Desmond Tutu and Reconciliation

 

Desmond Tutu was once invited to preach to a white congregation in South Africa. He told them that Africans were deeply grateful to them for the gift of the Bible. He added that “The only difference between us is that we believe in it.” The archbishop told this impishly humorous story in a talk at St Paul’s cathedral in the 1990s which my father-in-law and I attended. My limited experience of clergy is mostly of Anglican sermons in British churches, which somehow manage to detach Christian beliefs and morals from the personal and often avoid challenging personal behaviours. Tutu, by contrast, spoke from the heart with a simple, uncomplicated, utterly sincere belief in right and wrong, and in humans’ potential for good. At the end of his address in St Paul’s, he spoke of prayers ascending to heaven and lifted his hands and gaze upwards to the great dome with a look of joy on his face in an almost child-like manner which no learned British cleric could manage.

 

My other connection to Tutu was an indirect publishing one. In 2000 I published the international edition of The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which Tutu chaired. For the first time in my career, I consulted a libel lawyer who told me that the report contained multiple libels. Puzzled, I asked him what he meant. “Well, it accuses many people of murder, torture and other crimes. It could damage their reputations.” I protested that they had confessed to the crimes in public tribunals and had no reputations to damage. The lawyer was unmoved and advised against publication. Fortunately, my boss shared my opinion that this was ridiculous and we decided to publish. We did take one precaution against a lawsuit, however. The former President of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk, had attempted to sue the Commission over two references to him in the report. We decided to publish with those passages ostentatiously obscured with black ink and referred readers to the South African edition.

 

The launch of the Report at South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London

We launched the Report at an event at the South African High Commission. One of the speakers was Dullah Omar, South Africa’s Minister of Justice, who survived an assassination attempt by the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), which substituted a placebo for his heart pills. He collapsed in the street but was saved by a doctor who happened to be nearby. Two other speakers came from South Africa, including a High Court judge. The campaigner and journalist Trevor Phillips, chaired the presentation of the Report. Behind the speakers was the banner, bearing the slogan “Truth. The road to reconciliation”, that the Commission had taken around South Africa to the places where it heard testimony.

 

The speakers: Dullah Omar second from right, Trevor Phillpis centre

After the event, the High Commissioner, who had been a young anti-Apartheid activist herself, hosted a dinner for the speakers at her residence. Those attending included three or four Labour Party members of the House of Lords who had supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement, my boss, me and Mike Terry, a secondary school physics teacher who sat next to me. Mike told me that he had been secretary of the Anti-Apartheid movement. When I asked him why he was now a teacher, he explained that campaigning was exhausting. He would come home to find Special Branch officers sitting in a car outside his home and his phone was tapped. Nevertheless, he led the campaign for 20 years. As the speakers and the High Commissioner chatted among friends, they clearly relished being in charge and able to make their own decisions, rather than being told by white people what they may or may not do.

 

As I read the Commission’s report, I was struck by the gratuitous, depraved cruelty, of the security forces of Apartheid. It was clearly not enough simply to kill and eliminate their opponents; they must be humiliated and subjected to unimaginable pain. The men (they were I think all men) who carried out these acts, presumably had families to whom they returned after a day of murder and torture. The report suggests that acts of oppression damaged not only the victims but the oppressors and torturers themselves. Thus, the Apartheid regime not only damaged its opponents but its servants also.

 

Archbishop Tutu’s sense of humour and enjoyment of dancing have been mentioned repeatedly in news coverage, but I have been thinking of him in front of the Commission’s banner listening to testimony of countless acts of state-planned human depravity. He must also have been a man of profound seriousness of purpose and of compassion for the victims of Apartheid, perhaps even for some of the perpetrators whose moral being it corrupted.

Who hanged Father Christmas?

 

On Christmas Eve 1951 250 children gathered outside Dijon cathedral to see Father Christmas. But these children would not sit on Santa’s knee to hear a ho-ho-ho and receive a gift, for they had come to see him hanged and burned (in effigy of course). The clergy of the cathedral explained:

 

Representing all the Christian homes of the parish eager to fight against the lie, 250 children, grouped in front of the main entrance to the cathedral of Dijon, burned Father Christmas. It was not an attraction, but a symbolic gesture… A lie cannot wake up religious feelings in a child and is in no way a means of education. May others say and write that they want to make Father Christmas the counterweight of the Bogeyman. For us Christians, the festival of Christmas must remain a celebration of the birth of the Saviour.

 

The Archbishop of Tolouse declared: “Don’t speak to Father Christmas, for the simple reason that he never existed.” The formal position of the French church was:

 

The Father Christmas and the Christmas tree were introduced into the public schools although they are the reminiscence of pagan ceremonies related to the worship of Nature which do not have anything Christian; whereas in the name of outrageous secularism the crib is scrupulously banished from the same schools!

 

However, despite the opposition of the clergy of Dijon, Father Christmas was resurrected by the secular municipal authorities outside the town hall.

 

This event was the subject of an essay, Le père Noël supplicié (Father Christmas tortured) by a young anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss argued that Christmas represents the glory of life, once one has made peace with the dead. He linked the Christmas celebrations to Roman Saturnalia and celebrations of the solstice.

 

I learned about the sacrifice of Father Christmas this morning from a BBC Radio 4 programme, Something Understood, hosted by Mark Tully, a former Indian correspondent for the BBC. These kinds of programmes are one of the glories of the BBC, whose independence and very existence is threatened by our malevolent, autocratic Conservative government. Our current rulers are just the kind of autocrats who would hang Father Christmas if he disagreed with their politics.

14,000 residents, one Virgin and 3 million pilgrims

 

To reach Talpa de Allende from the Pacific coast, you wind your way through the pine forests of the coastal highlands for a couple of hours. Briefly, the road descends across the broad, heavily cultivated Valley of Mascota, and then climbs again on its way to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. At intervals you pass roadside shrines, some of which have concrete benches and tables for weary pilgrims to rest and take refreshments. A right turn takes you on to the only road into and out of Talpa. The first glimpse of the town is a parking area on a high cliff above the valley. Here stands a chapel dedicated to a priest who died on his way to worship in Talpa. The road winds its way down to the valley and directs you to the main street, Independencia. The first-time visitor is surprised by the number of hotels on Independencia. Most Mexican towns of this size have one or two modest hotels, but Talpa has quantities – at least 31, of which 20 are classed as “economical”. Those that advertise a double room for 250 pesos (£10/$12) per night must be very economical indeed. But we had reservations at the brand-new Doña Francisca Boutique Hotel, Talpa’s equivalent of the Ritz.

 

Downtown Talpa

Before Spain colonized Mexico from 1521-1821, Talpa was a Nahua (the same ethnic group as the Aztecs) town called Tlalipan. Tlalipan’s residents were lucky enough to be left alone by the Spaniards until 1532 when a lieutenant of the thuggish Nuño de Guzmán appeared in the valley. However, nobody showed much interest in Tlalipan until silver was discovered in nearby Aranjuez. Suddenly, Spanish families arrived and the administration in Mexico City converted Indigenous Tlalipan into the Spanish municipality of Santiago de Talpa. Little more of note happened until, in a now independent Mexico, Talpa’s most prominent citizens sided with the anticlerical Liberals in the 1850s War of the Reform. In 1885 Talpa ditched its religious name and became Talpa de Allende in honour of one of the heroes of Independence, Ignacio Allende.

 

An ice cream shop on Independencia

A short walk to the main plaza tells you all you need to know about modern Talpa’s economy and society. There are restaurants aplenty. Shops selling huaraches stock huge quantities of leather sandals, surely more than enough for every one of the 14,000 inhabitants of the town. The sweet shops sell rollos, sausage shaped sweets of guayava or of a local bitter/sweet fruit called arrayán, some filled with cajeta (a caramel made from milk) or cajeta de guayava, and rompope, a sweetened alcoholic drink of various flavours There are also a few neverías (ice cream shops), so the Mexican sweet tooth is well catered for. Then, of course, there are the souvenir shops selling memorabilia – reproductions in various sizes of the Virgin of the Rosary, and assorted other religious items – for the business of Talpa is pilgrimage and little else.

 

Rollos and rompope for sale

The Famous Lefty retaurant, specializing in birria (a meat stew flavoured with chiles, a Jalisco speciality)

The plaza is dominated by a not particularly attractive basilica in Neoclassical style. At the entrance gate you put on your obligatory cubrebocas (face mask) and a polite gentleman checks your temperature. Once inside, you notice – sign of the times – that many of the pews are draped with the kind of tape you see at accident or crime scenes to limit the number of faithful able to sit down. Above the altar stands the diminutive (she is also known affectionately as La Chaparrita or “Shorty”) dark-skinned figure of the Virgin who, when there is not a pandemic, brings 3 million people a year to Talpa. The most devout among these walk 117km. along La Ruta del Peregrino (Route of the Pilgrim), particularly to celebrate the Virgin’s birthday on 7 October or at Easter.

 

The Virgen del Rosario on the altar

The parish church of San José de Talpa

The story of the Virgin begins in the 17^th century, when Spanish priests walked or rode on muleback from church to church in their large parishes scattered across the mountains of modern Jalisco state. An indispensable element in a priest’s baggage was a lightweight, easy to transport Virgin. One priest carried a small Virgin made of corn stalks and orchid glue in Michoacán. After many years the Virgin was installed in Mascota, but it seems that she did not want to stay there, and persuaded her custodian to take her to Talpa. The people of Mascota recovered her, but again she persuaded her attendant to carry her to Talpa. By this time the poor little figure was badly decayed and it was decided to bury her in a well in the parish church of San José de Talpa, around the corner from the plaza. However, rays of light emitted from the well and the Virgin of the Rosary arose, no longer a figure of worm-eaten corn stalks, but a splendidly attired stone image. The miracle was witnessed by an Indigenous woman. [Miracles associated with Virgins are generally witnessed by an Indigenous person in Mexico. The most important of them all, the Virgin of Guadalupe, made herself known through an Indian man called Juan Diego.] A sign draws one’s attention to the miracle: “In this place the holy image of Our Lady of the Rosary was renovated. As she was not buried, the well remained as testimony of the miracle. Talpa, 19^th of September 1644.” 

The altar of the chapel where the Virgin of the Rosary was transformed, now watched over by a copy of her image

 

 

La Chaparrita carried in procession

A tourist bus offers various excursions: to a coffee plantation, to the nearby maple woods, unique in Mexico apparently, or to the “Olmec” petroglyphs. Since the business of Talpa is Catholicism, we opted for the tour of seven chapels and Cristo Rey (Christ the King). Devotion to Cristo Rey would be a normal focus of worship in most Catholic countries, but in Mexico he attracts a fierce devotion rooted in the country’s history. For in the late 1920s the hierarchy of the Mexican church decided to oppose the laws of the revolutionary regimes that had restricted religious activities and nationalized church properties. Many libraries and archives in contemporary Mexico are housed in former churches as a result. Finally, the bishops decided to strike. Churches were closed, there were no masses, baptisms, religious marriages or burials, except for those carried out in secret by clandestine priests at great risk to their safety. For those who would like a flavour of these turbulent times Graham Greene’s account of his travels in Mexico, Lawless Roads, or his novel, The Power and the Glory, about a priest pursued by the regime and racked by doubts about his faith, are good and evocative reads.

 

The monument to Cristo Rey

The faithful responded by taking up arms, especially in western Mexico in small towns like Talpa. On a hill above the town, our guide told us, the federal forces executed captured cristeros. On that hill now stands the grandiose monument to Cristo Rey, a huge concrete obelisk topped with a blue half-dome on which Christ stands looking across the town. Behind him are two small chapels and a larger building for exhibitions or events.

 

In the Chapel of St Michael, the saint "throw[s] into hell Satan and the other malign spirits that wander the earth to damn souls."

We had dinner one evening in a cenaduría (dinner only restaurant). The business model is to serve a limited range of antojitos (delicacies/snacks) at inexpensive prices. We shared a table with a brother and sister. Their family, all natives of Talpa, but most now living and working elsewhere, had gathered for a one-year anniversary mass for their late mother. The brother now works at a huge cattle feed lot in California. His job is to drive up and down long lines of cows dispensing food so that they fatten up as fast and as cheaply as possible. Since COP26 was scheduled in Glasgow, I could not help thinking of the CO² emissions produced by this charming man and his employers. However, the feed lot gives him a living he could not hope for in Talpa, and his sons were born in California so are now US as well as Mexican citizens. I thought it best not to discuss the environmental impact of his work. Moreover, he made it clear that he would much prefer to return to his terruño, and that his employer was muy codo (literally “very elbow”, meaning very mean, a phrase usually accompanied by tapping an elbow with the hand). Our conversation reminded me of our guide on the tourist bus, a young graduate in engineering from the Centro Universitario de la Costa or CUC in Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta. Mexico produces plenty of well-trained professionals, but few professional jobs.

 

Huaraches for sale

Late in the afternoon, as we strolled round the downtown streets shopping for huaraches, we noticed a small group standing to the side of the basilica with loudspeakers, and then a number of municipal policemen descended from a van carrying firearms. This caused us some alarm. Were the officers going to suppress a small demonstration? Was a criminal about to be arrested in a shoot out? However, the police officers, formed disciplined ranks clutching their weapons at attention. The civilians also stood to attention opposite them, their right arm across their chest, while an officer slowly lowered a large Mexican flag as the national anthem (“Mexicans, when called to war, prepare the steel and the bridle”, etc. Stirring bellicose stuff.) blared out of the speakers. Civic patriotism is the other religion of Talpa, the ceremony organized by a descendant municipal government of the state against which the cristeros once battled.

 

The flag is lowered

The pandemic has, of course, been an economic disaster for Talpa – no 3 million pilgrims. Our hotel, opened just in time for the lockdown measures, had only three occupied rooms: our two and the room of a couple from Oakland, California. They had requested a room overlooking the street, not realizing that at night the streets fill with people dining on tacos and other delicacies served by mobile vendors, traffic and the noise of music blaring from restaurants and bars. We had seen the man loudly protesting to the receptionist that his wife could not sleep. We met at breakfast next morning when we helped them to understand the breakfast options. I explained to them that social life in Mexico is always noisy, and in the centre of town much of it is conducted on the street.

 

Making galletas de nata (cream biscuits), another local delicacy

Talpa is not a particularly picturesque town, but its setting in a valley surrounded by verdant hills is stunning, the intense devotion to the Virgin is very Mexican, the tostadas, enchiladas, tamales, tacos and sopes served in the cenadurías are excellent, and the people hospitable. And the sandals are a bargain.

Rollos, Rompope Doña Chayo (vanilla, hazelnut, coffee and almond flavours), and furniture for sale

 

 

Caring and running for disabled children in Puerto Vallarta

 

I know a good deal about Mexico’s history. But my son Chris, who works for a charity, Pasitos de Luz, in the Bahía de Banderas tourist resort area on the Pacific coast, has learned about Mexico not from books and documents, but from his participation in the lives of Mexicans, from impoverished parents of disabled children to wealthy residents, the Canadian and American expatriate community, the state bureaucracies of Nayarit and Jalisco, local and national media, and his neighbours in San Vicente, Nayarit.

 

For example, during our recent stay in a hotel in Nuevo Vallarta, Chris chatted to the waiter who served us lunch and asked if he was de planta, meaning whether he was a year-round member of staff, or one of the many employed only for the six-month high season. This fortunate young man is de planta, but his colleagues who are not live especially economically precarious lives. Chris took us for a drive in the Ameca River valley, through the suburban towns beyond San Vicente. We noticed a number of smart buses emblazoned with the logo of the Vidanta Group, an enormously influential vacation resort company. Chris explained that these were taking resort staff home after the end of their shift. The homes were often public housing: small, identical homes built in rows, with no public space other than the street, and only a small concrete yard at the back, their whitewashed walls stained black in places. Chris told us that several of his Pasitos colleagues also live in these grim developments.

In the morning hotel workers sweep the public areas of the building, the gardens and the beach. The hotel business model is based on cheap labour.

If you are a poorly paid worker in the tourism sector, a disabled child is an unexpected economic burden, your home is almost certainly poorly ventilated (and certainly not air conditioned) in an exceptionally hot climate, and generally unsuitable for a child with special needs. In theory, the family might be entitled to help from the Sistema Nacional Para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (National System for the Integral Development of the Family), or DIF, the body charged with the constitutional duty of protecting the rights of children, “principally those who, on account of their physical, mental or social condition are vulnerable, to enable them to live a full and productive life.” I have seen DIF offices in towns with populations of only a few thousand people, so its network seems to be extensive. DIF issues identification cards that entitle disabled people to discounts in certain businesses. Chris tells me that DIF also offers therapy for disabled children, but charges a fee, which prevents the children of poor families from receiving vital support.

 

Pasitos de Luz celebrated its 20^th year during the pandemic. Its registered legal name is

Mamás Unidas por la Rehabilitación de sus Hijos A.C. (Mothers United for the Rehabilitation

of their Children Civil Association). Twenty years ago, Pasitos was a cooperative of mothers

operating from a building in the Bobadilla district of Puerto Vallarta. When I visited

Bobadilla in 2014 it was bursting at the seams with equipment, a kitchen, a nursery, staff

and children. The front door advertised what Pasitos offered to parents desperate to

improve the life chances of their child: “FREE professional care for disabled children [with]

cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, myelomeningocele, autism, impairment from meningitis

early years stimulation, special education, other syndromes, special nursery.” Care was

provided Monday to Friday from 7am to 7pm.

 

Chris at the Bobadilla building of Pasitos in 2014

 
The front door at Pasitos

Pasitos now operates from a spacious, cool and well-ventilated building, with spacious gardens, 

and recently a hydrotherapy pool, set among fields of watermelons and cucumbers just outside 

San Vicente. Physiotherapists help the children to lift their heads, to sit, to walk. They learn 

basic skills: at Bobadilla I met a tall fifteen-year-old boy who had recently learned to hold a 

pencil so that he could be taught to write. They are also given a nutritious breakfast and lunch. 

Such life-enhancing work does not cost a fortune in our terms – the annual budget is a little 

more than US$250,000 – but charitable giving is not a well-developed social practice as it is 

in the UK, the USA and Canada and raising that money is hard work. Much of the funding is 

raised at events for expatriate residents during the high season. Covid-19 stopped that funding 

stream dead, although Chris is now organizing the annual River Café Fashion Show, the 

biggest fund raiser, since March 2020. Pasitos survived by drawing on its very modest reserves 

and putting the staff on half-time work and pay. When the children returned in September some 

had regressed, so the pains-taking therapy had to begin again.

 
The new Pasitos building, known as The Castle

Chris has been touring gyms promoting his 21K challenge, to run from “Old Pasitos” in Bobadilla to 

“New Pasitos” on 11 December. His goal it to recruit from the gyms’ customers more sponsored runners. 

He tells me that the gym members understand the concept of a personal running challenge, but the 

dea of seeking sponsorship for a good cause is quite foreign to them. Nevertheless, a friend, 

Rodolfo, who is running the Mexico City Marathon in November will join Chris to run the 21 kilometres 

from Bobadilla to San Vicente.

 
Physiotherapist Eliseo teaches Alexis to walk. Both are blind

If readers of my blog would like to sponsor Chris, those in Mexico can give at: 

https://carreravirtual.recaudia.com/ayudadesdecasa/21k_2021/pasitos_de_luz/chris_jacobs, 

Readers in the USA and Canada can donate here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/pasitosdeluz

Readers in the UK should contact me at ianjacobsipswich@gmail.com. If you know of any 

organization, such as a local church, gym or disabled children’s group that might sponsor him 

please send them a link to this blog.
A session in the physiothrapist room

Thank you,

Ian Jacobs

Paid by the line with money printed by their bosses to work in hot airless tunnels

 

The landscape en route to San Sebastián del Oeste from Puerto Vallarta

 

Visitors to the Museo Conchita Encarnación in San Sebastián del Oeste, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, ring a bell and wait for Conchita’s daughter and granddaughter to appear. The granddaughter collects the entrance fee (20 pesos, equivalent to one US dollar). The daughter conducts the tour of the one room museum, a profusion of old photos, assorted memorabilia and curiosities. In fact, the display is a memorial to three closely intermarried families, the Encarnación, Sánchez and Aguirre, who, so the story goes, agreed to marry only members of their three families so that their Spanish blood should not be mixed with Mexican. The house is built of adobe (mud brick) and is about three hundred years old

 

One of the objects on display is a 19^th-century Libro de Raya (literally “Line Book”), used to record the days worked by labourers in the families’ silver mines. Against the name of each mineworker (such as José de Jesús Tovar and Juan Bernal, who have many lines against their names, or José Ancola and José María Velasquez, who seem to have worked in the mine shafts only occasionally) are the Rayas (“Lines”). Once the mine owner had totted up the days worked, he printed on a small hand-operated wooden printing press a simple paper token representing the number of reales (the currency of the day) earned. The miner could spend these tokens only in the shops (the Tiendas de Raya, literally “Line Shops”) in the town, one of which apparently belonged to a branch of the Sánchez family. The shop owners could then exchange the tokens for silver coins. Thus, the only people involved in these transactions who received real money were the mine owners and the merchants. The closest the mine workers came to handling silver was when they dug it out of the hills above San Sebastián.

 

The Libro de Raya

I know a good deal about Mexican silver mining from my sudy of mining in Taxco, a somewhat similar mining town in the state of Guerrero. My studies had told me that mine work was hard and dangerous, but I had not truly realized how miserable must have been the life of a Mexican mineworker until we followed the camino de las minas to the grandly named Mina de Santa Gertrudis (Santa Gertrudis was a 13^th-century German mystic; presumably the mine owner was a devout admirer of her). The path took us up into the hills to the north of the town. The vegetation was lush and watered by numerous rapidly flowing streams. We passed several houses, most built of adobe and corrugated iron, some of breeze blocks. 

The Camino a las Minas

 

 

Entrance to the Mina Santa Gertrudis

The mine is a damp, dank, narrow tunnel, which according to a local lady we met on our way down to the town runs for100 metres into the hillside and is accessible only in the dry season. The only ventilation seems to have been the narrow opening. To imagine working conditions, one must conjure up the image of men working bent low in a narrow, hot, sweaty, airless tunnel in the 16^th- and 17^th-century early days of mining by the light of candles made of beeswax or tallow, and by the 19^th-century by the flame of a carborundum lamp like one displayed in the museum. We passed several such shafts on our way up to the Santa Gertrudis mine. Rock from the face of the mine was carried out on the backs of labourers: there was no technology beyond the stone or iron hammer or pick used to dislodge the ore.

 

Mine entrance: note the brown water streaming from it

Mine work was not only hard and unpleasant, it was also dangerous. Silver ore generally contained toxic elements such as arsenic. The rock was carried away on mules to a hacienda de beneficio (“a refining mill:) where it was ground to a powder, mixed with salt, water and mercury (another toxic element) and then smelted to produce silver ingots. The 19^th-century mine owners of San Sebastián stored their ingots in a wooden chest in the house. Once the chest was full, the silver was carried by mule train to a railway station a five-day journey through the mountains. Bandits frequently raided the convoys of mules, but we were told, only twice succeeded in stealing the silver.

 

Museo Conchita Encarnación, general view: the press used to print tokens for the labourers is on the left, the Italian chests on the right

Life was evidently not so hard for the mine owners. The objects on display include a hat made in Paris in the 19^th century and a Chinese silk and lace baptism gown in which generations of the familywere baptised. We were shown a photograph of six galanes (“dandies”), elegantly dressed and sporting long Spanish-style moustaches. The galanes met for frequent banquets, at which each was given a napkin with which to wipe their mouth and another napkin specially designed to clean their magnificent moustaches. Wedding photos of couples who might be related as aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews or cousins, show elegantly dressed brides and expensively suited grooms. Items of heirloom furniture, such as two Italian chests and a baby’s cot, are on display. Between 1867 and 1910, when the Mexican Revolution brought an end to the family’s mining businesses, an Encarnación, Sánchez or Aguirre was Municipal President of San Sebastián on 21 occasions. The sign outside the house informs the visitor that Pablo Encarnación is considered the father of the town for his generosity and his service a Municipal President.

 

José Rogelio Álvarez and his encyclopedia

Other members of the family became prominent beyond their small home town. José Rogelio Álvarez was the editor of the Enciclopedia de México, published in 1977. Photos in the museum show him meeting the former President of Mexico from 1982-1988, Miguel de la Madrid. Another member of the family, Amado Aguirre Santiago (1863-1949), was a graduate in mining engineering and a general during the Revolution of 1910-1920. He fought with Generals Manuel Diéguez and Álvaro Obregón against Pancho Villa in northern Mexico. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1917, which wrote Mexico’s current constitution, and after the war he held various government offices, was governor of the Federal Territories of Quintana Roo and Baja California, and was interim governor of Jalisco. Another Aguirre, Agustín Aguirre Ramos (1867-1942) was a priest and bishop of Sinaloa for 20 years until his death. Yet another Aguirre, Ignacio (1900-1990) was a painter and engraver, who as a teenager also fought against Pancho Villa from 1915-1917. He was a student of Diego Rivera, and in the 1930s a member, and in the 1950s director, of the famous artists’ print collective, the Taller de Gráfica Popular (“Peoples’ Print Workshop”). However, the 1910 Revolution brought an end to the family’s mining enterprises. Doña Encarnación’s daughter and granddaughter seem to live in straitened circumstances today.

 

San Sebastián's town sign and ice cream shop

At its peak San Sebastián had a population of 20,000, now much reduced from its heyday to less than 7,000. In the 19^th century silver made the town sufficiently rich for the New York Life insurance company to open an office there: a policy on the life of one of the family was on display in the Encarnación Museum. For most of its existence San Sebastián was connected to the outside world by mule tracks. Only in 1957 was a road constructed to connect with the nearest highway to Guadalajara, the state capital. The town now lives principally off tourism from the resorts of Bahía de Banderas (“Bay of Flags), about two hours away, or from Guadalajara. There are one or two shops selling silver jewelry, but, I was told, the silver comes from elsewhere. There are several hotels (one a deluxe boutique establishment), restaurants and bars. The hills are good for growing coffee. Tropical fruits, from which a women’s cooperative makes jam, are plentiful. One jam which caused us some confusion when it was served as a complement to pan de elote (a dessert made of sweetcorn) was mermelada de faisán. In any other Spanish speaking country faisán means “pheasant”, but our helpful waiter explained that we were not eating pheasant jam, but rather one made of a local berry of the same name.

 

San Sebastián: the plaza, Portico Morelos and church

Church of Saint Sebastian Martyr

 

Many of the buildings in San Sebastián date from the colonial period, mostly from the 18^th century. The centre of the town is, as usual, the plaza with its gardens in the centre and its bandstand. The northern side is occupied by the Morelos Arcade, occupied by shops, bars and restaurants. Somewhat unusually, the church does not stand on the main square, but just off it behind the Morelos Arcade. It was built in the 18^th century, but its interior was later remodelled in neoclassical style. Our lodgings, the Hotel del Puente, is a typical 18^th century bourgeois home, constructed round an interior garden, round which a portico shelters residents from rain. Rooms, entered directly from the portico, have windows that are unglazed with their reja (bars or railings) and wooden shutters. The building lacks air conditioning and heating, but supplies its guests liberally with blankets.

 

 

The Hotel del Puente and its Garden

At the foot of the camino a las minas stands a building that would have been found in any 18^th- or 19^th-centruy town, the mesón or inn. The mainstay of the transport system was the arriero or mule driver, who travelled the mountain trails, carrying goods, including luxuries for the well to do, and transported the silver of San Sebastián to the railhead. Since journeys took days or weeks, a network of inns to rest and feed both the arrieros and their animals was essential.

 

The former mesón, now a family home

The informative signs that tell the visitor about the history of the buildings of San Sebastián, and praise the Encarnación family as one of the wealthiest in the municipality, do not name men such as José de Jesús Tovar and Juan Bernal, whose contribution to the wealth of San would be unrecorded were it not for their entries in the Libro de Raya. The visiting tourist admires the colonial architecture, visits the mines, dines and shops, but is not encouraged to ask about those on whose backs the town was built.

San Sebastián looking north

 

A Jacobs at COP26

 

I can’t avoid a brief post to reflect parental pride in my son David’s small contribution to COP26. For some years he has produced animations for the European Space Agency (ESA). One of the animations that ESA commissioned for the meeting in Glasgow is Change in the Arctic, available here:

 

Change in the Arctic 

 

 

To see the video click on Change in the Arctic and then on the url (https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2021/09/Change_in_the_Arctic). You will be asked whether you wish to be redirected to the link. Click on it again to see the animation. Sorry for the elaborate method of linking - the blog site requires it. You can also just cut and paste the link into a new window of your browser.

 

David designed the giant ice cube that looms larger and larger over London. It so pleased the ESA scientists that they decided to have a large inflatable version made for their display at COP26. Since the meeting is being held in Glasgow, it is particularly appropriate that David has contributed to the debate there, since he is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art.

Better to be on a bridge than behind a wall

 

It is a sad fact that we sometimes learn about the great achievements of a person’s life when we gather to mourn their death. This was certainly true of Anthony Wood, whom I had met only two or three years ago.

 

Over a lunch in our garden one day, Anthony told me two stories that exemplified his extraordinary life. He had been a jazz promoter and in 1998 had organized three concerts by Miles Davis, the great American trumpeter, bandleader and composer. Davis’ management was very demanding when it came to finance, and Anthony had little or no financial backing. Nothing daunted, Anthony somehow managed to meet Davis’ managers’ demands.This, I have learned was typical Anthony: he was not deterred by risks that might intimidate others, and enthusiasm trumped business sense. But his enthusiasm could produce extraordinary results. Not only did he pull off those three concerts, he arranged a rare interview on network television with Davis by Jools Holland.

 

Anthony’s other tale touched on another of his enthusiasms – riding his BMW motorbike. He had recently completed a feat known as the Iron Butt Challenge, which requires the biker to ride 1,000 miles in 24 hours without stopping (other than for essential bodily functions or fuel). Anthony had worked out that, if he drove to Berlin, and from there north to the top of Finland to see the Aurora Borealis, he could drive for 24 hours in daylight, which reduced the risks of the challenge. He had also begun plans to join a bikers’ ride in Jordan. He could not afford to ship his bike to the Middle East and he told me that one cannot hire motorbikes in Jordan. However, he had a plan: to hire a bike in Beirut, ride it to Petra, and there join the ride. Alas, Covid, the Beirut explosion and death frustrated Anthony’s plans.

 

Anthony the biker, August 2021

I learned from his obituaries and by “attending” his funeral online that Anthony was much more to the jazz and avant garde world than a man who had once organized three Miles Davis concerts against all financial odds. From early in his life Anthony developed an unbounded enthusiasm for music. He became a fan of Alexis Korner, “the founding father of British blues”, travelled widely to attend performances, and persuaded Korner to give a series of interviews at his home which Anthony recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

 

Anthony at an Actual Events concert at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1981

Anthony spent the little money he had on his collection of vinyl records and soon branched out into avant-garde jazz. One of the music musicians he met, in 1978, was the improvisation guitarist John Russell, who invited Anthony to stay in his home and encouraged him to become a music promoter. Anthony founded Actual Events to introduce the music of avant-garde British and international musicians to the British public. Audiences were sometimes very small, so this was a labour of love and certainly not a money-making exercise. Then in 1982 Anthony founded the seminal jazz magazine entitled The Wire: Jazz, Improvised Music and …”. In classic start-up style, Anthony financed the magazine, produced it from home, managed distribution and persuaded music friends to write for nothing. However, Anthony could not sustain the magazine without external finance and in 1984 he sold it to Naim Attallah’s Namara Group. Within the year Anthony had lost his magazine as a result of a boardroom coup. This setback and financial problems ended Anthony’s career in music promotion and publishing, but The Wire lived on to become an important part of the jazz scene.

 

An early issue of The Wire

Anthony now turned his enthusiasm to his other love – motorbikes. He joined long bike rides and wrote articles for biking magazines. He also had an interest, awakened during his family’s holidays, in Spain, and had made several friends there. Anthony was a regular at a biker’s café in London which had an affiliate in Barcelona. When terrorists attacked the city in 2017 Anthony got on his bike, contacted the biker’s café there, rode to Barcelona and organized a bikers’ ride into the city as an act of solidarity. Before they set out Anthony was invited to address the crowd and to ride at the head of the procession.

 

In his later years Anthony lived on the bank of the Thames in sheltered housing. He sat on committees to represent the interests of tenants and of social housing in general. He was never wealthy, but never daunted by adversity. He lived his life according to his great loves. He encountered many setbacks, which at times must have dispirited him, but they never quite extinguished his enthusiasm.

 

Anthony’s particular love of Spain made him a committed European. His friend and former colleague on The Wire Chrissie Murray quoted Anthony in the obituary she wrote: ‘There are too many walls being erected, physical ones by governments, physiological [sic: perhaps he meant ‘psychological’] ones by individuals, both trying to retain the illusion of perceived past greatness or racial purity. All intended to keep out either people or ideas. Bridges, on the other hand, close gaps, cross divides, bring people and ideas closer together. Despite the dangers of falling off, I would rather be on a bridge than behind a wall.’

 

I wish that I could have joined Anthony on his bridge earlier and that I had asked him more questions about his life and achievements.

 

For those curious to know more of Anthony his obituaries and memories of those who knew him can be found at:

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/larger-than-life-an-irrepressible-polymath-an-adventurer-memories-of-anthony-wood

 

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/anthony-wood-7-june-1948-15-september-2021

 

https://londonjazznews.com/2021/10/05/anthony-wood-a-tribute-by-chrissie-murray/comment-page-1/ 

https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2021/10/06/anthony-wood-free-jazz-flame/