Wednesday 28 November 2007

Dancing in the Streets, Zacatecas style







We went to Zacatecas for a long weekend , 3 of the 4 day's break for Day of the Dead (1st and 2nd November) here. It is a beautifully restored colonial city, very hilly, with lots of building facades in pink stone and many hidden plazas and charming tiny streets to explore. Its rapid development and richness in its heyday was due to the discovery of silver, as Melbourne's was to gold. Among the other tourist delights there is a tour available to a former silver mine. There is also a discotheque/ nightclub in this mine - given our aversion to very loud noise and smoking, we decided to give it a miss. The tour is interesting but I struggled a bit to make out the Spanish of our guide against the noise of other groups, not helped by wearing the obligatory hard hat. (There are currently major works going on in our neighbourhood as they replace all the major drains, digging up the cobbled streets. There are a few machines and a lot of manual labourers, but I have barely seen one in a hard hat, let alone a pair of Blunnies or other decent protective foot gear, ear muffs, safety harnesses when climbing poles or descending into pits, any kind of appliance to stop the ingestion of the vast amounts of dust and worse, etc. I am sure their work is more dangerous than our mine tour was, but I guess the local government is not worried that a hurt worker might sue!)

There are quite a lot of Huichol people in the region, and one of the most enjoyable museums has a large display of the ethnography of these not very easily colonised people, who still follow the traditional lifestyle, including a kind of pilgrimage to search for peyote, which is used in their rituals. The photo below does not do justice to the huge beaded work that hangs in the entrance hall, which contains many million beads and tells some important stories.
Their artesanias are particularly colourful and beautiful. Beading in very tiny glass beads and spectacular yarn pictures are traditional, and the techniques are now used by many Huichol people to supply the market with gorgeous beaded earrings, bracelets, necklaces, bags and belts. There are also wonderful animals, real, totemic, or fantastic, beaded all over. I know we have too much stuff, and I try not to buy anything these days unless I can get rid of something I already have to make space for it. This gets to be a problem as I am quite attached to all the Mexican artifacts we already have! I was unable to resist buying a very small beaded bowl, made from a gourd, in the museum shop, however.

There is a large collection of ethnographic research, including a collection of photos by European and US anthropologists from the early 20th Century who revisited many years later, and some of their original informants. Obviously funded by some US foundation, the information about the people and their customs has been well translated into English, and I found it very informative and totally fascinating. There is also a large collection of embroidery showing all the traditional themes, some of it from the late 19th Century . The work is not quite symmetric, there seems often to be an unfinished area or a piece or corner which looks very different from the rest, clearly not accidental. One of these days I might look up some of this stuff and find out what part of their belief system leads to this style of work.

There is another museum we visited which is especially renowned for its collection of masks. This is located in a partially ruined, partially restored ex-convent, whose original building materials have been looted over time to construct housing or streets or whatever they were needed for at the time. The parts being used as galleries have been restored, and the displays were very well curated. As well as the enormous collection of masks, pottery, etc, there was also an interesting collection of puppets and costumes from traditional street theatre companies from the 18th through early 20th Century which I found tremendously evocative, and a collection of some of Diego Rivera's collection of pre-columbian artefacts, donated by his daughter. I think the founder of the museum , an artist or sculptor himself, was also Rivera's son-in-law.
As in most museums, no flash photography is allowed (though this is largely ignored by the Mexican public). As I am not much of a photographer and don't know how to take photos other than point and click, I don't know how to suppress the automatic flash so usually only even try to take a photo where there is lots of natural light. So apologies for the lack of good photos!

One of the magic things about beautiful Zacatecas is the Callejoneada: literally, dancing in the laneways. I did not know what to expect at all, but when we came back to the hotel after sightseeing on our first day there, I saw some very colourful local dancers performing in the square near the hotel (see photo), and wondered if this was it.
It certainly wasn't! I have video but I can't upload it with the software I have available, so one of these days will post it on a website and you can look at it there!

I saved a bit of a draft about Zacatecas ages ago to start this entry, and was quite sure I had written about the callejoneada, but when I finally got around to work on the draft, there was nothing there about it at all. But then I remembered, I had actually written it up as my Spanish homework one day, as part of an exercise to write a letter home. So just to show you I can, I am going to post the Spanish version right now for the Spanish speakers on my distribution list (with apologies for the deficiencies in my Spanish prose), and then will roughly rewrite and expand on it in English.

Aquí en México, seguimos siendo turistas los fines de semana. Recientemente, fuimos a Zacatecas, una ciudad preciosa con una herencia colonial. Le han renovado bien las calles , las fachadas y muchos de los edificios – ¡que buenas son las vistas! Hay una tradición muy pintoresca en Zacatecas ¡todo el mundo baila en las calles por la noche! Hay orquestas que tocan y los bailadores, ciudadanos y visitantes, se juntan y van detrás de los músicos mientras caminan por las callecitas, bailando. El fenómeno se llama la callejoneada.

Hay muchas placitas coloniales lindas en Zacatecas, y las bandas se paran para tocar un poco en cada una, y donde hay más espacio, los participantes bailan más, y más espectadores y participantes siguen reuniendo con el grupo durante la noche.
Estuvimos en una callejoneada con un grupo de turistas y residentes – muchos fueron de una familia que habían venido para una reunión familiar, porque era Día de Muertos.

Por el día, hubo muchas personas en las calles vestido de disfraz, para Halloween o Día de Muertos: unos se juntaron con nosotros, pero hubo orquestas más grandes con mas bailadores que la nuestra en el Zócalo, al lado de la Catedral, donde además hubo un burro con barriles de tequila para atraer las masas. Pero preferí nuestro grupo, con nuestra propia tequila y unas cocas, porque cuando la orquesta terminó a las diez, la familia nos invitó a acompañarla a su hotel, donde Barry y yo también estábamos hospedándonos, para comer tamales y tomar atole, todos hechos en casa, que la familia había preparado para la fiesta.


Por casualidad, encontramos un hombre de la familia cuya esposa (que no estuvo con nosotros debido a una cita con su hijo en una fiesta de su escuela) es Australiana. El es dueño de un hostal en Zacatecas, y una de sus huéspedes también es Australiana, y escribe para la editorial Lonely Planet. Pasamos el día siguiente con ella, pero estas aventuras son para otra carta.


Rough translation and further commentary: we have been going away on weekends, and recently went to Zacatecas, a beautiful city with a strong colonial heritage. They have done a great job on restoring the city centre, many of the facades, streets, and squares, and like many silver towns, it is very hilly and has beautiful views. There is a very colourful tradition called the callejoneada: people join up with a band and follow them, gathering more followers as they dance their way through the streets in the evenings. The many small streets and lanes open up into little squares, often on several levels, where an open plaza is surrounded by beautiful colonial era buildings and where there is more space. The band stops walking and the dancers can let go and fill the space available.

We joined a group just across the road from our hotel, and discovered as the night progressed that many people in the group were from just one extended family living in and around Zacatecas, and had come into town for a family reunion over the holiday weekend. The family included a guy who has lived in the UK and Australia: his Australian wife was at another party with their children. At present he is back in Zacatecas running a back-packers hostel, and one of the other people in the group was one of his guests, Kate, who turned out to be an Australian who writes for Lonely Planet. What are the odds! The photo beside the Spanish text is one taken of our group dancing in one of the small plazas.

Because it was the night of Day of the Dead, which is now a bit mixed up with Halloween (we see syncretism in full swing here, with the traditional skeleton and Catrina costumes very mingled with kids dressed as pumpkins or carrying little pumpkin-shaped containers instead of the traditional skulls) there were many more people out on the streets in fancy dress than one would normally see. Here are some typical folk watching the dancing in the zocalo.

Our band was just one of many. There were many larger bands, including a couple which seemed to be permanently stationed in the zócalo, which had way larger followings than ours. The many onlookers were watching or joining in, and in the zócalo we also enjoyed another traditional feature: a burro bearing large flagons of tequila;

as this was dispensed, the crowds got less bashful and quite a scene developed there beside the Cathedral (a photo of the Cathedral's impressively carved street facade - its less imposing side faces the zócalo - showing some of the sculpture niches, which I took during the day, follows).
But after a while our band moved on and we followed. The hostel owner had bought a small bottle of tequila to share, and we had bought some soft drinks at a local convenience store, so we were well catered for. A group of people joined us from a bar in one of the squares, unfortunately including a very drunk and rather obnoxious fellow who eventually left the group when some police appeared - we were not unhappy to see him go as he kept propositioning the women, none of whom was remotely interested in being propositioned.


The band stopped playing at 10PM. This is a photo of some of the dancers who lasted till then: the drunk is in the front row, left.
I assumed we'd tip them or somehow pay for our entertainment, but they just melted into the night - I still don't know whether the family group had paid for them in advance or they get remunerated some other way. There were then two proposals to continue our evening - a visit to a cantina in the centre of Zacatecas in which the hostel owner has some interest, or a return to our hotel, where many of the family members from out of town were also staying, to eat tamales and drink atole, the traditional foods for Day of the Dead, which the family had waiting and warming in one of their cars. While Barry and Kate wanted to go to the cantina, the family-based low key celebration was all I wanted to do. So we all joined in and had some tamales and atole, and a bit of a chat, then when that party broke up, I went to bed and Barry and Kate went off to the Cantina.

We discovered that one of the women was the mother , and another, the aunt, of a senior official in the local tourism department. These family connections led to us being included in an offer to chauffeur Kate to a couple of destinations within a few hours of Zacatecas on Sunday.
We saw both an archaeological site, La Quemada, whose origins are somewhat mysterious, but it seems more allied to other meso-american sites to the north than to Teotihuacán or Mayan sites I have visited.

After touring this site, we proceeded to another charming town, Jerez, complete with cowboys, where we had lunch and wandered about while Kate did her Lonely Planet research, assisted by a very helpful American woman who lives in Jerez. I took lots of photos of shops full of cowboy boots and hats, but only managed to catch a couple of guys on their horses:

There were some lovely old buildings with wonderful stonework and timber carving, a beautiful church or two, and several lovely squares filled with lots of people making music, meeting their friends, and selling and eating street food. We decided that because it gets quite chilly and is somewhat lacking in cultural activities, Jerez, for all its charm, won't ever be a Mecca for US retirees like San Miguel de Allende.

Monday 19 November 2007

Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende and Tequisquiapan


In October, we went away for a weekend in Querétaro with Maggui and her mother Romy, to the holiday house Maggui bought when she retired. It isn't that far from Mexico City but getting out of town on the Friday afternoon was horrendous - it took 2 hours to get to the start of the toll road, then about 2 hours more to get to Querétaro. Our return trip late on Sunday was a bit quicker, but very nerve-wracking especially after dark. Barry and I both feel that we couldn't cope with the volume of traffic and how hard it is to get out of the city by car - not to mention how stressful we would find driving in the intense city traffic, with cars double parked everywhere, no lane discipline whatever, and people disregarding red lights at will if they feel they can get away with it. The traffic and fear of owning a car and driving here would be one of my major arguments against living in Mexico City long term, however much I enjoy it short term.


One of the reasons Maggui chose Querétaro is that she has family living there who can keep an eye on the place when they are not there, in the form of Gerardo, one of her nephews but like a much younger brother. For a few years of his childhood Romy cared for him, so they are very close - in fact when I first met him some 30 years ago, I thought he actually was one of her brothers, and it has taken me years to get the family straight. He commutes into Mexico City usually on Sunday night, where he works for Pemex (the state owned petroleum mega-enterprise), returning Friday night. Latterly he has been going by bus but formerly he drove. Now he is considering looking for work in Querétaro, which seems from appearances to be booming, but there is not really that much opportunity - there are small Pemex offices around the country, but all the major bureaucracy and functions are centralised in Mexico City. His wife Marisela works at the local university, and their 2 sons are finishing high school or in junior college there. But they do not want to return to living in the Mexico City, and enjoy the pace in Querétaro a lot better. Some of the photos show how attractive the downtown colonial areas are.

We had brought food with us from the city, but also went out in the morning for fresh bread and hand squeezed orange juice (brought home from the corner store in 1 litre plastic bags!). Maggui had brought the makings for chilaquiles, and I had a lesson in making this typical Mexican treat. It consists of layers of several alternating layers of fried tortilla strips ( home made in this case, but I guess you could use corn chips in Australia), a fairly mild green salsa - home made again, shredded cheese (most Mexican cheeses are not very strong and melt well. I will look up a recipe to confirm what type of cheese is used), and some cream (Maggui had a low fat version , and didn't use a vast amount). The baking dish is heated in the oven till bubbling, with the cheese melted. I have eaten chilaquiles several times (including breakfast at the wedding I blogged about earlier this year), but these were far and away the best ever. This was teamed with scrambled eggs, home made frijoles and potatoes with rajas (chilli strips), and fresh rolls and/or tortillas to mop up the sauce. Plus we had the juice and heaps of fresh fruit - I had brought huge mangoes and a decent melon, Maggui added bananas and grapefruit. I had brought some strong teabags for us from home - if you want a strong cup of black tea here you need the imported stuff , or else 2 local teabags.

As well as having family there, by now Maggui her mother have formed great relationships with their neighbours - in fact one of the neighbours popped in to thank Maggui for the birthday present she had brought from the city and given to her 8 year old daughter, and, this being Mexico, she stayed to eat a belated breakfast (there was of course a huge quantity) and I had a chance to practice my Spanish. Then an hour later, Gerardo and Marisela arrived and another round of breakfast was served for them - by now it was about 12. Then Maggui left Romy in their care, and took us into the centre of Queretaro to have a look around. We had gone in to have drinks and coffee in a lovely old hotel the night before (the first photo was taken then), and noted how beautifully the colonial city centre had been restored, but everything looks very different during the day. We took in a museum in an ex-Franciscan convent (see photos) and the artesanía market in the very central section, and noted how many different cultural activities were listed for that evening - I noted a choral concert early in the evening and Barry a Cuban Band playing later in the evening, at various of the outdoor plazas. And of course Barry found a book shop where he just had to buy a few books!

We then headed off to Gerardo's house, which is in one of the many recent developments all around Queretaro. In this case all the streets are named after the stars of the Golden Age of the Mexican movies and radio, really evocative names like Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Maria Felix, Dolores Del Rio - I have since learned more about lots of them from my Cancionero Mexicano course.

We collected everyone, and spent the rest of the day with the family, now also including Daniel, the younger of her nephew's sons, driving to San Miguel de Allende, which is a fairy tale of a place. Viewed from the lookout point on our way in, it looks like the original on which Walt Disney modelled Fantasy Land.

There is a lot of gorgeous pink stone and the crenellated towers of the Cathedral look exactly like Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. It is hilly and unbelievably charming, full of colonial buildings and streetscapes , very hilly and therefore full of gorgeous views. Many retired and artsy Americans have retired to San Miguel, so the prices have been pushed up, and there are many stores selling art, pottery, clothing and textiles not strictly along the lines of the usual handicrafts. The night life and music scene looked interesting, but we weren't there in the evening. I know Bev and Judy enjoyed their few days here, as their first port of call in Mexico.


A highlight of our return drive to Queretaro was stopping for dinner at Chilo's, a local seafood place, where Maggui got the band to serenade Barry (she had missed his actual birthday by a couple of weeks, but that wouldn't stop Maggui!). I have video footage of the serenade, but have had the usual problems downloading it. One of these days I will manage to move the video to somewhere you can actually view it, but probably not till we are back in Oz. See the picture I took to show the relative sizes of a normal bottle of white wine, the oversized beer bottles they served to the table, and a fish fillet Gerardo ordered.

The seafood was excellent, fresh and cheap. We met the owner, quite a young guy, who said he trucks in the fresh fish 3 or 4 times a week direct from the coast at Tampico. It is a huge barn of a place, completely unpretentious, and was full of families, who were mostly just leaving as we arrived, as their business is serving Mexican lunch, and they close about 8. Driving back the final half hour or so to Queretaro, there was a beautiful crescent moon illuminating the landscape, the mountains just visible on the horizon by starlight under the absolutely magical deep navy sky. Too gorgeous!

We returned to Gerardo's then just Maggui, Barry and I carried on into the centre to catch the last half hour of the Cuban band. The quality of the amplification was excellent: I've noticed how clear the sound often is at large outdoor events here, not sure how they do it and avoid the distortion I often associate with this kind of concert. The city was absolutely full of people: family groups with lots of small kids, asleep or awake, and young people in couples or packs. Everyone was eating something or other from the street vendors, from packet snacks, corn and ice cream to plates heaped with food. Kids had balloons and were blowing bubbles, or playing with marionettes and other toys bought on the street.

Echelons of men earn their living from tips earned by managing the parking - guiding you to spots on their pitch, helping you park in the tight spots by whistling, waving their rags about, thumping on your car, or whatever other means they have invented. In some cases they will wash your car while you are away (this happens a lot in Mexico City), thereby increasing their tip, and the presence of a watchful eye ought to discourage break-ins and car theft, so drivers cheerfully pay the guardians. I often wonder how the various guys in this informal economy claim and retain their particular pitch, and if there is a mafia of sorts which controls them and claims a cut of their takings. (Likewise I wonder about the street vendors - I photographed the Indigenous women below in San Miguel.) Outside the smarter restaurants and hotels there seems to be a bit more formality to the system, which even runs to valet parking, but it is amazing how people create a market and find a niche in the most straitened circumstances. Maggui had negotiated the parking system, having dropped us off near the plaza before she went off to park, and only rejoined us in time for the last song. Walking back to the car, she met some of the inevitable ex-Nestle crowd - she worked there for well over 30 years, in increasingly senior executive assistant roles, and seems always to run into former colleagues wherever we go.

On Sunday morning after breakfast Maggui dropped us off at a lovely park which has a museum and a few large statues of heroes of the Mexican Revolution, so we could have a look around for a bit, then picked us up and we packed up the car and Romy and headed off to Tequisquiapan, an incredibly charming village which used to be famous as a spa, but whose water has largely dried up as a result of lack of attention and poor environmental guardianship. After wandering around the zócalo we chose a place to eat lunch. Paella was on that day, so I had to have it, but I was a bit disappointed: the version cooked by the grandmothers at El Hogar Español in Johnston St in Collingwood at home is very much better!

We then had a wander around the place, taking in the artesanía market and ending up at the retirement home of Maggui's former boss, who was away in Europe . His chef, who is caring for the house and the rather overweight poodle, is a great friend of Maggui's and took us on a guided tour of the lovely house, pool and gardens, and regaled us with tales of Tequisquiapan in the old days. He also gave Maggui a huge bag of avocados from the garden in various stages of maturity: she passed on half a dozen to us which we consumed with relish as they ripened over the next couple of weeks. From there we negotiated our way through the extensive and very dusty roadworks back to the main toll road, and back to Mexico City. Maggui and I had both noticed "Speedy Gonzalez" playing over and over in the very small play list of a local radio station we had been tuned to, which neither of us could really explain! We just changed the station to something classical and a lot more calming for the journey home.

Friday 16 November 2007

Boycott Manos Magicas in Puebla






Well, with doing my Spanish homework taking up lots of the time I can get at the computer, and our many weekend trips to different parts of the country, I feel like I'll never be able to catch up on all the stuff I'd love to share with you. I have figured out that I can't directly move my photos from iPhoto on Barry's Mac to my Picasa web page because he has an old version of the operating system - in fact he tells me he has the correct version in Australia but has not installed it. Short of buying it myself and trying to install, I am going to be stuck with the painful methods of moving individual photos to the blog and continually failing when I try to post a slide show or short video. When I look at the photos , much of the magic of our adventures comes back to me, fortunately. So I might defer writing in detail (if at all) about 4 or 5 weeks' worth of adventures, and then when I get back to Australia try and work some magic with my PC so I can post my photos on Picasa and let you see them from there.

However, I have one duty to fulfil as a consumer advocate. The weekend after Bev and Judy left, Barry and I went to Puebla for the weekend. It is a beautiful colonial city, renowned for its tiles and ceramics. Most of you who live in Melbourne will have seen the lovely talavera dinner set I bought when we were here two years ago. It is absolutely gorgeous, cost a fortune (including the shipping cost which doubled its price), and has been disastrous! We expected problems with the shipping, and I was ecstatic when it arrived intact, but within days of starting to use it, the mugs, which are not a standard piece but had been made to order in the beautiful traditional pattern of peaches I chose, started to break when I poured hot water into them to make tea. They either developed slow leaks or more often disastrous cracks, and all but one of them fell victim. I would only try to use one on days when I was feeling full of optimism, but inevitably as I preheated them with tap water, drained them, introduced my tea bag and and started gently pouring water from the jug, a feeling of dread descended, and either intensified as the crack sounded or lifted if the mug lived for another day.

At the time I complained to Manos Magicas (literally "magic hands") where I had bought the set, and they graciously agreed to replace them and sent 6 new ones to us in Mexico City. But Barry, who was coming through Mexico City on the way home from another trip to the US, was overburdened with books, so he left the entire box of mugs with Maggui to mind. As part of the set, I had also selected a bowl which is talavera both inside and out, again a special order. When the mugs started failing, I noted with great concern that there was a leaf missing in the interior pattern on one bowl: the glaze had lifted off, it seemed, so I stopped using it, never dared use them in the microwave, and gave the damaged one to Barry to return to Puebla when he went there for a conference during the next year. As this is also not a stock item, they said they would replace that bowl and he could pick it up next time he was in Puebla. On that trip to Manos Magicas, he also bought a couple of new large and small plates to augment the settings.

When he got home from that brief trip, he brought back the replacement mugs, again intact thanks to excellent packing, and also the new pieces he had bought. But once more, within days, the mugs started to crack. What kind of mug will break when you pour boiling water in it, well you may ask. And what kind of plate breaks when you carve a leg off a roast chook and put it on the plate? Got it in one, talavera from Manos Magicas. While not one of the small plates, which we use frequently, has had a problem, more than half of the big plates have cracked either when putting hot food on them, one when it was in a low oven to preheat (to avoid a sudden shock!) or have cracked when I take them out of the dishwasher or the cupboard. Some I have glued together, others just chucked out in disgust.

So while we were in Puebla, Barry reluctantly agreed to go back to Manos Magicas. We were there a long time, speaking but eventually shouting, to the person in charge of the shop, then by phone to the manager, and then to his wife, who came in to handle us personally. Barry was in a rage at their refusal to replace all our broken pieces, and in the end , after a really long battle and threats to complain to the local equivalent of Consumer Affairs, they agreed we could take 6 new cups - a stock item this time, what they call a lechera, a broad cup for milk or cafe au lait. I figured maybe it was the design of the mugs at fault, and that a stock item would be a better bet. They also provided several new plates free, plus the replacement bowl (and we decided, to be fair, to pay them for a couple of extra bowls they had made and set aside for us). Barry insisted we use them here, as he said there is no point schlepping them back to Oz if they are going to break right away. To my horror and grief, 2 of the 3 lecheras I unpacked have already broken. I am feeling quite strong today and am about to unwrap a few plates and start using them to see whether they are any better! But every time I use them I continue to get great aesthetic pleasure from them, so no wonder my heart is breaking along with the china. So my piece of consumer advice to any of you who travel in Mexico is under no circumstance should you ever buy talavera to use (as opposed to displaying it for its beauty) from Manos Magicas in Puebla.

I have attached a photo of a cup, so you can see how nice the pattern is, but if you look closely you can see is cracked. There is one of the interior which shows the crack clearly, which I sent to them with my last outraged email, but I will spare you the agony. But to show why I am seduced by the beauty of their stuff, I am also attaching a few other shots of the stuff on display in their shop. Don't be fooled - just don't ever buy anything if you intend any use for it other than just looking. And a shot of a typical tiled wall and of the Cathedral, to show we did see a lot more of Puebla than just the inside of Manos Magicas!