In 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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We left town early, just before la madrugada. Up and down the deserted streets the soft glow of lamplight turned cobblestones into golden ingots in the dark. This radiance bathed everything in a spectral beauty and I could see ghosts hurrying along in the shadows of the Inquisition: women wrapped in rebozos, priests in […]
Continue Reading PRESENT CONTINUOUS (a Morning Walk through San Miguel de Allende) Two blocks uphill on Calle Jesús and a right turn on Umarán bring me to La Parroquia, the gardeners in the Jardín already at work shaping the trees into perfect rectangles, early risers reading on the benches or drinking coffee under the portales, someone selling […]
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Cogan’s Reviews Mornings in Mexico is a collection of essays and travel pieces that resulted from Lawrence’s visits to Mexico and New Mexico in the early 1920s. Some wonderful descriptive writing is to be found here. Lawrence was a good traveller in these parts and he spent a lot of time carefully observing the Indians […]
Continue ReadingMoralistic, prejudiced, racist, misogynist, manipulative, sexist, daring, exciting, critical, sarcastic and passionate – these are just a few adjectives that commonly describe Mexico’s most widely-read publication: the historieta . The historieta’s origin can be thought of as rather diffuse, considering that it is based on a synthesis of icons and texts wound into a single message. But […]
Continue ReadingOne of the rewarding aspects of investigating the history and evolution of Mexico’s rich and varied cuisine is the availability of authentic sources. The Spanish chroniclers took painstaking notes on nearly every aspect of indigenous life upon their arrival, including food and cooking techniques, and continued, after the Conquest, to keep household journals, diaries and […]
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Cogan’s Reviews A Mexico book by Carlos Fuentes Here’s Fuentes at it again, publishing short stories and novellas under a single title and trying to interlink them into a cohesive whole as he tried to do in The Crystal Frontier. The connection here is the orange tree, the symbol of Spain. “Could any image verify […]
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Cogan’s Reviews In 1952, John Steinbeck won an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the movie, Viva Zapata! Many years later, however, a manuscript was found in UCLA Library in which it was discovered he had written extensively about his subject, other than simply the screenplay. It’s that document that makes up the major […]
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Cogan’s Reviews The simplest way to describe this novel is to say that it’s a kind of Mexican “Roots” – a big family survival saga covering three generations of two families, complete with a large cast of characters. Author Villaseñor has based his complex, sprawling tale on the experiences of his own family members and […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I wish I could say this novel was an enjoyable read but, frankly, this humble reviewer found it rather a chore getting to the end. Since finishing it, curiosity has driven me to go looking to see what other people had to say about it. And it would appear that the verdicts are […]
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