the road less taken

I have mentioned before that Pátzcuaro was on my short list of places to live in Mexico.  In fact, four years ago, I came very close to buying a house in the hills above the town.


Being inclined to daydream, I spent more than a few hours at work imagining what it would be like to take a drive around the full perimeter of the lake.


On Thursday, my imagining became a reality.  I set aside about six hours to see as much of the lake as I could.  Starting with one rule: there would be no rules.  Whatever popped into my head, I would do.

The villages around the lake reflect as much diversity as the lake itself.  On its face, the lake appears rather uniform.  It is not.  It is shallow on its south side and far deeper on the north.


The southern shore has vast wetlands that were once the bed of the lake.  The northern shore is bordered by mountains that almost rise from the lake.  And it seldom seems blue.  At its best, it wears Georgia Confederate gray.


I have no idea if the villages are a result of geographical determinism.  It may be a factor.  Along with Don Vasco’s specialization regime.  The varying roots of the tribes around the lake.  Or the simple fact that my village is not going to look like my neighbor’s.


I don’t have the answer.  I am not an anthropologist.  But I am a traveler.

 

And travel I did.  I started with the western end of the lake -- places I had visited twice last week.  The hilltop village of Tzentezencuaro and its dilapidated church.  And even more dilapidated bust of Emiliano Zapata.


The former island of Jaracuaro with its nimble-fingered residents who weave hats and other reed products.  Years ago, a causeway was built to what was then an island. 

 

The causeway is rumored to have covered an underwater spring.  Without the water feed, the island became a peninsula.  But the bridge on the causeway is a great place to watch wading birds, cows, and the occasional net fisherman.


And Tocuaro with its slightly-disguised wood carving shops – especially, masks.


The highway skirts most of the villages.  But it passes right through the market town of Erongaricuaro.  Because I had spent two days there last week, I decided to drive through to new villages.

 

I got off the highway in Napizaro and Puacuaro to see the only major buildings in the villages -- their churches.  The church in Napizaro was the least satisfying.  But its origin is interesting.


It was built in 1979 with donations from the northern remittances of the village’s men.  And someone tried to give it a modern Spanish look.  But it is as uninteresting as an evangelical church in Pocatello.

 

However, I noticed an odd accessory in the church yard.  A tall pole with a small cross bar and a bit of aged vegetation topping it.  I saw the same setup in front of the church at San Jeronimo Purenchecuaro. 


I do not even want to hazard a guess on this one.  Do any of you have any idea of the significance?  It is obviously celebratory, but of what, I have no idea.


At San Andres Tzirondaro, I stopped at a junction to see if there was a way to retrace my steps.  I had seen a series of small fields, all divided by stone walls.  In an odd way it reminded of the hedgerows in Oxfordshire.  And I wanted a photograph.


But the road was built to hurry people along on their business – not to cater to photographers.  And stopping in the lane of travel was not an option.  For people who consider time not to be a life factor, Mexican drivers certainly like to ride the bumpers of scenery-loving tourists.


Rather than retrace my steps, I decided to gain elevation.  At the junction, a sign pointed to Santiago Azajo.  My road atlas showed no road and my GPS protested that I was driving through fields.  It was almost like the start of a Twilight Zone episode.


But there the highway was.  A beautiful, newly-constructed road.  With shoulders.  Even though I only wanted to get a bit above the lake, I was entranced with the road.


At this point, I should point out that my danger alarm started registering -- at a low pitch.  Back road.  Almost no traffic.  Unusual display of expensive pavement.


About another 1000 feet above the lake, I topped a ridge to see something I experienced several times in Greece -- a rather seedy village with a magnificent view.  I laughed at myself for being so concerned.

 

The village church is a surprisingly large building with an immense plaza in front of it.  Each of the multiple religious figures in the church wore real clothes.  I have become accustomed to that. 


What I found interesting was that each figure also wore multiple pieces of currency.  The only other place I had seen that was at the Santa Muerte chapel.  It was a bit unnerving.


While looking for some good photograph opportunities, I ended up in a dead end road with some fields.  I started snapping away at the bucolic scene.  A plow drawn by horses.  Beautiful mountains.  Campesinos working in the field.  I felt like Monet on holiday.

Then one of the field workers looked at me, stood up, and in perfect English said: “Where are you from?” 


For a moment, I thought I was hearing and speaking Spanish.


We talked briefly about his trips north.  Where I was from.  What I was doing in the village?  Was I lost?


And then the rather chilling note: “Maybe you should leave now.”


I do not know exactly what he meant, but I had a good idea.  So, I was on my way back down the mountain.


The road quickly took me past Santa Fe de Laguna, Quiroga, and Tzintzuntzan -- places we have visited recently on these pages.


And my impression?  I am still infatuated with this lake.  Whether it is the sense of peace in the water or the birds or the sheer enjoyment of the countryside, I am hooked. 

color and light

Wednesday started as a slow morning.  I had planned on driving around the full circuit of the lake.  But it seemed like a good day to just sit and read.


I flipped my Kindle over to Jorge Castañeda’s Mañana Forever and started slogging through prose for which the adjective “turgid” was invented.


When I glanced up, I was transported into one of Felipe Zapata’s tales.  The wall facing me was alive with light and shadow.


Felipe formerly wrote about how the light played off of he surfaces of his home.  And it was no coincidence that I thought of him.  The wall I was looking at is his.  As is the selection of art.

 

And that reminded me that I promised to tell you a bit about the place where I am staying in Pátzcuaro.


It is a two bedroom condominium about a seven minute walk to the plaza grande.  A trek I have been making two or three times a day.


The design is quite snazzy.  The décor even more so.


The downstairs consists of the grand room (living, dining, kitchen), a bathroom, an atrium, and a garage.  Upstairs are the two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a recreation room, and a balcony that overlooks Pátzcuaro.

 

The Mexican contemporary looks fits perfectly with the layout.  The colors are clearly Mexican, but with a subdued hue.  The place has the look of an artist inhabitant.


I like how the colors complement one another in the furnishings and the art pieces.


Because I am a sucker for texture, the three seed balls on the living room coffee table fascinate me.  But then, I am easily amused.

I have now lived here for a two and a half weeks.  It probably took me two hours before I settled into the comfort of the place.  It makes me feel at home.


The fact that I do not have to turn on a fan whenever I come back to the place is enough for me to make a cool place in my heart for the condo.


Especially on days like Wednesday when I decide that staying home is a real nice option.

 

dancing through life

What can I say about a day that starts with a group of expatriate men chewing the fat and eggs at breakfast; then lunching with my inestimable hosts; and ending the day with a dash of culture?


Knowing me -- quite a bit.  But let’s see.


Each Tuesday morning some of the expatriate men (R.O.M.E.O.) get together for breakfast at a rotating list of restaurants.  Solely for fellow-ship.


They have been extremely kind in letting me join in -- just as if I lived in town.  In fact, they have made me feel as if I was one of the group.  When I run into one of them, now and then, during my days out, they act as subtle anchors for this stranger in a strange land.


I do not need a lot of social interaction.  But I need some.  And they have helped to provide it.


As attractive as Pátzcuaro is, without the acquaintances I have made, it would not have made the impact on me that it has.  I guess that is obvious from my posts of the last two weeks.


Two weeks?  It hardly seems possible.

 

But the biggest impact of this trip to Pátzcuaro has come from my hosts, Felipe and the good Lady Zapata. 

I had lunch with them on Tuesday afternoon.  Along with an American couple who has lived in Pátzcuaro and San Pancho for many years.  I was not the least bit surprised they know my friends, John and Trish, in Barra de Navidad.


You have read Felipe’s rave notices of his wife’s cooking and baking.  He did not exaggerate.  She cooked up a pot of pozole that had to be the best I have ever eaten.  And then hit a home run with a corn cake dessert.


The true joy of the afternoon was to sit on the famous patio and chat about politics, Mexico, and the sense of just being alive.  I could have spent the rest of the day there.


But there was culture to be had.  Earlier in the week I noticed posters that a flamenco group was going to perform at the local theater on Tuesday evening.


The Emperador Theater is a pleasant venue.  It was the cinema for many years.  It now acts as the type of multi-event theater that were once popular in The States.  Pull up the screen and you have an adequate stage for touring companies.

 

The side walls are painted with borders of local activities -- including a running school  of the lake’s famous whitefish.  The ceiling has an interesting reverse dome that looks far better than my photograph.  As if ET is returning home.


For Tuesday, the touring company was a flamenco group from Zacatecas.  And they were fine for the limitations placed on them by the performance space.


Six dancers.  A guitarist.  A percussionist.  A singer.


Flamenco is tricky to perform and present.  It has become so stylized that it runs the danger of being a parody of itself.


But this group found an adequate line between stage performance and the raw roots of the dance that may have come to us through the Moors.  One reason the dance is such a full body exhibition -- hands, feet, legs, arms, head; all akimbo and in motion.  With the face frozen in that look beautiful women use to deter the approach of lesser mortals.
 

The singer was the ever-present star of the show.  Flamenca songs have a tonality similar to the New Age music of Cirque du Soleil performances.  She did an excellent job of reminding the audience that the flamenco masks strong emotion.


Flamenco is like a dark chocolate torte.  It can be overwhelming in large quantities.  The company mixed in some modern steps (a very clever number using rhythm boxes) and added just a bit of what disco would look like through a flamenco dancer’s eyes.


My sole complaint goes to the heart of the whole production.  Flamenco is a very personal and intricate dance.  The focus should be on either one dancer or a pair of dancers.  A full company on a large stage loses the intimacy that is at the heart of the dance.


I experienced my first flamenco performed by an old gypsy woman in a cave outside of Cordoba.  All performances I have seen subsequently fade in comparison.


At about an hour and a half, it was just about the right measure for an audience that thoroughly appreciated that this group of strangers would stop by to share of slice of Spanish culture with them.


And I was happy to dance through this day -- knowing that I have another two weeks to enjoy myself.

liking the lake

Santa Fe de La Laguna.


It is one of many little villages that dot the shore of Lake Pátzcuaro.  If you were driving around the lake, it would be easy to miss it.  The highway barely skirts the village,


But I have had it on my to-visit list for two weeks now.  For one reason.  Santa Fe de La Laguna is the site of Don Vasco de Quiroga’s first act of humanism.  The act that distinguished him from the Franciscans and their acts of charity.  A distinction O’Gorman makes quite clear in his library mural.


When the Spanish arrived in the New World, a disease sharing process set in.  The Spanish got syphilis; the Indians got smallpox.  Neither side did very well in the open market of death.  But the Purépecha fared particularly bad.  Ten of thousands died within a year.


But it was not only disease that Don Vasco discovered when he arrived in 1533. The once great Purépecha empire had collapsed.  Enslaved and demoralized, they were starving.


As we have already discussed, Don Vasco was prepared to deal with the underlying problem by creating a new social order for the Purépecha based on Thomas More;s Utopia.  But he was also a practical man.  Sometimes you need to deal with symptoms before you can handle root problems.

 

And that is exactly what he did.  In a village a bit to the east of Tzintzuntzan, he built a hospital (in the European sense of that word) to provide a community center for the care of the poor.  As part his plan to win the hearts, minds, and souls of the Purépecha.


It is still there.  Along with a church, they still form the heart of Santa Fe.  It now serves as a shrine to the memory of the man who helped preserve the Purépecha -- as an integral part of the Spanish empire.


On the drive out to Santa Fe de La Laguna, I noticed how attached I have become to the lake.  Between the village and Tzintzuntzan, there are a number of houses with property that stretches down to the lake.

 

During my search for places to live in Mexico, I once looked at some of those houses on line.  They intrigued me.  And my visits to the east end of te lake has revived a lot of that interest.


I drove back on the south shore road -- and realized if I could find a house to rent somewhere on that stretch of road, I would seriously think about spending some time in this part of Mexico.


Especially in the summer.

the church lady

 

Sunday is church day.


And that presents a dilemma for me.


Unlike San Miguel (and even Melaque), Pátzcuaro does not have an English-speaking church.  But it is filled with the Spanish-speaking variety.  Some quite grand.


And, even though I am not a Spanish speaker, I long ago learned to experience my faith even when not completely understanding (or agreeing with) English words that surrounded me.  Why not take the same tack with Spanish?


So, I did.


I knew something different was happening in the morning.  The usual bells calling people to worship are almost always just a few clangs.  Not this morning.  The bells rang and rang -- in an unusual order.  And, of course, there were the dynamite-loud sky rockets.  Something was up.

When I got to the Basilica, it was decked out in Mobil red and white grand opening pennants.  I learned long ago that little flags outside usually mean grand decorations inside. 


And I was correct.  The Basilica looked like a Hapsburg coronation was about to occur.


This was a big Sunday on the liturgical calendar.  Assumption Sunday.  Not Jesus’ assumption, mind you.  This was Mary’s non-scriptural assumption.


In my tradition, this day simply does not exist.  But for the Roman religion, and especially its Mexican variant, it is a whale of a day.  And the Basilica is a Mary church.


The nave was packed with worshipers.  It was not just standing room only.  It was elbow-for-space full.  I could not get a good view, but it appeared there was an effigy of Mary laid out in front of the altar with candles at each corner of her bier.

 

Being such a special Sunday, it was a great setting to celebrate first communion.  The long line of young girls and boys dressed in white looked eerily like a Moonie wedding in West Virginia.


But the children could not have been more proud to go through a ceremony that would recognize them as communicants in their church community.  For their parents and relatives, it may as well have been a wedding.


And, I suppose, in a theological sense, it was.


They made me feel proud.  Even when I had to wonder who was the watcher and who was the person being watched?

kindness of friends

What would I do for blog posts without the notorious Welfare Escape?


There it is.  Resting peacefully outside my condo door.  The emphasis in that sentence is resting.  As in peace.  The RIP kind of peace.


About 8 PM on Friday, I returned from one of my history tours and put the truck away in the garage.  Ever since my failures to lock the truck in San Miguel, I have been very conscientious about making certain I have locked it up before I head indoors.


Sometimes too conscientious.  On Friday, I managed to get my security steps a bit out of order.  I locked the truck -- but failed to remove the key.  Worse, the key was still in accessory mode.


Not only was the key locked inside (with the nearest spare key in Melaque), but the battery (my new battery, mind you) was slipping away to the the Land of No Charges.


One of the joys of living in a new place is that everything is new.  A corollary is that being in a new place means knowing next to nothing.


What I needed was a locksmith.  Rather than running off looking around, I relied on one of the great resources God provides us -- friends.


I texted “Felipe Zapata.”  He told me what I instinctively knew.  No locksmith in town would be open at that time of night.  But he told me not to worry.  He would be here early Saturday morning to rescue me.  Just like the cavalry.


And so he did.  A locksmith showed up and had my door open within seconds.  And we were on our way to a local mechanic to borrow a battery to jump my truck back into life.


By noon Saturday, I was back in operation.


So, thanks to Felipe for his kindness and assistance.  Otherwise, my next series of blog posts would be about the events within walking distance.


But I do have a few of those, as well.

tale of two towns

Yesterday I took you on a tour of the grand city that was once Tzintzuntzan.  A city that is no more.


The town that is now Tzintzuntzan is hardly a shadow of its brother on the bluff.  But it still bears the family name.


When Cristóbal de Olid accepted the humiliation of the Purépecha emperor, Tanganxoán II, in 1522, the Spanish allowed the emperor to retained what appeared to be control over his people.


Six years later, one of history’s villains (lacking his own partisan historians), Nuño de Guzmán, showed up in the Pátzcuaro valley searching for gold -- a substance the Purépecha did not particularly value.


In an attempt to torture the emperor into disclosing the hiding place of the nonexistent gold, Guzmán burned him at the stake.  A heretic’s death even though the emperor had converted to Christianity.

 

It was amongst this chaos that the beloved Don Vasco arrived on the scene as the new bishop in 1533  The Spanish had moved the political capital of the area to Pátzcuaro.  But Tzintzuntzan remained the religious center.


That helps to account for the fact that the only historical tourist attractions from that period is the former monastery complex of San Francisco.


The Spanish took little time in setting up their religious community.  Construction on the monastery and its associated churches began in 1530 -- even before Don Vasco arrived.  The complex includes two churches (the Church of San Francisco and the Church of La Soledad), and a broad courtyard.

 

The Church of La Soledad lacks any architectural splendor -- even though the interior was dressed up for some occasion.  But past the blue, yellow, and white bunting, there is not much there.


However, I did have an interesting experience while looking at an obvious Mason symbol on the altar.  I heard two people speaking in turn.  It was an older Indian couple reading prayers.  Another example of people putting their faith in action.


What was ironic is the history of the church.  Indians were not allowed in this church.  It was only for the Spanish.
 

The Church of San Francisco was built as a place for the Indians to worship.  Whenever separate but equal is put into place, there is no equality.  Even with its rustic look, the church has more charm than its Spanish only neighbor.


The barrel vault ceiling gives the impression of three-dimensional plaster.  But it is merely paint cleverly disguised.  A number of the repeated figures on the roof are of Indian origin.  Appropriate symbols for the original worshipers.

 

Life sometimes comes in interesting juxtapositions.  Just as the Indian couple was worshiping in the former Spanish only  church, this Mexican family was receiving a mixed Catholic-Indian blessing in the former Indians only church.


Whatever the source of the blessing, the husband and wife were emotionally moved as they looked through the rest of the church.


But that is why the place exists.  To exercise one's faith.

 

The church also contains an interesting effigy -- Santo Entierro.  A wax figure of Christ in a glass coffin.  The legend is that the arms and legs of the statue are growing -- an apparent miracle for no particular purpose.  That explains the bay window at the end of the coffin.  Making room for those growing legs.


I am not certain what explains the line of pesos and dollars along the edge of the coffin.  Traveling money?

 

The cloister in front of the churches shelters one of Tzintzuntzan’s most interesting relics -- a grove of olive trees planted by Don Vasco.  He had another of his dreams.  To grow olives for oil as part of his Eurocentric Utopia.


Unfortunately for him, the Spanish government had mercantilistic ideas of its own. 


To protect its own farmers, Spain declared that olives could not be grown in any of its colonies.  If the colonists wanted olive oil, they would need to buy it from Spain.  Of course, most of the population in Mexico was quite happy to ignore this bit of protectionism by using local corn oil.  As they do to this day.


The rheumatic gnarls that were once young olive trees now stand as historical contraband.  As illegal as marijuana -- and thriving. 


The legend is that the olive trees have never borne fruit.  The trees are undoubtedly pining away for the return of Don Vasco.


But Tzintzuntzan’s place in the sectarian sun was short-lived.  Don Vasco decided his attempt to bring Thomas More’s Utopia alive would be more effective in the political capital.


In 1539 he pulled up his bishopric stakes and moved his seat to Pátzcuaro -- along with his dreams of a five-nave cathedral.  As a result, Tzintzuntzan slipped into what it is today.  A sleepy, slightly seedy lakeside town.

 

As part of his Utopia plan, Don Vasco assigned specific craft skills to each Purépecha village.  For Tzintzuntzan it was wood carving.  You can still find wood-carving craftsmen in town.


But most of the pieces are far more souvenirs than functional home items.  The type of thing you see in someone’s home and immediately remark what a beautiful view they have.


And then there is the usual tourist market with fields of undistinguished pieces of pottery you can find at every tour bus stop.

 

The one exception is the colorful woven reed decorations that beguile every camera-toting visitor.  Including me.


After leaving the woody craftsmen, I decided to head back to Pátzcuaro on the shore road I discovered earlier in the week.  It is an amazing stretch of pavement.  At every turn the view is more stunning than the last.


Unfortunately, you will have to take my word for it.  There simply were no turnouts for the best shots.  This will have to do.