Catrina, Catarina

Today during a guided tour of the nearby city Guanajuato, our cultural ignorance finally ended regarding the skeleton female figure that dominates store windows, museums, artwork, t-shirts, mugs, etc.

First of all, she has a name. Catrina. 

Catrina in Mural

Our Guanajuato guide, Dali, introduced us to Catrina as he described a replica of the famous mural Sueño de Una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central (Dream of a Sunday afternoon along Central Alameda) in the Diego Rivera Museum.  Catrina is pictured in the mural with a small boy to her right which is a representation of the artist Diego Rivera.

Original Catrina

The image of Catrina was originally designed around 1910 - 1912 by lithographer José Guadalupe Posada. It was then known as La Calavera Catrina ('Dapper Skeleton', 'Elegant Skull'). Posada’s intent was to present a satirical portrait of Mexicans who were aspiring to adopt European (especially French) aristocratic traditions. Catrina has come to symbolize El Día de los Muertos and the Mexican willingness to laugh at death itself. Death is a neutralizing force; everyone is equal in the end, and sometimes people need to be reminded of that.

In Diego Rivera’s 1947 mural, the Elegant Skull acquired a body and stylish accouterments.  Catrina is now a staple in Mexican culture.  She is a starring figure in Day of the Dead rituals.  She is also a general cultural icon represented in many forms of dress and adornment.

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Familiar Patterns

We are nearing the end of our "tourist" cycle in San Miguel. We have toured the top sites in SMA and have become sufficiently familiar with the city that we no longer check a map when we leave the house.

In our second full week here, the rhyrhm of life has settled into familiar patterns.

On Saturday, we both enjoyed breakfast gatherings organized by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for women and men. Helen enjoyed another breakfast at the Blue Bear Restaurant (Cafe Oso Azul) and Jay joined the men for another bread breaking morning at Mama Mia's.

Service UU Fellowship

We skipped the Sunday morning UU Fellowship sponsored breakfast (we went last Sunday), but joined other UUs later at the Sunday service held in the Atrium Sala of La Posada de la Aldea (Ancha de San Antonio 15, San Miguel de Allende). This UU Fellowship, established 30 years ago, is engaged in the community donating over half of the Sunday collection to local social justice projects. Sunday services are well arranged with either guest ministers or lay speakers. This Sunday's speaker was poet Judyth Hill, author of the famous poem "Wage Peace" that has been set to music.  Despite the fact that the materials she was going to use were in her luggage that had not arrived, she gave an engaging talk.

Music is also an important element of the Sunday service. This Sunday, in addition to the talented pianist Paula Peace, renown flamenco guitarist Javier Estrada was invited to provide a special musical performance. See the short video below.

Following the service we visited the Allende Museum (Museo de San Miguel de Allende). The museum is the 1769  birth home of Ignacio Allende. Allende was born to rich Spanish hacienda

Ignacio Allende

owners, but in 1810 became a local Mexican leader in the War of Independence from Spain.

The museum is a bit subpar, composed of rooms that display some artifacts augmented with long detailed historical descriptions in Spanish and English. Our decision to visit this Sunday was sparked by free admission on Sundays, our type of touring. The normal admission is 50 pesos ($2.75) per person.

We also visited the Church of the Immaculate Conception (Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción).  This church, just off the historic city center square, was built in 1511 as part of an extensive housing complex, and continues even today to serve as a convent for the sisters of the order of the Immaculate Conception Church. We have frequently seen nuns in traditional habits entering and leaving the church compound.

There are two striking elements of this church. A dome added in 1891 majestically rises just in front to the ornate altar. The second is life size figures of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus. Both displays showed vivid, if not disturbing, representations of these events. This church truly takes its Catholicism seriously.

Our evening was a bit less travelogue like. We purchased a pizza from a nearby Domino's. We decided to heat up the pizza in our gas oven and promptly burnt the pizza. We were not about to spend another 85 pesos ($4.75) on another pizza.  Hey, every peso saved counts...right?

Cerrado. Abierto.

Today we put to full use lessons taught on Sesame Street.  Cerrado.  Closed.  Abierto.  Open.

Helen, a Senior Trip Advisor reviewer with more that 360 reviews, is keen to make TripAdvisor a valuable tool for those seeking current information on hotels, restaurants, and sightseeing venues.  

This morning she saw on TripAdvisor a list of restaurants in San Miguel de Allende that needed more reviews. Some restaurants had less than five reviews and some of those reviews were years old.

 

Equipped with a list of restaurants in need of updated reviews, we headed to the historic district of SMA intent on rectifying this deficiency. 

We discovered the first restaurant was up a long, steep hill and cerrado. The second, just a few minutes away, was also no mas. The third restaurant was a 5.1 kilometer walk SE of downtown. Nah, not doing that.

Back in the center of town on the street next to La Parroquia, the former Chuleto restaurant was now the home of a hotel and spa and the nearby Karin's Cafe had closed three years ago! 

Our last stop was a food court at Relox 18. Two of the restaurants listed in Trip Advisor were gone, but there were a dozen more! Sitting in the center of the food court filled with tables for the patrons, we ate some delicious tacos from the Taco Lab (octopus, beef brisket and shrimp), looked at the menu for Mac & Soup (their speciality is mac and cheese), and observed they didn't have a single customer for the hour and a half we were there. Maybe it's

because they charge 165 pesos ($9.16) for a plate of mac and cheese. One reviewer wrote last year, "everything there is expensive, including the water."

We discovered a little tea shop, Euro Te, in the far corner of the food court. We ordered two pots of hot tea brewed from loose tea that one could smell in the tin before selecting. Jay preferred the caramel rooibos and I savored the cherry festival! Total cost: 80 pesos: $4.44. I will submit their first Trip Advisor review tonight. 

A Busy Day

During our leisurely breakfast this morning of eggs over easy, toast and coffee, we flipped through the weekly English/Spanish newspaper Atención and its insert Quepasa?  We reviewed scheduled activities and circled items of interest. Events included Musica y Vino, Concerto con guitar flamenco and so on. Yes, its tough being us.

For today's activities we selected a narrative video of the Historia del Mexico and a pretty esoteric video / lecture / discussion of Non Duality with Ravi Nathwani. This last selection also gave us an opportunity to visit the  northwest section of the town that we had not yet explored.

Historia del Mexico

Helen seated in Theater

The Historia del Mexico video was presented in the 85 seat Teatro Santa Ana at the Biblioteca Publica. This public library is actually a private enterprise that relies on donations and money raised by events and the Cafe Santa Ana. The Biblioteca Publica is also a perfect example of a public square. Folks gather at the library to practice their Spanish, others to practice their English and others to attend films and performances at the Teatro.

The Historia del Mexico was a one hour, 334 animated slide show in video form covering their history from the pre-Spanish days, Spanish conquest and turmoil, revolution, assassinations, revolution again, turmoil again and so on until the late 1930's. In our life time we have known only a relatively stable neighbor to the south. Our sliver of Mexico here in San Miguel de Allende is upscale and trendy. We hope that stability and prosperity continue for our southern neighbor. We are acutely aware that we mingle only with well-to-do light-skinned Mexicans, but occasionally we we see dark-skinned, native stock Mexicans begging on the streets or selling trinkets. We know there is vast poverty in the campos (countryside) just outside of town and out of our sight. We are making an extra effort to remember that these people, too, are our neighbors.

Train made of straw

Toy Museum

Between our two intellectual endeavors, we decided to stop at the Toy Museum. Just to let you know, the regular entry fee is 100 pesos per person ($5.55), but as seniors we were admitted for only 20 pesos each ($1.11). We wandered through the four floors of handmade toys. Many of them were made for competitions and had won prizes, but it was abundantly clear that these toys were for viewing only--they were not to be handled and played with.

Life size models with dozens of masks

Some were reflections of everyday life; there were many examples of toy dishes, trucks, planes, etc.
Additionally, there were many masks that seem to be a big part of the Mexican culture. One big exception were the Frieda Kahlo dolls. These were made in adoration of one of the country's most famous female artists.

Lecture on Non-Duality

We continued to walk to the northwest corner of the city for the lecture / discussion that started at 5:00. In the tiny 65 seat theater, there were a dozen expats there for the presentation. We had no idea of what to expect. We discovered that this session was the second in a series of time and space and most of these people knew each other. We watched three short videos; the first one was about being present "here," and wherever you are is "here," the second was a cartoon video starring Puppetji about letting your baggage go and the third 19 minute video was an Indian swami talking about being and existing in such a way that neither of us couldn't figure out what it was all about. Needless to say, both of us were glad when we were able to escape at 6:30!

Cañada de la Virgen

Among the treasures of our travels is learning of people and events about which we previously knew nothing.

Today we took a highly rated tour offered by Dr. Albert Coffee and learned of ancient people and their incredible understanding of the movement of the moon, sun and stars.

Coffee, a native son of Louisiana, has lived the past 15+ years in Mexico. An archeologist by training, Coffee worked on the excavation of the site's structures, known as Cañada de la Virgen, that were built by the Otomi and other people more 1,500 years ago.  Coffee’s academic training, hands-on dig experiences and a desire to share his passion were quite evident in this guided tour.

The land on which the structures are located was occupied by native people from 540 and 1050 A.D.  Generation after generation built and added to the stone structures that served as ceremonial spaces, elite residences, burial grounds and time-keeping instruments that are aligned precisely to the movements of the celestial bodies. This last function of the pyramid was the most eye opening of our tour.  

Getting to the Site

Getting to the site was a bit a journey in itself.  Coffee provided van service for the 30 minute ride out of town. As we traveled Coffee explained that the ancient structures that were claimed by the Mexican government as part of its national heritage are surrounded by private hacienda property.The hacienda owners were not keen to surrender the pyramids and structures to the Mexican government since they considered the structures part of their own private sacred space. Thus, there are some bureaucratic difficulties included in gaining access to the structures.  

A long walk (instead of driving), for example, is required up an increasingly steep cobblestone road to reach the central pyramid and other structures. There is an upside to these restrictions, in that development of hotels, restaurants and roadside vendors are not allowed, leaving the landscape in its natural state.

We added an optional lunch and lecture after the Coffee tour by Dr. Rosanna Quiroz Enis, an astronomer who has studied the pyramid for years. We recommend this lunch/lecture option to get a full appreciation of the ingenuity of the engineering of the stone structures.

Things We Leaned

The Otomi people and others that followed were sky watchers. They clearly saw that stars remained fixed in relationship to each other, but other heavenly bodies moved about. The sun and moon clearly had set rising and setting times and locations on the horizons. They also saw other bright objects visible to the naked eye, including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, dancing in the sky.  We learned that much of their religious devotion based on blood-letting was designed to maintain this motion of heavenly bodies. 

It appears the movement of the moon through the course of a year was the main focus of the design of the central pyramid.  

The moon is visible at specific times in its cycle on the various steps of the pyramid structure. This alignment is not accidental. In addition, the pyramid is intentionally not symmetrical, allowing the moon to move up the left hand steps in 20 day increments, cross the top structure in a precisely calculated time and then descend the right steps in five day increments. How such understanding and how this engineering was achieved is lost to time.

As Dr. Rosanna Quiroz Enis informed us, "The pyramid told me what they knew."

It is clear that ancient, pre-Google people acquired a sense of the world and the universe beyond themselves.

Flamenco y Toros

As we wander about San Miguel de Allende, we search for posters and flyers of events that may be of interest to us. When we saw a flyer for Flamenco y Toros (Flamenco Dancing and Bulls), Helen quickly put the event on our Saturday afternoon schedule.

The picture of a matador with a bull charging a red cape on the flyer clearly indicated a bullfight was on the bill of fare.  However, the event was scheduled to be held in the northern part of the city at the Ventana's Golf Club and we just couldn't reconcile in our heads that a bullfight was to be held just off the back nine of any golf club. Oh, we have so much to learn.

Around 3:45 pm, we flagged down an independent taxi driver on the main avenue near our home. Using an undesignated taxi is considered a bit dicey, but it was still daylight and the driver was eager for a ride.

Our anxious driver underbid the ride at 50 pesos before realizing just how far out of town we were traveling. We kept track of our progress on Google Maps just to make sure that we were not diverted from our intended destination. After we arrived at the gated golf club, the driver was given additional directions where to drop us off.

We thanked the driver and upped the fare to 75 pesos and received a smile and a warm thanks from him as he departed.

We really did not know how things were going to unfold at this event. We found several tables set up with white table cloths under a canopy. Food and drinks were available for sale and a blue jean clad flamenco dancer was practicing on a small dance floor.  We later realized that this was the tailgating part of bullfighting.

We split a sandwich and later followed others when all of us were invited into the bull ring situated near the white table cloth seating area.

More ritual followed once we were seated in the ring. The flamenco dancers walked around the bull ring,  followed by a large draft horse that clopped about. The horse was a curiosity. Two long term SMA residents, John and his wife Shelia, who sat next to us, informed Jay that the draft horse would later drag the dead body of the bull from the ring. Yikes!

The picador then entered the ring on his heavily padded, blindfolded horse carrying his pic, or long metal pointed lance. Shortly after the bull entered the ring, the mounted picador used the pic to stab the bull in a very specific muscle on the bull's back to tire the animal and cause him to bleed as well as lower his head.

Two banderilleros also appeared in the ring. These men planted banderillas (short barbed sticks) into the back of bull. The intent of this ritual is to wither the animal's strength. It is also believed that sticking barbed metal in the bull's back will make the bull charge in a livelier fashion.  John remarked to Jay, "This will not be a fair fight."


The matador then entered with fanfare as live guitar music wafted over the bull ring.

In the last event before the fight began, a flamenco dancer entered the ring carrying a sign over her head announcing the name of the bull, its number and size of 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs).  John commented that larger bullfighting arenas sport bulls weighing 1000 kilograms. Yikes!

Celebratory flamenco dancing followed the bullfight. We used some artistic license in the design of our short video below.

Fabrica La Aurora

Our House to Fabrica La Aurora

This morning we walked to the northern part of San Miguel de Allende to visit the trendy Fabrica La Aurora.  Fabrica La Aurora is a former textile mill that has been transformed into artists studios and gallery space.

Although some local art was on display, most of the art appeared to be imported or created by expat artists who have taken up residence in SMA.

All guide books list Fabrica La Aurora in their top ten places to visit in SMA.  So when in Rome...off we trekked the 2.1 kilometers from our home to this artist colony.

Art by Any Other Name

Religious Art

Modern Art

Fabrica La Aurora is arranged in four sections designed A, B, C and D.  We explored all sections finding a collection of art ranging from religious statuary to incomprehensible modern art . . . and everything in between.

Since we have three weeks to explore San Miguel de Allende, this visit to Fabrica La Aurora allowed us to tic off a venture on a tour guide top ten list without sacrificing time from lingering in the historic city center.

Our recommendation, if time permits, put Fabrica La Aurora on your sights-to-see list.

See the Local Side of Town

We are in day two of our stay here and seek opportunities to explore the city.  Our 30 minute walk to Fabrica La Aurora gave us a chance to wander through the historic city center and then into an area of town frequented primarily by locals.

Even in the less touristy sectionsof town we noticed that streets are clean and the sidewalks passable.

NO AL MURO!

We also encountered a well executed mural on one of the many walls that separate homes and businesses from the sidewalk. With a little study of the mural we discovered that American political rhetoric about our current president has found a responding voice here in Mexico.

An image of a clown-nosed Trump was seen carrying a local Mexican on his shoulders.  Trump's passenger held a sign reading, "NO AL MURO!" Translation: "No to the wall!"

Make Tacos Not Walls

A similar commentary, albeit more obliquely stated, was also found at our lunch taco stop the other day at Chicago's Sobroso Taqueria.  Displayed on the wall was the restaurant's motto, "Make Tacos NotWalls."

As we have travelled the world, we have become keenly aware of just how closely people follow events in the United States.  We confess to being distressed by the negative impact impulsive tweets have on our nation's image around the world.


Art in an Alley

In a study in contrast, as we wandered back to our home we visited a cluster of small jewelry and crafts shops tucked into an alley.

It was there that Helen purchased a red bracelet.  And the price of 80 pesos, which she bargained down to 70, ($3.90) was the right price.