adios to san luis potosi

As I was looking through my photographs of my trip last night, my attraction to San Luis Potosi was reinforced.

Like a lot of attractions, there is often no explanation. I do not create emotional bonds lightly. Nor do I romanticize them. But there is something about San Luis Potosi that pulls my analytical mind back to its streets.

It may be because the place is an Hegelian's dream. There are theses and antitheses galore hanging around for a syllogism to resolve them into a synthesis.

Church altars are a good place to start.

San Luis Potosi has plenty of altars because it has a cornucopia of church. And each church has at least one altar. Without an altar, how could a Catholic church conduct what the ancient skeptics called hocus pocus, in a perversion of the mass's "hoc est corpus meum?" (And who says Mexpatriate does not give you good ammunition for that next bar bet?)

The altar in the Franciscan church is quietly-reverent. Far more what you would expect of Francis of Assisi than his majestic mannequin in Real de Catorce.

As I sat in the church contemplating the architecture as well as the purpose for which it was constructed, I could easily have believed I was in France. 

Well, with the exception of those obvious Mexican flourishes. Even with them, the altar is understated.

The same cannot be said of this altar in the Mother of God chapel inside the Del Carmen church (the church is on the left in my black-and white shot).

This is another of those "considered to be the best of" that I mentioned earlier in the Zacatecas wrap-up. And you can easily see why.

Even though the facade of the church is a whirl of Churrigueresque, this altar is in the comparatively staid neoclassical style. With all of that gilded wood, it is difficult to see its classic mirror image. It looks more like going for Baroque.

The Catholic church takes repeated hits about having spent the amount of money it did constructing these opulent buildings. Benito Juarez certainly thought that -- even though it was a priest who was responsible for launching him on his career.

But the Spanish (and their Mexican successors) were simply continuing a tradition laid down by the Prehispanic tribes. Descriptions of the Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan make the Del Carmen church sound like a Quaker meeting house.

I mentioned the conspiracy-minded in the Zacatecas piece -- those paranoids who are fixated on the transparently-silly Illuminati plots. (If you are European, substitute "Templar Knights" for "Illuminati.")

Another brand of conspiranuts have a separate target.And you can see it as you walk out the door of the Del Carmen church.

A Mason lodge. And not just any Mason lodge. A Scottish rite Mason lodge.

Part of the conspiracy theories were brought on the Masons by their own secrecy. Deprived of facts, people are capable of inventing all sorts of theories.

In Mexico, lodge membership followed political allegiances. Conservatives tended to be part of the York rite; liberals of the Scottish rite. And both, theoretically, were targets of the Inquisition that claimed to fight Masonry because of its secrecy -- among other reasons.

The United States went so far as to form an Anti-masonic political party, that launched the careers of several prominent American politicians in the mid-1800s. (More bar bet material, courtesy of Mexpatriate).

Me? I just like those Masonic symbols. You can also see them on the tomb of the venerated Don Vasco in Patzcuaro's basilica.

The buildings are nice, but, as I wrote in a chicken in every potosi, it is a city's people who truly make it enjoyable.

People like these proud parents waiting for their daughter to receive her university degree on graduation day.

Or these nuns (a sight we never see in Barra de Navidad) waiting on a street corner with the same authority that most likely would have led them to defy President Calles's order to prohibit clerical garb in public.

Or this family waiting outside the cathedral to welcome their daughter into the bosom of the church.

The baby girl already has the advantage of two older brothers who will mercilessly tease her and fight with her, but will do everything during their mutual lives to protect her from the vagaries outside of the family. It is upon those rocks that society is formed.

I will let San Luis Potosi go with one final shot. I had just left our hotel when this sight popped into the range of my camera.

Having spent some time analyzing contemporary art on this trip, I considered the possibility that it might be a public art installation. Cool dude backed by street graffiti.

In fact, it was just a trendy men's shop. The graffiti was nothing more than the usual tagging on any blank space.

But, is that true? Was it not art?

It might have been merely a mannequin ans some unrelated scribbling, but didn't I just turn it into a piece of art with my framing? Marcel Duchamp would say that by you looking at the photograph, you have turned it into art.

I will leave that question with you to ponder.

Tomorrow morning, I board a bus to ride up to Zamora where I will spend the next four days imagining that I am a Purepecha grandma. There are stranger thoughts.

See you there.