Japan: Modernity and Tradition

I mentioned recently that connections between Mexico and Japan go back to the late 16^th century. A visitor familiar with Mexico is struck by certain superficial similarities between the two cultures in terms of the formal politeness of daily life and the forms of deference to people of higher social status (which automatically includes foreigners). In Japan the behaviours and forms of address are multiple and difficult for foreigners to understand in full. They clearly reflect ancient traditions and systems of status and power. This set me thinking about the theme of tradition and modernity in Japan.

Our plane reading was Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (the master of the short story) and, in Jan’s case, Natsume Sōseki, an early 20^th century novelist whose writing career lasted only eleven years, but won him enduring popularity. His first novel, I Am a Cat, was an instant success. We visited the Sōseki museum, built on the site of his home, and only a few yards from our son’s apartment. He published more than 20 novels, a book about the theory of literature and translations of works from English and French. Much of his literary production was for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The Japanese government sent Sōseki to London for two years (he recalled them as the two most awful years of his life) to study English literature. His home was of traditional wooden construction and design, with a garden dominated by a Japanese banana tree. His study, recreated in the museum, contained a large library, a low Japanese writing desk and implements. Sōseki’s interest in foreign literature and languages marked him out as modern. Perhaps still more remarkable was his taste for bread and sandwiches. 

Sōseki’s study

Akutagawa was an admirer of Sōseki and attended his weekly salons in his home. Like his mentor, Akutagawa drew on Japanese tradition and western modernity. He re-worked medieval Japanese stories in modern language of great power and concision. Two such stories, Rashōmon and In a Bamboo Grove, deal with good and evil and the slippery nature of truth. Akira Kurosawa combined the two quite different tales into a brilliant film, Rashōmon. On the other hand, Akutagawa was an avid reader of western literature. In Spinning Wheels, he refers to himself as a modern Monsieur Bovary and writes of his admiration for Strindberg and Dostoyevsky. In Death Register he draws on his own experiences, informing us that his mother was a madwoman. Like Sōseki, he wrote to deadlines for a newspaper. And like his master his career was brief: only thirteen years.

Akutagawa

It is hard to escape modernity in contemporary Tokyo’s neon-signed avenues, its skyscrapers, the boutiques of self-consciously fashionable districts such as Daikanyama and Naka-Meguro, or the obsession with gadgetry on show in Akihabara Electric Town. Yet, the drive for modernity is little more than century and a half old. The man credited with dragging Japan into the modern, international, era is emperor Meiji (reigned 1867-1912). The need to modernize Japan had been made clear in 1853 when Commodore Perry’s American naval squadron sailed into Tokyo Bay to give the Japanese a message: they were to open their economy on American terms or else. The humiliated and impotent Japanese had no choice but to agree.

Meiji’s remedy was to import skills of all kinds from overseas. European artists were hired to teach western style oil painting with linear perspective (known as yōga) as opposed to Japanese painting using traditional materials and techniques (nihonga). Graphic designers taught drafting skills, useful for designing postage stamps, but also for blueprints of war ships and armaments. Architects were brought to Japan to design western-style buildings. The success of Meiji’s programme was demonstrated by triumph in the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese war ten years later, in which the Japanese navy destroyed the Russian fleet.

The father of modern Japanese architecture is said to be Josiah Conder, a Briton hired by the government in 1877. Conder designed the Naval Ministry, the Ueno Imperial Museum, churches and university buildings, and villas for wealthy Japanese eager to adopt western tastes. One such was designed for Baron Furukawa Toranosuke, an owner of copper mines. The baron also had a garden designed by a Japanese, Ogawa Jihei. The garden combines a formal rose garden with a Japanese landscape garden. We visited the garden, accompanied by vast crowds of Japanese rose enthusiasts.

Conder’s Furakawa villa, brick clad in stone

Conder also trained a number of eminent Japanese architects. However, the modernization process was not entirely completed, at least in architectural terms, by the time of Meiji’s death in 1912. We joined a tour of the Japanese Diet building, the seat of the House of Representatives (roughly MPs) and the House of Councillors (roughly senators), designed by Japanese architects, after designs by German and American architects had failed to receive approval. The building was constructed in the 1930s using Japanese materials, but exceptions had to be made for technologies that the Japanese had not mastered. These included stained glass (from Britain), mail chutes and a system of door locks with a master key (both American).

The Diet Building

While Baron Furukawa opted for an entirely western-style building, the mansions of other wealthy Japanese combined traditional style with imported modern features. One such was built in 1919 for Kyu-Asakura, Chairman of the Tokyo City Government, who married into an aristocratic family of landowners. The family added to their fortune through rice milling in the 19^th century. Asakura adopted his wife’s last name, which no doubt helped his political career. The residential and business areas of the house are of traditional wood construction, with a tiled roof. Screens, some exquisitely painted with motifs of flowers, birds, fans and other designs, divide the rooms. The flooring of the rooms is traditional tatami mats. Rooms are measured in terms of tatami (a small room might be four tatami, a large room twelve or more). In some rooms the cedar wood, obtained at great expense, was cut to display the grain. However, there are innovations. The external screen doors, traditionally of light wood and paper moving on a wooden sill, here are glazed with glass and move on rollers because of the weight. There are western-style toilet fittings. The reception room is wood-panelled, carpeted and has decidedly un-traditional sash windows. In terms of materials the storehouse is a radical departure: it is of concrete construction. The exterior walls have rows of hooks from which mats of wet straw were hung as a measure against fire – fire was a frequent cause of destruction in a city constructed mostly of wood. Asakura also had a garage – and therefore a car at a very early date – constructed, again, of modern materials: concrete blocks and corrugated iron. It would not be out of place in a modest British home, but in 1919 Tokyo signalled wealth.

Asakura house

Asakura house garden

The Kyu-Asakura house is a rare survival (only about three homes of that period survive) on account of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and following fires, of 1923, and the fire-bombing of World War II. This accounts for the architectural modernity of Tokyo, much of it on a scale of ordinary to awful, but a surprising amount truly striking. On a stroll through Harajuku, a district popular with teenagers, some in school uniform, others in outlandish attire, we saw a small spectacular cantilevered office building designed by Klein Dytham. The same partnership designed the Tsutsaya bookshop and other buildings under the train tracks at nearby Naka-Meguro, close to the cafés and boutiques along the Meguro river.

Klein Dytham office building

Tsutsuya bookshop

Despite the neon and the skyscrapers, it is not hard to find ancient temples and shrines in Tokyo – ancient that is in terms of foundation rather than construction, since few survived fire and earthquake. The columns that sustain Senso-Ji temple at Asakusa, for example, are of steel and the roof of titanium. Legend tells us that in 628 two fishermen caught a statue of the bodhisattva Kannon in the Sumida River. They took it to the ruler of their village, who converted his home into a temple to house it. Today, Senso-ji is a vast temple approached along an avenue of shops (religion and trade go well together in Japan). In contrast, we were pleased to find at Shibamata in the eastern suburbs of Tokyo, the Taishakuten Daikyo Buddhist temple, founded in 1629. Unlike Senso-ji, this temple is an entirely wooden structure that has survived earthquakes and wars. It is dedicated to Taishakuten, originally a Hindu god of thunder, adopted by Buddhism as a subduer of evil.

Taishakuten Daikyo Temple

The glory of this temple is the high relief carvings on the exterior, but especially in the interior, of scenes of worship, travelling monks and animals.

Taishakuten Daikyo wood carving

Aspects of the theme of tradition came up in conversations with friends. One told us that when she was young it was usual for girls to be taught ikebana (flower arranging) and tea ceremony as a preparation for marriage, but that few young women now devote much time to them. Over dinner in Kanazawa we commented that we had seen many young women in kimonos in the famous Kenroku-en garden. Our friends disabused us of the impression that tradition was stronger in Kanazawa than in Tokyo: the girls hire the kimonos, and are dressed by shop staff, since many do not know how to put on the kimono. In short, here tradition is a tourist experience.

We had eaten lunch that day opposite a wedding planning business and watched young couples being sold expensive packages. We asked our Kanazawa friends about their wedding forty years ago. They were married in a Shinto shrine, which was conveniently located within a wedding chapel. Their son had been married in a shrine, but his parents explained that the choice between shrine and wedding chapel (these are ubiquitous in Japan) does not usually express any deeply held faith.

When I travelled to Japan for business in the 1990s I met a Buddhist monk, dressed in yellow robes, at a private view in an art gallery in fashionable Omotesandō. He was drinking beer and told me that he was married to the artist. I asked him how he spent his time. He responded that he walked in mountains, bathed in streams and relied on donations for his meals. Drinking beer, wandering in mountains while enjoying beer and art world society in central Tokyo seemed an agreeable lifestyle. The Japanese are generally eclectic and practical. They choose elements of tradition that hold society together and help to make it work, and see no contradiction with simultaneously pursuing modernity in its many guises, superficial or profound.

Investigating ancient Mexico: 7000 B.C. to 1600 A.D.

A few of you have asked me to explain the project that brought us to Zamora. At the risk of boring you all I will try to do so in this bulletin.

In 1974, when I was a mere 22 years old, I left for Mexico City (Air India to New York and Greyhound bus to Laredo, Texas) to research a PhD. My topic was the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 in the state of Guerrero. The eventual result was a book that was translated into Spanish and, I am encouraged to discover, is still used as a textbook in Mexico.

1970s Guerrero was a lively place. A schoolteacher called Lucio Cabañas led a guerrilla group of the Partido de los Pobres (Party of the Poor). Lucio staged a spectacular coup by holding hostage the governor elect, Rubén Figueroa, a member of a powerful family in Guerrero, and very much a gun-toting, hard-drinking old style Mexican politician. The Mexican army occupied most of the state. I occasionally encountered them checking passengers on buses, but the soldiers were doing much nastier things to poor peasants up in the mountains. Guerrero, alas, was then, and is now, a bye-word for poverty and social deprivation. The difference now is that the drug trade has made the problems much uglier.

Guerrero has not always been the prototypical Mexican basket case. It was here that several of the heroes of Mexican Independence eventually defeated the armies of Spain. In 1813 José María

Aerial view of Chilpancingo

Morelos convened a constitutional congress in Chilpancingo (now the state capital) but was captured and executed before Independence was achieved. Finally, in 1821 Independence leader Vicente Guerrero met a turncoat Royalist general, Agustín de Iturbide in Acatempan to declare the Independence of the United States of Mexico. Their meeting is re-enacted as “the embrace of Acatempan” every year.

My project starts at the very beginning to investigate what Prehispanic Guerrero was like and what the Spaniards changed in the first eight decades of Independence. My question is whether what went wrong started with the arrival of the Spanish.

Laguna de Tuxpan, where maize was first cultivated

The story begins about 7,000BC on a lakeshore in the northern Guerrero Valley of Iguala. Here a group of nomadic hunter-farmers were the first to cultivate the staple grain of every modern Mexcan’s diet – maize. They prepared their dinner by grinding maize on a stone, leaving behind traces of starch which scientists analyzed just a few years ago. Without the agricultural innovations of those ancient guerrerenses (as the people of Guerrero are known) there could have been no Aztecs or Mayas in our children’s school textbooks.

 

Diego Rivera painting of an Indian woman grinding maize, 20th century

A little later, about 2,300BC another group of hunters were living in a bay on the site of the modern tourist resort of Acapulco. These guerrerenses lived off shellfish and fish. Analysis of thousands of fish bones has proved that their favourite was tuna. Now, tuna does not come close to the shore, so these early Mexicans must have had boats and fishing equipment to catch quite large fish. They also made the first known ceramics in Mexico: the not very beautifully named Pox Pottery.

Ancient Guerrero was rich in things which were hugely in demand in other parts of Mexico. Guerrerenses produced cotton in large quantities, and made very fancy clothing for the rich and powerful. They also cultivated cacao (Mexicans were the first people in the world to taste chocolate) and made gorgeously painted gourd cups from which the great and (not so) good drank. And if you wanted prestigious jewelry or sculpture made from precious stones, or shells from the Pacific coast, craftspeople in Guerrero could supply it. Guerrerenses were also skilled metalworkers, making fine objects of bronze and occasionally of gold.

Mezcala style sculptures from Guerrero

Guerrero was such a source of desirable goods that the two great empires of ancient Mexico, the Aztecs and the Tarascans fought frequent wars to control as much of the region as they could (the Aztecs controlled most, but the Tarascans seized territory with copper mines and salt pans).

Things changed radically when the Spaniards arrived. The conquerors were a rough and ready lot who wanted to get rich – and fast. As far as Guerrero was concerned, they were interested in only two things: precious metals and trade with Asia. Guerrero was the key to both.

An aerial view of Taxco with the church of Santa Prisca

In the north, not far from where those early farmers first cultivated maize, the Spaniards found silver in a place called Taxco. The indigenous people of Guerrero had worked metal for centuries, but in only small quantities to make ritual objects or jewelry. The Spaniards were different: they wanted lots of silver and they wanted it fast. For that they needed two things: human labour in large quantities and animals to feed the miners and to transport the metal to Mexico City – oh, and salt to extract the silver from the ore, and wood or charcoal to heat it. They solved the labour challenge by importing slaves from Africa, enslaving some Indians and forcing many more to work in the mines. Taxco was not a nice place to work: the silver ore contained lead. Since the ore had to be heated to extract the silver the miners were exposed to lead fumes, and their families drank lead in contaminated water. The mine owners stripped the hills of their forests to process the ore.

The mine owners made fortunes. The richest of all, was, curiously enough, a Frenchman, José de la Borda, who undertook many good works for the good of his soul. He is now best known as the man who built the exquisite church of Santa Prisca. Santa Prisca is an exception that proves the rule: very little of the silver wealth remained in Mexico. As soon as it was extracted, it was sent to Europe to finance the Spanish king’s wars, or to Asia to buy exotic luxuries. Taxco is now a destination for tourists who stroll its hilly streets lined by colonial buildings, visit Santa Prisca and shop for silver and other crafts.

Acapulco bay, probably 1950s

As some Spaniards rushed to the Taxco mines, others headed for the coast where they hoped to find the fabled western route to Asia. They found it at Acapulco Bay where ancient guerrerenses had once fished for tuna. In 1565 a Spanish friar guided a fleet of ships to Manila and, most importantly, found the return route. For the next 250 years Spanish ships arrived every year at Acapulco.  Merchants descended on the port to trade the silver dug out by Indian and African labour for precious silks, porcelains, works of art and spices from Asia. They loaded their purchases on great trains of mules to transport them on mountain tracks the 700kms or so to Veracruz on the Gulf Coast from where they were despatched to Spain. Imagine the quantity of mule droppings deposited along the route by tens of thousands of mules over 250 years.   Many Spaniards grew rich from the trade or from organizing mule transport.

You should not conclude from this brief and rather simplified account, that prehispanic guerrerenses lived in a democratic paradise: their rulers were autocrats who waged wars, owned slaves and practiced human sacrifice. But the point is that, in that context, Guerrero had quite a lot of things going for it. As if with a flick of a switch the Spaniards changed all that. They reorganized the regional economy on a south-north axis from Acapulco to Taxco and Mexico City. Everything that travelled the Royal Road, as the dung-laden track was grandly called, left for Mexico City, Asia or Europe, leaving little behind for the locals. Everywhere to the right and left of the road was of little interest except for grazing beef cattle, sheep and goats and raising mules. Before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico the largest domesticated animal was the turkey. Within two or three decades, Europeans travelled on horses, mules bore cargo, and herds of tens of thousands of grazing animals were wandering the remoter parts of Guerrero. Imagine animals whose like you had never seen coming over the hill in quantities to eat and trample your carefully planted field of maize.

It is impossible to say whether Guerrero would have been a better place if the Spaniards had never arrived. But while they busied themselves saving indigenous souls, they were responsible for at least some of modern Guerrero’s problems.

Zamora Epilogue: Elections of 1 July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inseguridad in Mexico

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the volcano

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

Paricutín from a distance

The lava field

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

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

The upper part of the façade of the church

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

Our lunch restaurant

Lunch is prepared

The church of St. James the Apostle

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

St. James The Apostle interior

 

The sotacoro of St. James the Aspostle

The huatapera chapel at Nurío

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

Church of St. Bartholomew, Cocucho

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

St. Bartholomew interior

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

The sotacoro of St. Bartholomew

The Virgin, little devils and the Holy Spirit

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

Walking to the huatapera

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

The courtyard of the huatapera

Interior of the chapel

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

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

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

The chapel façade

The procession of the Virgin begins

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

The Virgin

 

The procession returns to the chapel

Octavio with one of his works ready for firing

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

Diablitos

 

The kiln

The Holy Spirit emerges from the church

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

The procession

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

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

Tamales for sale

Cakes and jellies

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

Construction of the castillo

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

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

Another Mexico: cattle and cheese

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

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

The González home in San José

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

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

The González hom in San José

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

The González home in San José

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

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

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

Statue of Luis González

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

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

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

Statue of Apolinar Partida

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

Statue of Anatolio Partida

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