Anyone who has ever had enough stamina or time to traipse through the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City gets a mere glimpse of Mexico’s treasures. I’ve heard there are enough artifacts in storage to fill the museum twenty times over, and still have skeletons in the closet. There was a time when it […]
Continue ReadingIn matriarchal-governed communities we sometimes loose sight of the patriarchal side of the coin. We have read that physical and mental abuse runs amuck in Latin American homes. Pick up any newspaper in whatever part of the world you may be living in and you’ll find the statistics are about the same. These conditions do […]
Continue ReadingI know about sisters. I had seven. There is a brother-to-sister relationship and a brother-to-brother relationship, but it is not quite like a sister-to-sister relationship. We all know men and women who have never had a sister. Some siblings don’t really like each other; some don’t even tolerate each other, but think about the person […]
Continue ReadingMexico enjoys temperate climes throughout the year. It gets a bit warm on the coast in the summertime and a bit chilly in some of our mountains in the wintertime. But generally, we don’t suffer the debilitating hot, humid summers our northern neighbors do, nor do we skate around on frozen lakes in the wintertime. […]
Continue ReadingIn 1985, there were four Americans living in Talpa. Guy Lawlor and Bill Worth had almost finished their ranch house, or so I thought. Twenty-three years have passed and it is still almost finished. Bill never allows his measuring tape or draftsman’s pencil to lie idle for long. The great open hall upstairs, with four […]
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There was an Indian mound near my home when I was growing up. We knew we were not supposed to play near the mound, and we knew it was an ancient burial spot, but we didn’t know it might have been a “power place.” My older brothers had shoeboxes full of flint arrowheads collected from […]
Continue ReadingIn Talpa de Allende, there is a neighborhood girl who calls me her quasi-godmother. We have studied English together for the past few summers, but I find her attention span jumping about like a monkey. We decided we would study “Cooking in the Gringa Kitchen” this summer. I am not Karen Hursh Graber or Diana […]
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Almost every community of any consequence in Mexico has an annual day or week set aside when a saint or revered person is honored with some type of celebration. If, for example, a town’s name honors San Patricio or San José or San Francisco, then on those Saint’s Days there will usually be fireworks, parades, […]
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It all began with a casual comment by my friend Rodrigo Orozco — also known as Tarantula Man, thanks to the anti-poaching project he leads in western Mexico — when I told him about a hike I was organizing for the following Saturday. “Sorry, John,” replied Orozco, “I’m going to be tied up for the next 44 […]
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From Cholula we are in the city of Puebla in a matter of minutes. Though Puebla is a city of maybe 1.5 million people, it is not a city of tall buildings of steel and glass. The old part of town surrounds the main plaza or ‘zocalo’. The plaza is dominated by a magnificent Cathedral and buildings […]
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