Many years ago, on one of my first trips to the United States, I had the opportunity to attend to a rather formal party, organized in honor of one of the local personalities at the small, charming Midwest city I was visiting. I remember that I received a printed invitation, and I also remember something […]
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Not a river exactly, Xochimilco is a vast system of canals and gardens at the southern extreme of this megalopolis called Mexico City. It was a lake at the time of the Aztecs. They floated rafts on the shallow lake´s surface and heaped them with rich soil and compost and grew enough produce on them […]
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As the evening mass ended, the huge colonial doors of Santa Maria Magdalena swung open. People swarmed down the church stairs into the plaza. I moved along with the crowd to a wrought iron bench. The small town plaza was alive with color and movement. Shadows flickered across the white curlicues on the kiosko or bandstand. Lights […]
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Moctezuma ordered his special chair. Pedro Páramo, in Juan Rulfo’s award winning novel sat upon one. Both men enjoyed equipales, the rustic leather furniture found everywhere in Mexico. Equipales are still hand-manufactured in many parts of the country. However in Zacoalco de Torres, a small town south of Guadalajara, the tradition dates back to Pre-Hispanic times. By the […]
Continue ReadingHace muchos años, en una de mis primeras visitas a los Estados Unidos, tuve la oportunidad de asistir a una fiesta más o menos formal, organizada en honor de alguna de las personalidades de la pequeña ciudad del Medio Oeste en la que me encontraba. Recuerdo que recibí invitación impresa y toda la cosa, y […]
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Back when I lived in a Northern Virginia condo and traveled often to Mexico and the Caribbean with the Vienna-based Emerald Shillelagh Chowder & Marching Society, I adopted the habit of buying a tee shirt featuring the name of the city or island. My favorite shirt, the one that got the most commentary from fellow travelers on […]
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Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan celebrates its 100th anniversary in 1998. “[Mariachi] Vargas was one of the first organized groups to go to Mexico City and become popular. But that was just one style of music. During the thirties and forties, the record industry sort of standardized mariachi music. In a way that was good, and […]
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It was a chance thing, really. We were heading for Patzcuaro, almost due south of Guanajuato where we had spent the past several days on a photography and business junket. While we were checking out of our small hotel just this side of the tunnels that snake under old Guanajuato, the otherwise taciturn gentleman who […]
Continue ReadingMany of the things we take for granted today didn’t exist in the last century. A case in point is the railroad from Manzanillo to Guadalajara. The grand celebrations for the inauguration of this line, completed in 1908, were among the finest ever seen in Colima. The Mexican President of the time, Porfirio Diaz, attended […]
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Cogan’s Reviews The location for these nine stories is the town of Tecate in the Baja. I must admit I’d never heard of it until I came across this book. It sounds like a mildly attractive place, located 34 miles east of Tijuana. Tucked away in the extreme northwest of Mexico, it couldn’t possibly be […]
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