from the family farm.

The main entrance of the Colegio de Michoacán

In the Colegio de Michoacán a number of people make our life agreeable. A small group of vigilantes guards the  three entrances day and night. They have got to know us well enough to admit us with a cheery buenos días, que le vaya bien (“Good morning, have a good day”). The man who guards the entrance to a private street, in which one gate is located, has two jobs as we discovered one Saturday morning, while walking to the Mesón de Valle hotel for breakfast. Our afternoon vigilante was working his second job, cleaning a medical

The vigilante's broom

building and the pavement outside. One Sunday, when we went to the Colegio to read in the quiet and cool of the garden, we found the vigilante at the main entrance making brooms of twigs, collected in the garden, to sweep the entrance area. His evident pride was matched by the formal beauty of the brooms.

Weekdays, we take our lunch in the cafeteria of the Colegio. Front of house is run by Lety and her brother-in-law (her sister is the cook). The team starts work at 6:30am to prepare for breakfast at 8am. Lunch starts at 2pm. The working day finishes about 5:00-5:30pm. Lety then spends her early evenings doing other jobs: one is to clean our apartment once a week. We know when Lety has been cleaning: the smell of Pinol, the universal disinfectant floor cleaner, lingers, and some of our less tidy areas are made orderly. Lety finds my name hard to pronounce. I explained that Ian is the equivalent of Juan, so she addresses me as Don Juan!

 

The Colegio's gardens and the cafeteria

The gardens of the Colegio are a haven from the noise and bustle of Zamora. Trees provide shade and a haven for birds. Bougainvilleas provide brilliant colour. To one side of the cafeteria is a tree with orange flowers much frequented by a hummingbird. A roof garden, with shaded areas with seats and tables for working, connects the main academic buildings. All of this is cared for by one gardener. I met him one day dusting the solar panels: Zamora generates dust in quantities. Since there are some 40 or 50 panels that need dusting, this alone keeps him busy.

Ancient Michoacán, land of the fish-eaters, and their sad fate

Mexico has one of the more interesting national flags. The colours are red, white and green and in the middle of the white area is an eagle, with a snake in its beak, standing on a nopal (prickly pear cactus). This is a reference to the foundation myth of the people we know as Aztecs, who called themselves mexica. The mexica conquered a substantial part of central Mexico, and practiced human sacrifice on a spectacular scale. The Estados Unidos de México takes its name from these warlike people, and the national capital sits above the ruins of the mexica’s capital Tenochtitlan. The ruler of the mexica was the huey tlatoani (great orator). When modern Presidents step out onto the balcony of the National Palace to pronounce in grand oratorical style they emulate their mexica predecessors.

 

Former president Ernesto Zedillo gives the grito ("shout") to celebrate Independence in 2000

The mexica tend to hog the limelight of ancient Mexico’s “great civilization”, but they were, in fact, one of a number of important civilizations conquered by the Spaniards in the 16^th century. The Aztecs met their warlike match in Michoacán, where lived the people the mexica knew as Michhuàque (those who have fish), and whom the Spaniards called los de Michoacán (those from the place where they eat fish), but who called themselves purhépecha. They are more generally known nowadays as the Tarascans (meaning idol, son-in-law, or father-in-law). Since we are temporary residents of Michoacán, this seems a good moment to tell a little about this much less well-known people.

The capital of the purhépecha is Tintzuntzan, a city built on a hilltop terrace, covering almost seven square kilometres, above Lake Pátzcuaro. The modern visitor sees several large stone platforms, rectangular in shape except for one curved end. On top of the platforms once sat temples where purhépecha priests performed public rituals, including the inevitable human sacrifice to Curicaueri, the god of fire and sun; Cuerauáperi, the creator goddess of birth, death, rain and famine (quite a combination); Xarátanga, the goddess of the moon and wife of Curicaueri; and Ucumu, god of the underworld associated with gophers, moles, mice and snakes.

 

Tzintzuntzan from the air

In addition to the temple platforms, by the early 16^th century there were also palatial residences for the nobility, and other residential zones for the lesser nobility, commoners and for people from other ethnic groups. There was also a manufacturing zone for craftsmen: knife-makers (from obsidian stone), leatherworkers, sandal-makers, potters, masons, metalworkers, feather workers, carpenters, painters of gourds (used as cups). There was also a zoo; storehouses, steam baths, a market, and, south of the city, a court where the ritual ballgame was played.

The population of the capital city was probably around 25,000-30,000 by 1520. A further 70,000-80,000 lived in the lake basin. Here farmers cultivated the rich soils around the lake, fishermen supplied the produce of the lake itself, and merchants moved around the lake in canoes.

 

Lake Pátzcuaro from the ruins of Tzintzuntzan

Tarascan copper bells, worn by priests

The ruler of the purhépecha was known as the cazonci. By about 1350 the cazonci of Tzintzuntzan was the most powerful ruler in the lake basin. By the 1440s the cazonci Tangaxoán I (1408-1454) had expanded his domains to the Pacific Coast and the Balsas river to the south and east, seeking tropical products such as chocolate, cotton, colourful birds’ feathers, and sources of copper. His successor Tzitzi Pandácuare (1454-1479) expanded his empire north and west, and further east.

The eastern expansion brought the armies of the cazonci into conflict with the forces of the huey tlatoani of Tenochtitlan. The mexica were accustomed to winning their battles and were shocked to be defeated soundly by the purhépecha. After the 1480s the two empires fortified their frontiers and fought frequent battles, but abandoned attempts to expand into one another’s territory. This was the situation when the Spaniards first appeared in 1519.

The defeat of the mexica in 1521 must have been quite a shock to the cazonci Tangaxoán II, who submitted to the Spaniards to save his people the death and destruction inflicted on the mexica. Unfortunately, Tangaxoán had to deal with an exceptionally thuggish Spaniard, Nuño de Guzmán. Guzmán, convinced that the purhépecha were hiding gold from him, tortured their last ruler to death.

Other Spaniards followed Guzmán to the land of the purhépecha, but in search of souls rather than gold. The Pope had entrusted the Spanish crown with the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Franciscan friars who arrived in Tzintzuntzan were few, and the indigenous people many thousands. So, evangelization posed two logistical problems. Where would Spanish friars conduct mass conversions by the thousands, far too many to be converted in a traditional church building? And how would they address people who understood not a word of Spanish?

The first solution was to construct a large open air “nave” with a stone “atrial cross” at its centre, where large numbers of Indians could assemble to hear the gospel. To give the nave a Spanish flavour, the friars planted imported olive trees along the edges (the surviving trees can still be seen today). As for language, the friars learned purhépecha and published grammars so that other priests could learn the local tongue. Work on a monastery, and the church of San Francisco, began in 1570 and was finished in 1601. The façade of the monastery includes open air chapels from which friars could preach to the multitude gathered in the open air nave. In the 17^th century a second church, dedicated to the Virgin of Solitude, was built a few yards to the right of the Franciscan church. Next to this church stand the remains of a hospital, complete with its own open air chapels.

 

Church of San Francisco, Tzintzuntzan

The first bishop of Michoacán was Vasco de Quiroga, who established his headquarters not in

Plaza Vasco Quiroga, Pátzcuaro. The statue of Quiroga is in the centre

Tzintzuntzan, but in Pátzcuaro.  This is a beautifully preserved colonial town, whose two plazas commemorate very different historical figures. Bishop Quiroga’s statue presides over an enormous square, that bears his name, now fringed by hotels and restaurants. The rather more popular Plaza Gertrudis de Bocanegra, teeming with buses, street food vendors, the market, and the cinema, commemorates a heroine of the independence struggle, executed in Pátzcuaro in 1817.

Easter processions and defending the faith

We spent much of Holy Week in Zamora, which provides an opportunity to describe some of the local celebrations, and then to take a broader look at the place of the Catholic church in Mexico.

Easter (Pascua) is a week-long affair, with masses and events every day. On Holy Saturday (Sábado Santo), the Procession in Silence takes place. The first procession, the idea of a local priest and the Caballeros of Don Bosco (The Knights of Don Bosco, an Italian priest who devoted his life to educating street children), took place in 1959. At 10am men (no women allowed) gather outside the church of Los Dolores (The Sorrows) and walk in silence for five hours, dressed in a white t-shirt and blue trousers, in penance for Christ’s crucifixion. The only sound comes from a megaphone on a pick-up truck, as the names of deceased members are read out. Some men carry a crucified Christ, some wear a crown of thorns, many just walk, many fathers with young sons. The organizers this year anticipated an attendance of 30,000. We saw only the end of the procession, and in any case, could not possibly count that number.

 

The Procesión en silencio, Zamora

Our local church (Espíritu Santo, Holy Spirit) is not on the route, but has its own tradition: a via crucis around the plaza. The action begins outside the church: we witnessed the whipping of Christ, Pontius Pilate washing his hands, and then we all set off following Christ who carried a large and heavy cross, accompanied by the two thieves who bear solid-looking wooden logs across their shoulders. The Roman soldiers languidly whipped Christ in between each of the stations.

Station VIII

The stations were set up outside local homes, each with its crucifix and other adornments according to taste: one had an image of the Virgin identified as Reina del Mundo (Queen of the World). At each station we were given readings from a pick-up truck with a megaphone. The assembled faithful then said the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary faster than Jan and I have heard it anywhere else (bear in mind that they have to say both twelve times). In between stations, a voice from the pick-up truck led us in a heartfelt chant: Señor ten piedad de nosotros. Perdónanos señor (Lord have pity on us. Forgive us Lord).

Each station had its protagonist. Barabbas briefly helped Christ carry his cross. By far the most dramatic was the lamentation of Mary, an impressive performance that moved even reserved Brits close to tears.

The procession eventually reached the concrete platform at the far end of the plaza, by the town cultural centre. Here Christ was fixed to the cross, which was then raised by the young Roman soldiers, and tentatively slotted into a hole in the concrete. At this point an older man stepped forward to supervise the wedging of the cross to ensure that it was stable. The young man playing Christ spent quite some time on the cross while passages from the Bible were read and a song was played. The soldiers gave him “vinegar” to drink on a long pole and prodded him with a “spear”, at which point he was very carefully lowered from his precarious perch to be laid in the arms of the grieving Mary. Christ’s inert body was then transferred to a tomb of black cloth, and, after a pause for a costume change, he emerged to applause.

 

The cast takes its bow after Christ's resurrection

Zamora is, you will gather, a very Catholic town, and Mexico is, nominally at least, a Catholic country. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the national saint. The greatest heroes of Independence, Hidalgo and Morelos, were priests. However, the relationship between church and state has been very complicated and conflictive. We were reminded of this at a fish lunch with our friends Verónica and Sergio, the day of their wedding anniversary. In Mexico, church marriages have had no legal status for a century and a half. The legally recognised ceremony is civil, and its form was specified by

Ocampo's heart. The sign says "Do not touch"

President Benito Juárez in 1869. The law obliged the presiding official to read to the couple the “epistle of Ocampo”. Melchor Ocampo was a Liberal politician, a native of Michoacán (whose full name is Michoacán de Ocampo). He drafted the Reform Laws, which abolished many church privileges and confiscated much church property. His Conservative opponents executed him in 1861. After his execution, his daughter had his heart removed to preserve it and took it to the Colegio de San Nicolás in Morelia, now the University of Michoacán. It is displayed there with Ocampo’s books, his telescope, the clothes he wore when shot, and other mementos.
There is a statue of Melchor Ocampo in the main square in Morelia. It bears one of his sayings: “We will understand one another by talking, not by killing one another.”

 

Ocampo's statue in Morelia

Relations with the church worsened after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The church generally

Cristeros in Sahuayo, Michoacán

supported the opponents of the Revolution and the wealthy landowners. The Catholic hierarchy instinctively opposed elements of socialism in the revolutionary programme, especially the new “socialist education”, often delivered by anticlerical teachers. The new revolutionary regime placed many restrictions on the church. For example, it determined how many priests would be allowed in Mexico, prohibited wearing priestly garb in public, and expropriated more church property: the public library of Morelia is housed in a former Jesuit building. Eventually, the church announced that it would carry out no burials, marriages or confessions. In the late 1920s the faithful rebelled in parts of the country, and a bloody civil war ensued. Catholic rebels killed schoolteachers and other representatives of the government. The Government in turn executed priests and rebels. The faithful of the Zamora region actively supported the rebellion. Federal troops occupied the Sanctuary of Guadalupe and held executions to one side of the altar, where the impact of bullets can still be seen.

For decades, no Mexican President or ambitious politician could admit to being Catholic. Nor could he allow any member of his family to attend church, still less be married in church. Things began to change in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the Mexican government re-established relations with the Vatican. Politicians, even Presidents, could now declare “I am a Catholic”.

For those of you curious about the epistle of Ocampo, the following is my translation:

This is the only moral foundation of the family, of the preservation of the species, and to overcome the imperfections of the individual who cannot achieve the perfection of humankind alone. Perfection does not exist in a single person, but rather in the duality of marriage. Married couples should consecrate themselves to one another, even more than they do as individuals. The man, whose sexual gifts are principally valour and strength, should give, and will give, to the woman, protection, food and instruction, always treating her as the most delicate, sensitive and best part of himself, and with the magnanimity and benevolence that the strong owes to the weak, especially when the weak gives herself to him, and when society has entrusted her to him. The woman, whose principal gifts are self-denial, beauty, compassion, sensitivity and tenderness, should give, and will give, to her husband obedience, pleasure, assistance, comfort and advice, always treating him with the veneration which is due to the person who supports and defends us, and with the delicacy of she who avoids provoking his brusque, irritable and hard side. Both owe and should show respect, deference, fidelity, trust and tenderness, and both will try that the hopes each had when they married should be preserved in their union. Both should be prudent and should moderate their faults. They should never insult one another, because insults between husband and wife dishonour the one who insults the other, and demonstrate a lack of judgement or self-control, still less will they ill-treat their partner, because it is base and cowardly to mis-use strength. Both should prepare, by recognizing and by accepting loving and mutual correction of their faults, for the supreme responsibility of being parents, so that, when they become parents, their children will find in them a good example and conduct worthy of being their model. The beliefs that inspire these tender and loving bonds of affection will make them happy in prosperity and adversity; and the happiness or misfortune of their children will be the reward or the punishment, the happiness or the misfortune of the parents. Society will bless, esteem and praise good parents, for the great good that they do by giving us good and dutiful citizens; and society will censure and despise, with good cause, those who, through neglect, misguided affection, or bad example, betray the sacred trust that nature conferred on them by giving them children. And, finally, when society sees that such people do not merit the dignified position of parents, but rather should live under supervision, as ones incapable of dignified conduct, then society regrets having sanctified the union of a man and a woman who were incapable of being free and to conduct themselves well.