With his parents’ permission, I took Fernando, my 12-year-old English student, to Guanajuato, the seat of the Mexican War of Independence, for two days. Fortunately, I’d been warned by a friend to avoid driving in Guanajuato because of the extreme difficulty in traversing the city streets, which are laid out with no pattern, no design, […]
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Old is good, especially when it’s a freshly discovered newspaper from April 1929. It’s exciting to read things that happened even before the stock market crash was to occur that coming October, leading America into one of the bleakest periods in our history. That sad period also saw the close of the oldest institution on […]
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The status of World Heritage site is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) denomination. The status is conferred on selected sites under the terms of “The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”, adopted at UNESCO’s 17th General Conference in November 1972 and subsequently ratified by 186 member […]
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As a child, I had heard some stories about my ancestors, in particular, about clashes between Pancho Villa and a distant relative, something about someone “being strung up by their thumbs”. However, as a young boy, growing up in San Diego, California, the stories didn’t mean anything to me, and they were stored deep within […]
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We jounce for five hours in a pickup truck heading west from Tampico over the dusty Mexican plain to the Sierra Madre, up and up into a green world-peaks as sudden as the mountains of Moorea, tree-covered jagged ranges huge enough to be the molars of God, past coffee plantations, ramping bougainvillea, banana trees, crashing […]
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Travelers who are interested in the history of this region of Michoacán will be well rewarded by a tour of the numerous picturesque villages bordering Lake Pátzcuaro. In addition to their authentic indigenous ambience and specialized crafts, many of these communities boast old colonial churches and missions, some dating back over 400 years. Here are […]
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My grandfather, Frank Henry, was an English silver mining engineer in Mexico during the Revolution of 1910-16. This is the story of a family’s harrowing escape from marauding bandits at the height of the Revolution. Sadly, it was without my grandfather, as he had been brutally murdered by the bandits while defending their home from […]
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There are all kinds of heroes, from the international arena to the local, and in one’s own neighborhood or family. Most heroes are defined by courageous or exemplary behavior while facing extreme adversity or challenge. Each profession has heroes, too those who make significant contribution to advancing its purpose or goals. This is the story […]
Continue ReadingI’m not what you would consider one of those mystical psychic types, well versed in the mumbo jumbo of the supernatural. But I’m not a skeptic, either. All I can do is simply accept what happens to me, that which I experience, and write some things off as unexplainable. Such was the case with the […]
Continue ReadingMythology and Legends of the Nahua People: Essays on Ancient Mexico Part 1: “The Creation of the Universe” Part 2: “Legend of the Fifth Sun” Part 3: “Creation of the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan” As the future unfolds, history is tucked away into the past. We see this past because our ancestors recorded the events of their […]
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