“Wait,” she protested. She bent over the crouched photographer busily framing the pleasant scene for posterity, his camera at the ready, shutter cocked. She spoke loudly into his ear. “Wait!” On the very street – no, more like a boulevard in a city of grand boulevards – where being seen is becoming the number one […]
Continue Reading
It must have been an incredibly difficult and painful journey in its time, sailing from Sevilla on the very frontier of Europe to Nueva España, then traveling on foot within the limitless boundaries of that still empty land from one end of the new empire to the other. The 17th and 18th centuries in the […]
Continue Reading
The most important visual image in the classic film, ” Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” was not the alien spaceship, but the imposing stone monolith chosen as the site of the encounter. In an attempt to understand the significance of his mental image of that place the star of the film almost goes mad. It […]
Continue Reading
The Saturday movie-matinee feature of pre-television history introduced my entire generation to the mystery and adventure of lost cities lurking in the dank depths of the world’s remote jungles. Great white hunters slashed their way with machetes through vine-infested rain forests seeking the treasures of civilizations long gone from the earth. In the third reel […]
Continue Reading
Of all the most endearing and enduring charms that draw travelers back to Mexico, the effect that the country can have upon a sense of humor is the most magical. It arises out of an initial attitude of annoyance and frustration by the first-time visitor toward anyone or anything that appears to behave or operate […]
Continue Reading
Deep down in all of our hearts, there is that desire to escape the everyday world in which we feel trapped and find our personal paradise. Or, to be more precise considering the limitless alternatives of that thought, how would one conceive of their own paradise? Perhaps to some it would be a deep, dark […]
Continue Reading
It was an evening to remember. The final chorus of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” bombarded the barren shore, the vocal crescendos punctuated by nature’s own rhythm section: the waves crashing on Zicatela beach. Off in the distance, scattered among the sand dunes of this world famous Mexican surfing “pipeline,” huge bonfires spewed Stygian sparks high […]
Continue Reading
Staying at a Mexican hacienda hotel is like being transported back in time. The casa principal or main house usually stands before an elegant garden ablaze with purple bougainvillea and red flamboyant. The perfume of orchids fills the air. At some haciendas a massive brick aqueduct arches above and through its arches flows a cerulean blue swimming […]
Continue Reading
On a balmy summer evening in August 1940, a young man gained admittance to the study of Leon Trotsky’s heavily guarded house near Mexico City. He asked Trotsky to read something he had written. While Trotsky was poring over his article, the visitor removed an alpine climbing axe from his overcoat and sank it into […]
Continue Reading
I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party (although I did subscribe to the Daily World during the wild and woolly Sixties), but a visit to Leon Trotsky´s house in Coyoacán has affected me beyond all my expectations. It reminded me of my youth when I imagined, however […]
Continue Reading