On my first evening in San Miguel de Allende, my friends and I walked up Callejón Blanco, the street where they were renting a house for the winter, turning right on to Quebrada and then, crossing a bridge overlooking Templo de las Monjas, we turned again onto Umarán, heading towards the city’s main plaza It […]
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As I mounted my red, Honda SL 175 combination bike a cool drizzle sprinkled Mexico City. The city only had seven million inhabitants then, but still presented a puzzling maze my three week visit hadn’t deciphered. Today’s tourists complain about the lack of highway signs but there were even fewer in 1971. Two possible potholed […]
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When you say the word Mexico, something odd happens to the anglophone ear. The M leans in. The E lingers. Pressure builds. Anticipation hums, then release. To most, it’s just a word. To a neurodivergent nervous system, it’s the waiting before the jump. Arriving in Mexico can feel like a sensory freefall. It is a […]
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More than a deep dive into cool waters, cenotes (sinkholes) are portals to the past, conjuring up the history and lore of the Yucatán Peninsula, where they were thought to be passageways to the underworld or Xibalba: the place where the dead met the most powerful of gods and underwent trials and challenges. But who […]
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In 2021, Mexico City unveiled its innovative Cablebús system, a network of gondola lifts intended to revolutionize urban mobility. The project aimed to integrate historically under-served neighborhoods with the city’s sprawling public transportation network, providing a much-needed lifeline for its residents. What began as a practical solution to a logistical challenge, however, has become one […]
Continue ReadingIn January 1975 my friend Linda drove me to the Mexican border where I took the train from Mexicali to Mexico City. It was my first trip out of the country alone and I was both nervous and excited. I booked a private compartment, inexpensive in those days, so I could relax and sleep in […]
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When the Spaniards arrived in the region in west central Mexico that would become Aguascalientes, Caxcán farmers and nomadic Zacatecos Indians and other early indigenous people were already crafting wine by foraging and fermenting the grapes that grew wild in these high desert plains. But the Spaniards had brought with them cuttings of Vitis vinifera, […]
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Javier Alvarado Saloma carefully cuts a piece of leather on which he’s traced an outline using a template. “I use either cow or pig skin,” he says, as he concentrates. Cutting the leather is the first step of several needed to make a mask. Two weeks after cutting the leather, he’ll have a finished mask, […]
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It would be hard to overstate the symbolic importance of Chapultepec Park, not only to Mexico City, but to the country as well. It has played a key role in Mexico’s history since the Mesoamerican era, with emperors and presidents eager to leave their mark on it. But its recent history also includes neglect. To […]
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The foods of the Pacific coast resort Puerto Vallarta can be as simple—and delicious—as those sold by vendors who stroll the beach hawking skewers of fire-roasted shrimp and trays of freshly shucked oysters or the street vendors like Caesar who, wielding a machete, sells fresh coconuts at his stand on Aquiles Serdán to a long […]
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