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