A couple years ago, a reader from Ajijic spent a week in Barra de Navidad.
She was singularly unimpressed with my hometown on the beach. She described it as "what Six Flags would build as a Mexican Village." (The next time you need a good example to prove Benjamin Dreyer's distinction that "Funniness is not irony. Coincidence is not irony. Weirdness is not irony. Rain on your wedding day is not irony. Irony is irony.", feel free to use the first two sentences of this paragraph.)
I reacted the same way all provincial chauvinists do. I was morally indignant. In that same way grandparents get when you point out that their granddaughter's rendition of "Feelings" at her grade school recital was not going to eclipse the memory of Maria Callas's E flat in the Mexico City performance of Aida -- and their best defense is: "Well, she was no worse than the others."
My defensive grandparent mode lasted just as long as it took me to realize dying on that rhetorical hill was not worth the effort. She did have a point.
Barra de Navidad looks as if it was built to lure tourists. THat is true. It was. But, then, so does Cancun or San Miguel de Allende or, to my earlier point on irony, Ajijic.
Last week I took a stroll to the central part of Barra, the very core of our tourism magnet. When I have guests here or when I am on my walking routine, I see that part of Barra regularly. Because neither of those conditions precedent have existed lately, I do not get down there very often.
There have been some changes.
Last May I told you that a building that once stood at the entrance of Barra de Navidad's malecon was no more. (can you spare some change?) It was now a small rolling plane. I believe it was Hank who had the correct (and Immediate) response. It was to be the parking lot for the Restaurante Colimilla.
Parking on the sand spit that gives our town its name is always at a premium -- especially for people who drive to the launches that will take them across the lagoon to the restaurants in Colimilla. Those patrons now have an exclusive place to safely abandon their vehicles.
And there is no doubt now who has the sole privilege of parking there.
The lot has a sign almost as large as the demolished building giving notice as to whether sheep or goats have parking privileges.
For those of you who live here or are frequent visitors, you may have noticed something new to the right of the parking sign in that previous photograph.
The archway welcoming visitors to the malecon has long been there. But it now has a new set of clothes.
There is certainly no missing it. At first, I was not certain of the color combination. But it has now grown on me to the point I am perfectly capable of putting up a grandparent defense of my own.
Some things have not changed. Barra may have only a rump of its former beach, but tourists still flock to take advantage of the narrow strand of sand that remains.
Even the Marines come occasionally to dip their toes in the sea. Because their profession is a bit dangerous, some of their colleagues loiter in the shade of umbrellas providing a modicum of security. They are such a common sight that I do not even notice the automatic rifles in the shade any more.
Where my reader from Ajijic was right on in her "Six Flags" comment is our rather lamentable town square.
Town squares are not unique to Mexico. They form the heart of a lot of cities around the world -- including the United States. But the Spanish turned them into an art form (thanks, in part, to their own Muslim overlords). The Spanish then shared their aesthetic lessons with their colonial possessions.
Almost every Mexican city that has a colonial past also has at least one grand square. Usually, fronted by the town church and government offices. The squares tie functions together and offer visitors a place to relax at the heart of the city. The grand zócalo in Mexico city. The jardin in San Miguel de Allende. The plaza grande in Pátzcuaro. Even the small jardin in San Patricio pulls together all of the elements of a good town square.
Unfortunately, the town square in Barra does not. Part of the problem is location. It really is not at the center of anything. True, the post office and the local government building face it. But, until they are pointed out, most people miss the fact that they are tucked away in a tiny corner.
There is a stage. The standard-issue gazebo (this one appears not to be Porfirian; most are). And even a tsunami-warning tower that worked years ago. Otherwise, it looks as if a series of shops had been torn down to make way for a parking lot that has not quite yet been installed.
In short, it lacks the architectural form and soul that people expect of their squares.
But spending resources on developing a better town square for Barra would be money squandered. The focus of Barra de Navidad is the sea. It is why tourists visit and leave pesos. And we have one of the best town squares in Mexico. We call it the malecon.
When the newly-appointed Spanish Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, disembarked here on 25 December 1540, while searching for appropriate ship-building sites, he named the spit of land our malecon rests atop as Barra de Navidad -- Christmas Bar.
The Spanish hand rests lightly on Barra de Navidad and the surrounding area. Even though it was the site where the ships that opened the Pacific trade routes with China were built and launched, the Spanish soon moved on. Thus, the lack of a colonial town square. Or much of anything else Spanish.
Instead, for decades, the town has been the focus of Mexicans who want to spend time in the sea, sand, and sun. More recently, they have been joined by northerners.
And where better to appreciate that history than standing on Mendoza's sand bar, now refined by the hand of tourism experts -- to enjoy the sunsets toward which the ships of the conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi sailed on their way to The Philipines to prove Columbus's theory that it was possible to travel west to China and to establish a global trade regime.
Who needs a fancy colonial town square when you have all that?
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