An old railway station at the western end of the train tracks in Jalisco, Mexico, bears witness to unspeakable cruelties perpetrated upon thousands of Yaqui Indians in the early 1900s. According to the Jalisco Secretariat of Culture’s Guachimontones Guide Book, Yaquis were sold as slaves at the station “for 25 centavos a head” and “around the station were located […]
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For some northerners, heading south of the border to live after a busy career, Mexico looks like the land of mañana. All they have to do is kick back and watch the monarch butterflies pass on their annual trek down to the state of Michoacan, while the maid whips up another batch of margaritas. This view does […]
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I’m sitting in a third grade class at the Independencia School in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Aside from the charming teacher, there’s hardly a full set of teeth in the room, although nobody’s smile appears to be diminished by this defect. The teacher’s name is Fatima Almeida and she does not work for the […]
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It started in 2001 with supplying a pair of shoes so that a young man didn’t have to go to college barefoot. He’d already won a scholarship. A San Miguel woman named Helen Morris provided them, and a relationship blossomed from there. Soon she was joined by Virginia Wheelwright and several others in providing financial […]
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San Miguel de Allende has, for decades, been one of the shining jewels of Colonial Mexico, a mecca for painters, writers, musicians or anyone with artistic sensibilities who has been touched by its ancient cobblestone streets, by the way the light and shadows fall across the distant hills or by the adobe walls painted the […]
Continue ReadingMay is a dry month in Mexico. In fact, some folks may call it the drought month before the rainy season begins. This is the time of year when farmers begin to prepare their fields for planting. The actual planting is done after a couple of good soaking rains. This preparation of the fields is […]
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New World Women is a native women artisan group in Tecalpulco, Guerrero who decided to form a production cooperative. These skilled artisans are the original designers and producers, creating beautiful jewelry. Theirs is a cottage industry with a goal of perpetuating the region’s craft tradition and creating a source of work that can keep their […]
Continue ReadingSeveral million Americans look to the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua as their ancestral homeland. Chihuahua – with a total of 245,945 square kilometers within its boundaries – is the largest state of the Mexican Republic and occupies 12.6% of the national territory. In stark contrast, Chihuahua’s population – 3,052,907 residents in the 2000 census […]
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Reading the recent MexConnect article Tears of the maguey: Is pulque really a dying tradition? brought me to the realization that here in Cholula, many of the pulquerías (pulque bars) have slowly and quietly vanished, and only two or three remain. While nobody was sorry about the closing of the one near the elementary school, where the kids […]
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A great ideological struggle is never a day at the beach. Whether its matrix is race, nationality or economic inequality, the fight of the oppressed against the oppressor is always a somber affair. Nobody realized this better than José Clemente Orozco. Born at a time when Mexico was ruled by a seemingly revolution-proof dictator, Orozco […]
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