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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As readers of MexConnect are no doubt aware, Mexico has a great variety of tourist attractions of various types. There are the pre-Hispanic ruins, Spanish colonial architecture, churches and cathedrals, government buildings, battlefields, fortresses, houses of famous people, museums, beaches, mountains and other types of natural scenery. But what about industrial tourism? That’s one you […]
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We take the coastal road south as it winds through the tree-covered Sierra Madre del Sur mountains and past vistas of the blue waters of the Pacific far below, traveling to Zihuatanejo, pronounced Zi-Wat-En-Ay-O, as anyone who has ever heard the song of the same name knows. Often called Zihua for short, the name comes […]
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MexConnect.com is all about Mexico. While most articles focus on the interior, the edge of Mexico is still Mexico and Mexico’s border regions are worthy of exploration. There is plenty to see there. My 20-year old son Raphael and I recently took a drive in a Mexico border region. We followed the U.S.-Mexican border, on […]
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Chipilo, Puebla is different from other Mexican pueblos. Very different. That’s because it is an Italian pueblo, settled in 1882 by Italians from Veneto, in northern Italy. In the late 1880s, the Mexican government wanted to modernize its agricultural sector and recruited Europeans. Seventy-nine families arrived in Chipilo, worked hard and eventually succeeded in establishing […]
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In March 2023 the city of Guadalajara dedicated a new monument to world-renowned engineer-architect Luis Barragán. The monument, El Palomar, was originally designed by Barragán in the 1970s but did not come to fruition until many years after his death. Barragán’s career has been extensively documented. However, the emphasis has usually been on his later […]
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The walk from the Hotel Mesón de Jobito where I’m staying to the Convento de San Francisco is only 15 minutes away but it’s a distance that spans centuries. The route takes me from the hotel built in the 1700s as a residence and then later used as an inn with donkeys, mules, and horses […]
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