Jim & Carole's Mexico Adventure

Panamá's famous Altar of Gold is located within Iglesia San José. Later in this posting, I will tell you about the legend of the Golden Altar. Plaza Independencia, and the nearby Iglesia San José (St. Joseph Church) are both located in Casco Viejo, Panamá City's Old Town. In addition to showing you both of these sites, I will also provide some of Panamá's 19th Century history. There is a great deal to see in Casco Viejo, including a wide variety of architecture from the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. Many of these beautiful old structures are grouped around four major plazas. Unfortunately, our tour only allowed us part of one afternoon to explore Casco Viejo. A thorough investigation of all of the interesting sites could take several days. I encourage anyone considering a visit to set aside enough time to see as much as you can of this World Heritage Site.

Plaza Independencia

Catedral Metropolitana de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is the Plaza's centerpiece. Plaza Independencia is also known as Plaza Catedral and Plaza Mayor. The Catedralis one of the largest churches in Latin America. As the seat of the Archdiocese of Panamá, it has had two predecessors. The original seat had been established in 1510 at Santa Maria la Antigua del Darién on the Caribbean Coast. In 1519, it was moved to Panamá Viejo on the Pacific Coast. Following the destruction of Panamá Viejo during Captain Henry Morgan's raid in 1671, the Archdiocese was again transferred. When Panamá City (now called Casco Viejo) was founded in 1673, the Archdiocese finally arrived in its present location. Plaza Independencia got its name because it was here that independence from Spain was proclaimed on November 28, 1821, and independence from Colombia was declared on November 3, 1903. Both announcements were delivered from the steps of the Catedral.

The church's Renaissance style facade is sometimes called the "Jesuit" style. The first version of Casco Viejo's cathedral was a rather unimpressive wood structure, hastily erected in 1674. A few years later, in 1677, a devout parishioner contributed the sum of 14,000 pesos. The funds were used to dismantle the remains of the old Panamá Viejo cathedral so that the stone could be used to construct the new one. However, it was not until 1688 that the first stone for the current building was laid by Bishop Lucas Fernandez de Piedrahita. Work continued in fits and starts for the next 108 years. In 1737, a great fire devastated Casco Viejo, severely damaging the partially-constructed cathedral. The bells, which had survived Panamá Viejo's destruction, melted in the 18th Century conflagration. By 1749, all but the towers and the ashlar-stone facade were complete. In 1751, Bishop Francisco Javier de Luna Victoria y Castro began to supervise the project and the pace picked up. Born in 1695, he was the first Archbishop of Panamá native to the isthmus. The Bishop died in 1777, before the church was finished. The Neo-classical bell towers were built between 1762 and 1796, during the last stage of construction. The towers are 36 m (118 ft) in height and are inlaid with mother-of-pearl from the Gulf of Panamá's Pearl Islands.

A statue of Manual Amador Guerrero stands in the Plaza in front of the Catedral.Dr. Manual Amador Guerrero (1833-1909) was a prominent physician who helped lead the successful movement to gain Panamanian independence from Colombia in 1903. He became a surgeon after graduating from the Universidad de Magdalena. For the last 30 years of the 19th Century, Dr. Amador Guerrero was associated with the Hospital Santo Tomás, an institution that had served Panamá's poor since the colonial era. During his tenure, he reorganized the hospital and acted as its Superintendent in addition to his duties as a doctor. In 1904, a Constituent Assembly elected the doctor as the first President of the new nation of Panamá. His wife, Maria Ossa de Amador designed the first flag of the Republic of Panamá.

Our Casco Viejo guide is clad in a pollera, the traditional dress of Panamá. Along with our Caravan Tour Director Pedro Palma, she shepherded our group as we walked a circuitous route up and down the narrow streets of Casco Viejo. It must have seemed to them a bit like herding cats, but they both managed to maintain their good humor. The role of cross-isthmus trade has been critical for Panamá since 1514. In that year Spain's King Phillip II directed the conquistador Pedro de Arias to build roads to connect the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts and to look into the possibility of a canal. The King wanted to facilitate the transport of Peruvian gold and oriental luxuries back to Spain. Panamá Viejo, and its successor Casco Viejo, were founded as key Pacific ports for this purpose. The trade flow continued throughout the colonial period and into the 19th Century, gaining great impetus from the California gold rush of 1849. In 1850, an American-owned railroad company began construction of a 76.6 km (47.6 mi) line across the isthmus. The project cost $8 million and as many as 10,000 lives before it was finished in 1855. It was one of the shortest railroads ever built, but it was a huge achievement against stupendous obstacles, including bottomless swamps, raging rivers, and deadly diseases. On a macabre note, the work was partially financed by the selling the corpses of workers who died during construction to medical schools for practice autopsies.

Two young girls stroll through the Plaza in front of Palacio Municipal. The Palacio is an early 20th Century building constructed in the Neo-classical style. In addition to housing the municipal government (similar to a US county government), the second floor of the Palacio is occupied by the Museo de la Historia de Panamá. The building was designed in 1907 by Italian architect Genaro Ruggieri, the same man who designed Panama's National Theatre. Although the building is a 20th Century creation, it has the distinction of housing the oldest continuously functioning government body on the Western Hemisphere's mainland. Panamá City's municipal government is a descendent of the one established in 1510 by Diego de Nicuesa at Santa Maria la Antigua del Darién. The current building was dedicated 400 years later in 1910.

The cupola of the Palacio Municipal is bracketed by two sets of Neo-classic sculptures. The sculpture on the left depicts the Greco-Roman god Mercury kneeling at the feet of the goddess Athena. The right-hand sculpture shows a standing man holding a pick and a seated youth holding various fruits. The municipal government's long history was, and is, a source of great pride for the isthmus community. In the late 19th Century, Panamá was still part of Colombia. and its leaders were bitterly frustrated because they sensed they had become a neglected appendage of the Colombian nation. However, they also desperately wanted a cross-isthmus canal. The canal idea was not a new one. After some experience with Panamá's wild interior, Pedro de Arias informed King Phillip of the project's enormous potential cost, difficulty, and overall impossibility given 16th Century technology. However, the vision would not die. In 1529, one of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa's former lieutenants suggested four possible canal routes, one of which is close to the actual route chosen almost 400 years later. During the 18th Century, such figures as Benjamin Franklin and the German philosopher Goethe advocated for an isthmus canal. During the 1820s, the South American Liberator Simón Bolivar sent engineers to Panamá to investigate a route but, in the end, took no action. The explorer Alexander Humbolt also suggested an isthmus canal, but in Nicaragua rather than Panamá.

A trim and handsome young policeman walks across the Plaza. Although there are drug gangs that operate in the poor areas on the fringes of Casco Viejo, there was a strong police presence in the Old Town area where we visited. As early as 1826, the US tried to negotiate a canal treaty with Colombia (then called New Granada). However, the New Granadans backed away, fearful of becoming a US colony. In 1835, Col. Charles Biddle wanted to build a railroad, but the idea was scuttled by President Andrew Jackson, who favored a canal but took no action. In 1848, the New Granadans became fearful of British intervention and signed a treaty making the US the guarantor of isthmus neutrality. The opening of the isthmus railroad in 1855 led to more proposals for a canal. The deluge of Gold Rush enthusiasts, and their attitude toward Panamanians, caused resentment among the isthmus population. After riots broke out in 1856, the US Navy landed marines. This was the first of many military interventions to follow. During the last half of the 19th Century, there were sporadic US efforts to secure a canal agreement, but Americans were distracted by the US Civil War and the problems of westward expansion. In 1863, New Granada renamed itself Colombia, and by 1879 the Colombians were fed up with US inaction. They signed a deal with Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French builder of the Suez Canal. However, digging a canal through the flat sand of the desert was not the same as pushing one through the swamps and jungled mountains of Panamá. By 1888, the French effort went bankrupt. The last efforts to revive de Lesseps' project was abandoned in 1894. The Colombian government, based in Bogatá, then rejected a US proposal to complete the project. These twin failures had profound effects on Panamá's trade dependent economy. By 1903, Panamanians had had enough. They decided to separate from Colombia and go it alone.

Tomás Arias was one of the junta that led Panamá to independence. His statue stands in Plaza Independencia in front of the Palacio Municipal. Tomás Arias (1856-1932) was a businessman and politician who was born in Panama City and educated in Panamá, Jamaica, and the United States. Like many other leaders of the independence movement, Arias was from an elite family. Also like the others, he had served the Colombian government in a variety of posts including Treasury administrator, assembly deputy for the Department of Panamá, representative to the Colombian Congress, senator, and government secretary. The new Republic of Panama was fortunate to have such enormous experience available in its initial leadership. After the separation from Colombia, Tomás Arias served the Republic as foreign minister, consul to Mexico, and chairman of Panama's National Assembly.

Iglesia San José and its Altar of Gold

The rather nondescript Iglesia de San José houses Panama's famous Altar of Gold. The church is only about two blocks from Plaza Independencia. Iglesia San José was built as a replica of the original Augustinian church, destroyed during the pirate attack on Panamá Viejo. Construction on the newchurch in Casco Viejo began in 1671, shortly after Panamá Viejo was abandoned. The unfinished church and its Augustinian convent were inaugurated in 1675. Work on Iglesia San José continued until 1677.

The main nave of the church, showing the Altar of Gold. The Altar itself was carved in the Baroque style popular in the 17th and 18th Centuries. The rest of the interior has been remodeled in the less-flamboyant Neo-classic style. In addition to the Altar of Gold, the church's single nave contains several other elaborate retablos, including one on either side of the altar area and two more on the right wall.

The Altar of Gold fills the entire end of the church's nave from floor to ceiling. The Altar has three levels and contains six niches. Five of the niches contain statues of saints or other religious figures. The top level contains a painting surrounded by a circular frame. The structure is not actually made of gold, but of carved mahogany covered with gold leaf. The figure on the second level in the center niche is San José, for whom the church is named. At his left is Santa Clara de la Cruz de Montefalco. To San José's right is San Tomás de Villa Nueva. On the bottom level to the left is Nuestra Señora de Consolation, and on the right side is San Agustin, patron of the Augustinian Order. In the bottom center is an elaborate cylinder that was closed at the time we visited.

View of the elaborately carved cylinder at the bottom center of the Altar. It is clearly constructed so that it can be opened, but what it contains remains a mystery to me. I have not been able to determine its contents. Just below the cylinder, Christ appears on a tiny crucifix. There is a wonderful legend about the Golden Altar and the pirate Captain Henry Morgan. When, in 1671, the residents of Panamá Viejo heard that the dreaded marauder was hacking his way through the jungle from the Caribbean side of the isthmus, they panicked and began hiding their valuables. At the time, an Augustinian monk named Juan de Villa de los Santos was in charge of the church.

Nuestra Señora de la Consolation, holding the Christ Child.This version of the Virgin Mary is especially revered by the Augustinians. As Captain Morgan's pirates drew closer, Juan the monk was faced with a difficult problem. The Altar of Gold was much too large and cumbersome to move. If Juan left it as it was, the pirates would no doubt hack it to pieces in order to carry off as much of it as they could. They would, no doubt, have been particularly angry to find that the altar was only covered with gold leaf, rather than solid gold. Who knew what sort of barbarities they might commit in their frustrated rage?

San Agustin, patron of the Augustinian Order.Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354 AD - 430 AD) was an early Christian philosopher and theologian. He is recognized as one of the four most important Doctors of the Church and his writings heavily influenced early Catholic doctrine. In Panamá Viejo, Juan the monk wracked his brains for a solution to his dilemma. He hit upon the idea of disguising the Altar as something greedy pirates might overlook. Gathering the few parishioners who had not fled into the jungle, he began to paint the great structure with albayalde (silver oxide).

San José, holding the Christ Child.San Joséis the patron saint of workers and the protector of the Catholic Church. When Captain Morgan himself burst into the church, eager to pillage it of its gold, he found a black altar rather than one of shining gold. The pirate chief grumbled that he had been badly misinformed and that this was a poor example of an Augustinian church. Juan the monk worked hard to confirm this impression. He pleaded poverty and even suggested that the Morgan should make a donation to help complete an unfinished part of the church.

The circular painting at the top of the Altar shows God holding the Scales of Justice. Above his head is a triangular halo, representing the Trinity. The ploy of Juan the monk worked! He persuaded the pirate captain to make a magnificent donation of 1000 ducats. The story has a charming end. While turning to leave after giving his donation, the Captain looked Juan in the eye and said "I don't know exactly why, but I suspect you may be more of a pirate than I am!"

Detail of the Baroque carving. Here you can see the fine carving of the artists who created the Altar of Gold. According to the legend, the Altar of Gold was not destroyed in the great fire that consumed Panamá Viejo. It was cleaned and restored and shipped to a rebuilt Iglesia San José at the new site of Panamá City--now Casco Viejo. Unfortunately, recent professional examinations of the Altar indicate that it was probably created some time after the fall of Panamá Viejo. Historians and archaeologists can often be terrible spoil sports! I prefer the legend.

This completes Part 4 of my Panamá series. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, and you would like to leave a question or comment, please do so in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments box, PLEASE also leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Modern Panamá City, viewed over the mudflats along the seashore, looking east. The stunning skyline stretches all along the Bahía de Panamá for over 18 km (11 mi). The first time I saw this amazing array of modern structures was from the air as our plane circled around the Bahía. On that visit, we stopped for a brief layover on the way to Guatemala. I was amazed by a shoreline that reminded me of Miami Beach. I had been expecting a rather seedy, down-at-the-heels city, like Casco Viejo before the renovation. When we returned in 2013 for our Caravan tour of Panamá, we were told that the city has over 100 skyscrapers, with another 150 under construction. In this posting, we'll take a look at the modern city, along with its harbor and marinas, and enjoy a dance performance that was arranged especially for our visit. For a Google map of the new city, click here.

The modern city skyline

The view from the ruins of the cathedral tower at Panamá Viejo, looking west. The Bahía is on the extreme left, beyond the raised causeway which crosses the mudflats seen above, between the trees and the skyscrapers. At high tide, the mudflats are covered with a few feet of water. Until the end of the 20th Century, only four buildings in the city exceeded 150 m (492 ft). Then, in the early 2000s, a building boom began, leading to a veritable arms-race of skyscrapers. As of February 2015, there were an additional 45 structures that exceeded 150 m, ranging from the Golden Tower at 152 m (498 ft), to the Trump Tower which soars to 284 m (932 ft). Many others are proposed, approved, or under construction. The aptly-named Megapolis Notria Tower, when completed, will reach 333 m (1,093 ft).

A view to the east across mudflats and a patch of coastal jungle. The weather was constantly changing during our visit, one moment cloudy, the next sunny with blue skies. This made photography a bit tricky. We visited in March, the driest time of year. Even so, it averages 10 rainy days during the month. March temperatures typically range from a mild 77 to a warm 90 with a humidity of 59%. That humidity may seem high to some, but in Panamá City it is the lowest average level during the year. From July through December, humidity averages a sopping 93%.

The city retired its famous Diablos Rojos (Red Devils) the day we arrived. These former US school buses were imported decades ago by their Panamanian owner-drivers. They became the core of Panamá's public transportation system. In fact, although now officially retired in the capital, many Diablos Rojos still operate in other cities and towns. The buses are painted with wild images inside and out, reflecting the individual tastes of their proprietors. Each vehicle has its own name, seen above, printed just below the windshields. Many Panamanians mourn the end of the Diablos Rojos as the loss of a colorful part of their culture. However, the Red Devils tended to be badly maintained and often spewed clouds of diesel fumes, contributing to the city's heavily polluted air. They could be dangerous not only because of poor upkeep but also because of the recklessness of the drivers. The Diablos Rojos have been replaced by modern, roomy, air-conditioned vehicles that are operated by employees, not driver-owners. The night we arrived in Panamá City, the chaos caused by the transition to the new system filled the evening's TV news. Hopefully things have settled down since.

In the background, the Trump Ocean International Hotel and Tower rises above all. Its curved profile reminded me of Half Dome in Yosemite. Developed by the ever-flamboyant Donald Trump, the tower gives meaning to the term "trumped up". The structure rises 70 stories above ground level and is currently the city's tallest building. If the buildings seen above appear to be jammed together, sardine-style, it's because they are. Although the available land is limited, the egos of the builders are not. Consequently, the city's nightmarish traffic jams are legendary. This is one reason that the anarchic Diablos Rojos bus system was scrapped in favor of a more modern, if less unique, system of transportation.

The cylindrical Plaza Paitilla Inn provides another interesting shape to the cityscape. The hotel boasts 272 rooms with spectacular views in every direction. I am dubious about the hotel website's claim that the airport is only 15 minutes away. Given the previously mentioned traffic difficulties, perhaps they mean 15 minutes by helicopter.

The F&F Tower looks like a giant corkscrew. It was formerly called the Revolution Building. The first 13 stories are a parking garage, while those above form a twisting helix. The building's 52 stories rise 242.9 m (796.9 ft) from ground to tip. Emporis GmbH, a real estate data mining company, rated the F&F Tower as #7 of the ten best skyscrapers in the world for 2011. The building offers commercial office space, perhaps aimed at those with a twisted sense of humor. There is some talk of making the F&F Tower Panamá City's official symbol.

The city's unique Aquabuses

Keep your feet up and they won't get wet! As we crossed a bridge spanning a lagoon near a marina, I spotted a bus voyaging in the opposite direction. The startling view out my bus window resulted in the following series of shots. At first, I thought the bus was traveling on a slightly underwater bridge, or perhaps the water was just extremely shallow. Later, I found out that this was one of the city's famous amphibious Aquabuses.

Land Ho! The Aquabus nears a landing ramp. Somewhat like the Diablos Rojos, the tour operators acquired vehicles from the United States that were created for an entirely different purpose. The US military originally developed them as a way to carry troops across rivers and other bodies of water where no docking facilities for a normal boat were available. As a veteran, I suspect that the original vehicles were a bit less comfy than the tourist model.

The Aquabus begins its climb up the ramp, becoming a land vehicle again. Tours cost $49 (USD) for adults and $39 for children. The two hour tours are given Wednesdays through Sundays, starting at 10:30 AM and 2 PM and must be reserved in advance.

High and (mostly) dry, the Aquabus looks and functions like any other bus when on land. The tours take the adventurous on a route that passes through several bodies of water This includes crossing the Bahía to the mouth of the Panama Canal.

The Bahía, Harbor, & Marina

Ships ride at anchor outside a breakwater, with the city skyline in the background. The size of the Trump Tower can be appreciated in this view. What is the origin of the mind-boggling wealth that created modern Panamá City? There are several sources. The service sector comprises 78.4% of the economy, while industry takes 17.9% and agriculture only 3.7%. Almost 65% of the workforce is involved in providing services. The Panamá Canal forms a major part of those services and has produced over $7.61 billion (USD) in profits between the time the Canal came under Panamanian control at the end of 1999 through 2013. $1 billion of those profits were accrued in 2013 alone. Closely related to the Canal are other important activities such as the Colon Free Zone, insurance, container ports, and the flagship registry.

A beautiful old yacht gently rocks in waters of the Bahía. This old craft has the look of those owned by Gilded Age tycoons at the end of the 19th Century. I am not sure of its current power plant, but the smokestack indicates that it was once steam-powered. Another key part of the economy's service sector is finance. Panamá is ambitious to become Latin America's international trade and banking center. More than 100 multinational corporations use Panamá City as their regional headquarters for Latin America. Almost 100 international and local banks operate here. A good part of the mushroom-like growth of skyscrapers is due to this ambition. In addition, important parts of the industrial sector include construction, and cement and other construction materials. Since these are all related to the skyscrapers built to house the burgeoning service sector, this further points to the domination of that sector.

Detail of the yacht. A wisp of steam rising from the top of the smokestack indicates the presence of a steam engine somewhere below decks. As the old saying goes, if you have to ask how much a craft like this costs, you can't afford it. Someone else once described a boat as a hole in the water into which you pour money. Unless this is a local boat, the owners must be extremely well-heeled tourists. Almost 9% of Panamá's economy is related to tourism. The World Bank estimates that, in Panama, each $1 of tourist spending generates another $2.87 through the "multiplier effect." Tourist spending here falls into three general areas: beach resort visits, adventure/eco-tourism, and foreign retirees. However, much of the tourist spending never ends up in the pockets of ordinary Panamanians. A hefty portion is repatriated by foreign-based tourist corporations. In addition, supplies and food for tourists often comes from out-of-country sources.

Row after row of sleek yachts are anchored in the harbor's marinas. Sometimes the sources of income of the owners of these expensive boats can be mysterious. The illegal drug trade has been a fact of life in Panamá since at least the early 1980s. The country's free-wheeling banking system, and particularly its bank secrecy laws, created an ideal environment for money laundering. In addition, Panamá occupies a key geographic position between North and South America, and between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This geography plays a major role in the transportation of illegal drugs, particularly cocaine. As a result, the drug cartels of Colombia have had a long and well-documented working relationship with corrupt members of the Panamanian government. Some of these officials have included Panamanian presidents and supreme court justices.

This yacht seemed more like a small ship than a boat. Panamá City's forest of skyscrapers fills the skyline. The US invasion of Panamá in 1989 was billed, at the time, as a police action aimed at capturing military dictator Manuel Noriega. He had just been indicted in Miami for his involvement with the Colombian cocaine cartels. Only later, it emerged that Noriega had been a paid agent of the Central Intelligence Agency for more than two decades. The CIA helped bring him to power after the mysterious death of his predecessor Omar Torrijos. Noriega had been recruited by the Agency while studying at a military academy in Peru. In 1967, he was trained in counter-intelligence at the US Army's School of the Americas (SOA). The SOA's, graduates form a rogue's gallery of Latin American military dictators and human rights abusers. Noriega remained on the CIA's payroll up until 1988, only a year before the invasion that led to his ouster. Up to that point, top US officials turned a blind eye to his drug affiliations in spite of their lip service to the importance of the US War on Drugs. Noriega's defiance of the Miami indictments forced the hand of the George H.W. Bush Administration. After Noriega's capture, the US turned over power to a junta of so-called "democratic politicians." However, nearly all of them had held high positions with the same banks that had laundered Colombian drug money for decades. Top US officials were well aware of these connections, and former President Gerald Ford even lobbied on behalf of the banks. Although some anti-drug reforms have been implemented since the invasion, many of them appear to be window-dressing to hide the continuation of business-as-usual.

Dancin' up a storm

Restaurant at the marina where we stopped for lunch during our tour. In the distance you can see a ship sailing across the Bahía toward the Pacific entrance of the Canal. Pedro, our tour director, arranged for some special entertainment during our meal.

These young dancers performed a local version of the tango. Panamanians are famous as party-animals, even among Latin Americans. There are numerous areas in Panamá City where nightlife is abundant, and after-hours clubs pop up like mushrooms all over the city.

Puttin' down some steps. Given the warm weather and the athletic moves of this dancer, if she had worn any more clothes than this, she would have been drenched with sweat. Doubtless that was the reason for the limited nature of her outfit.

The sensuality of tango was considered shocking in the 19th Century. Tango originated in Argentina in the late 19th Century, but its roots go back to Cuba and Aftica. It became popular among the Argentine working class of Buenos Aires, and then migrated to Europe and North America where it caught on with the middle and upper classes in the 1920s.

Panamanians are a wild mixture of races and cultures. Only about 9% are indigenous. This young woman appears to be mestizo (mixed Spanish and indigenous) while her partner appears to come from an African, or Caribbean-African background. Because of its important position in international trade, people from every continent can be found here

This completes Part 5 of my Panama series. In my next posting, I will focus on the operation and history of the Panama Canal. I hope you have enjoyed this week's posting. If you would like to leave a question or comment, please do so in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Plaza de Armas is the most beautiful of San Luis Potosí's several lovely plazas. In Part 1 we visited Plaza de los Fundadores. Plaza de Armas is one block east of it on Avenida Venustiano Carranza. The kiosco (bandstand) just behind the small fountain in the foreground was constructed with pink cantera, a building stone very popular in old Mexican buildings. In this posting I will treat you to some of the plaza area's outstanding architecture and lively activities. To locate Plaza de Armas on a Google map, click here.

The view east on Calle Francisco Madero toward Plaza de Armas. This calle (street) is typical of several pedestrian-only passageways in the Centro Historico. Notice the wonderful old balconies that overlook the street on both sides. The activity on streets like this is lively, including fellow strollers, street musicians, jugglers, clowns and more.

Plaza de Armas from its northwest corner looking toward the Cathedral steeples. Carole stands on the left, surveying the action. It is hard to overemphasize the positive effect of removing traffic from an area like this. The entire atmosphere is different from an area where motor vehicles dominate, rushing by, spewing exhaust and honking their horns.

Palacio Gobierno, looking west along Avenida Lazaro Cardenas.The Palacio occupies the whole west side of the Plaza. It is the seat of the executive and legislative departments of the State of San Luis Potosí. Construction of this stately Neo-classical building was ordered by Don José de Galvez, Visitador de Nueva España (Inspector of New Spain). Construction began in the second half of the 18th Century. Until the Palacio replaced it, the site had been occupied by the Casa Real (Royal House), the seat of government. The first stone was laid in 1770, during the colonial period. However, ironically the building was never used by the colonial government. By the time it was finished in 1827, Mexico had been independent for six years.

View of the Palacio Gobierno from the left. The building was designed by a military engineer, Miguel Costanzó. He was also a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos, in Mexico City. Due to the scarcity of architects and engineers, it was common colonial practice for military engineers to design civilian architecture, including religious buildings. The man who initially directed construction was Felipe Cleere, the Royal Treasurer and an amateur architect. Several other architects became involved over the years. The project took so long because funds were frequently unavailable. Another factor was the 1810-1821 Independence War, during which trained engineers were engaged in the war. When the builders of the Palacio finally declared it finished in 1827, and presented the bill for 166,000 pesos, the rear of the building was still incomplete.

An exact copy of the Independence Bell of Dolores Hidalgo hangs over the main entrance. The original bell was the one rung by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on September 15, 1810 in the Guanajuato town of Dolores. Using the bell to summon the townspeople, he stood on the steps of his church and gave his famous grito (cry) for independence. That original bell now hangs over the balcony outside the office of the President of Mexico at the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City. Everywhere in Mexico, from the capital city to the smallest town, a similar bell hangs over the entrance of the most important government building. Late in the evening, every September 15, each bell is rung to cheers of ¡Viva Mexico! The pealing bells and cheers commemorate Father Hidalgo and the beginning of the great struggle for independence.

A fine old colonial mansion occupies the northwest corner of the Plaza. Today, the ground floor is filled with store-front businesses. I am not sure, but I believe the upper floor is occupied by the State Controller's offices. The original owner of the mansion would have had a fine view of the activities on the Plaza de Armas from the ornate balcony on the second-story corner. The structure on the left of the photo is the corner of the Palacio Gobierno. Notice the statue on the roof pedestal over the corner balcony.

The Roman god Mercury is typical of Neo-classical architectural adornment. The finely wrought bronze figure wears the winged hat and boots common to images of Mercury. He carries the snake-entwined caduceus--symbol of the herald--in his left hand. Mercury was called Hermes by the Greeks. The Romans were great borrowers and began worshipping Hermes as Mercury around the 4th Century BC. He was the patron of financial gain, commerce, eloquence and messages, travellers, boundaries, luck, trickery, and thieves. The Latin words merx (merchandise), mercari (to trade), and merces (wages) all relate to the god Mercury. His presence on this old building is probably very appropriate. While constructed as mansions for the wealthy, many such structures were built with their living quarters on the second floor. Even in colonial times, the ground floors were often devoted to storefronts or other commercial purposes. San Luis itself was founded, and grew wealthy, as a commercial center to provide goods to the mining areas in the adjacent mountains.

A pair of street musicians entertains passersby. Mexican plazas often attract musicians and performers of various kinds and they seem especially prolific in San Luis Potosí. These two were quite versatile, utilizing a small guitar, rattle, and flutes of various sizes. As many street musicians do, they left their instrument case open to encourage donations. I obliged, as I nearly always do.

Kids enjoying a statue of The Birdman. The statue was modelled on the miner José Moreno Diaz who fed the hungry pigeons so regularly that they flocked to him when he arrived in the plaza. The two kids seemed fascinated by him and the little girl couldn't resist playing with his mustache. I love the way such statues are not blocked off by fences and barriers. Touching is encouraged.

The stone kiosco is fairly unusual. I have seen many throughout Mexico and can't recall any others that were constructed using pink cantera. In fact, the original kiosco at this site was of the usual wrought iron and wood design. In 1948, the earlier structure was replaced by this octagonal one, apparently to better fit with the cantera facades of the surrounding buildings. The stone gives it the appearance of a small Greco-Roman temple. Both the kiosco and the fountain in the foreground were the work of the Biagi brothers. Their other work includes the statues of the Twelve Apostles in the nearby Cathedral. The scene above, photographed in the early evening, shows people flocking around the kiosco to listen to a performance by the San Luis Potosí State Orchestra.

Life in Mexico always comes with a live soundtrack. Mexicans love music and everywhere we go there are live performances, often in free, public venues like this one. Unfortunately, in the US, the days of Woodstock and free performances by famous rock groups in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park are long gone. Today, orchestra performances are usually restricted to those with the funds to pay for expensive tickets. Greed rules. By contrast, the State Orchestra regularly plays in this kiosco, along with many of Mexico's great musicians. Some of their names are inscribed on the walls.

Early morning sunshine warms pedestrians on Avenida Venustiano Carranza. This street runs along the north side of the plaza between the Palacio Gobierno and the Palacio Municipal (county government office). A leisurely, traffic-free, morning amble along streets like this is one of the many pleasures that await visitors to San Luis.

Palacio Municipal and the bell towers of the Catedral. The two buildings fill the east side of the plaza. The site of the Palacio Municipal has had many uses since early colonial times. The first Casa Real (Royal House) stood here and was the office of the colonial mayor. Later, it became the site of both the prison and the headquarters of the Royal Tobacconists (the government monopoly on tobacco).

View of the Palacio Municipal from the right In the mid-19th Century, the site was changed into the Parián (market). It was converted to the two-story building you see today, with the large arcade in front bordered by the portales (arches). In the later 19th Century, the building was taken over Bishop Montes de Oca and renovated into a Neo-renaissance Episcopal Palace. This was probably due to its proximity to the Cathedral next door. Finally, in 1915, the new Revolutionary City Council seized the building and reconverted into the Palacio Municipal. This sequence is typical of Mexico's old architecture. Instead of simply tearing down one building and putting up another, the same structure will be modified, altered, improved, and reused for centuries. The Oficina de Turismo (Tourist Office) is located in this building and a kind employee led me several blocks through the streets to find a new memory chip for my battery. It's always a good idea to find the Oficina de Turismo early in any visit.

Catedral Metropolitana de San Luis Rey. The Metropolitan Cathedral is the most impressive building on this very impressive plaza. In this posting, I will show you a bit of the exterior, but in the next one you will be able to see the exterior and interior in detail. The original parish church, built in 1593, once stood here. It was constructed only a year after San Luis Potosí was founded. Construction on this great Cathedral started in 1670, using the Baroque style popular in the 17th Century. Sixty years later, in 1730, they finally finished. At that point the Cathedral had only one tower, the rust-colored steeple on the right.

Late afternoon sun lights up the pink cantera of the Cathedral's facade. In the 19th Century, the church was remodelled, with many Neo-classical elements replacing the Baroque. The steeple on the left, built with grey stone, was added in 1910, the Centennial of Mexican Independence. In front of the entrance you can see one of the Omnibuses that pick up tourists here for a ride around the Centro Historico.

The Omnibus loads up. Carole and I decided to take a ride. Although our Spanish was not quite good enough to understand the guide's detail descriptions, the ride gave us a good overview of the area. We were able to identify what to look for when we came back on foot in the following days. If you can position yourself correctly, the upper deck of an Omnibus is also a handy spot for photography.

View down Calle Francisco Madero from Plaza de Armas to the Caja Real. Another pedestrian-only street, this one leads west from the Plaza one block, along the south side of the Palacio Gobierno (right side of street). At the end of the block on the right is the Caja Real(literally: the Royal Box, or Treasury). Felipe Cleere, who initially directed the construction of the Palacio Gobierno in the late 18th Century, also built the Caja Real. The building served many purposes over the centuries, including treasury office, customs, and a residence for governors and military commanders. In 1854, President Santa Ana gave the building to Bishop Montes de Oca as a residence. In 1935 it was declared a national monument. Two years later, it became the Federal Finance Office. Finally, in 1960, Caja Real was taken over by the University of San Luis Potosí as a cultural center. Today, many artists display their work in the Caja, and there are musical and theatrical performances as well.

The original purpose of the Caja Real was to collect the "Royal Fifth." During the colonial period, the Spanish King reserved for himself the Quinto del Rey or Royal Fifth. This amounted to 20% of the value of precious metals and other commodities acquired by his subjects through war loot, found treasure, or mining. The concept of the Royal Fifth goes back to the Middle Ages. It had been collected in New Spain from the moment Hernán Cortés landed and sacked his first indigenous city. Not coincidentally, San Luis'Caja Real is located across the street from La Moneda, the old mint. Immediately above the balcony is Bishop Montes de Oca's coat-of-arms. In the niche above the coat-of-arms is a statue of the Immaculate Virgin, a gift from King Charles III (1716-1788). The city's evening lights were just coming on as I took this shot.

This completes Part 2 of my San Luis Potosí series. I hope you have enjoyed it. If so, and you'd like to leave a comment, please do so in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Aerial view of the Pedro Miguel locks and the Centennial Bridge. The single chamber of the Pedro Miguel Locks is 9.5 m (31 ft) deep. In addition to those at Pedro Miguel, there are two other sets of locks in the Panamá Canal. The Gatun Locks are located on the Caribbean side of the isthmus. The Miraflores Locks form the Canal's exit into the Pacific. The Pedro Miguel Locks are located only a short distance before reaching Miraflores. For a schematic showing the whole system of locks, click here. The Centennial Bridge opened in 2004 and is 1.052 m (3,451 ft) long. The bridge is the crossing point for the Pan-American Highway, a network of roads stretching 48,000 km (30,000 mi) from Alaska's Prudoe Bay to Ushuala on the southern tip of Argentina. This makes it the longest drivable road on earth. The only break in the highway is Panama's Darien Gap, arguably the most dangerous location in the Western Hemisphere. The Gap is one hundred miles of rugged mountain wilderness infested with drug smugglers, guerrillas, and a deadly assortment of insects and snakes. As to the Canal itself, it has been described as one of the engineering marvels of the world. In this posting, I'll give you a sense of how the Canal functions, and some of its history. (Photo courtesy of the Canal Museum)

A look at the Locks

Lock gates and the control building where they are operated. Miraflores is the last set of locks before reaching Panamá City's harbor and the Pacific. This, and all the photos that follow, were taken from the observation deck of a multistory administration building overlooking the locks. Notice how the lock doors join at an angle pointing upstream. They were designed this way so that the pressure of the water will force the doors together, ensuring a good seal. Because of this, the doors can only be opened when the depth of the water is equal on each side.

View of the inner side of the last set of lock doors. The water in this lock is almost equal to the level of the water beyond Miraflores. In the lower right, you can see water pouring in through one of a variety of vents. There are two parallel channels in each set of locks, so that two ships can transit at once. However, there is a dangerously narrow stretch of the Canal before reaching Miraflores. This requires all ships to travel in the same direction, so the traffic periodically alternates directions. In the Miraflores Locks, each channel had two chambers 16.5 m (54 ft) deep. The gates of Miraflores are the largest in the whole Canal system. They are 25 m (82 ft) high and as much as 2.13 m (7 ft) thick. The gates each weigh 662 tons and each individual gate hinge weighs an additional 16.7 tons. In spite of their immense size and weight, the gates are so well-balanced that their operation requires only two 25 horsepower electric motors for each door. If one motor fails, the other can still open and close the door, although at a reduced speed.

Two sailboats await their turn. The Canal takes all comers, from huge cargo ships to small boats like these. Cargo ships pay for their transit according to the number of containers they carry ($82 per full container, $74 for empty). It can cost a fully loaded container vessel over 1/3 of a million dollars to travel through the Canal. Small boats pay by length. Under 15.24 m (50 ft) and your fee will be $800. For up to 24.4 m (80 ft) you pay $1,300. Bigger boats, up to 30.5 m (100 ft), are charged $2000. Above that size, you'll shell out $3000. However, if you can afford a boat that big, the transit fee probably won't make you blink. Whatever their size, small boats generally make the trip in groups in order to save energy, water, and time. The smallest toll ever charged was 36 cents. It was paid by Richard Halliburton, who transited the Canal by swimming in 1928.

The flow of the Rio Chagres provides hydroelectric power for the Canal's operation. The Canal follows the course of the Rio Chagres from Lago Gatun in the interior to the Bahia de Panamá. When the river reaches the locks, some of the water is diverted to this plant. The US engineers who planned the Canal's construction in 1904 rejected animal or steam power as impractical and chose electricity to drive the operation. The biggest hydroelectric installation is at the Gatun Locks on the Caribbean side. There are also thermoelectric plants near the locks. The full Canal system requires more than 1000 electric motors. Because of recent droughts, Panamá has begun to consider solar and wind as alternate sources of power for the Canal.

Army barracks of the former US Fort Clayton, with skyscrapers in the background. The red-roofed buildings were part of the 22 US forts, airfields, and other military installations that protected the Canal Zone for nearly 100 years. After the Zone reverted to Panamanian control in 1979, the US military facilities were gradually abandoned over the next 20 years. They became quaint relics of a colonial past. Today, many of the picturesque old buildings have been reborn as restaurants, stores, or commercial offices. If the barracks are a relic of the past, the skyscrapers represent Panamá's future.

The Miraflores Locks in operation

The Sextans enters the locks. She is a Chinese tanker out of Hong Kong. Built in 2007, she is 183 m (600 ft) in length and displaces 51,218 tons. The tight fit requires the assistance of a tugboat. Notice the Panamanian flag in the foreground, signifying the country's long-sought sovereignty over the Canal Zone. The maximum length and width of the locks is known as the Panamax and ships exceeding this must find another route. However, a new, widened canal is under construction parallel to the existing Canal. It is scheduled to open in 2016.

The 1904 Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, gave the United States control of a zone ten miles wide cutting across the isthmus from Colón on the Caribbean to Panamá City on the Pacific. The time-frame of the treaty was to be "in perpetuity." This effectively made the Canal Zone an unorganized territory of the US, government by an official appointed by the American president. Within the Zone's limits the US would be allowed to build, operate, and control the canal. The circumstances of Panama's 1903 separation from Colombia, and the signing of this treaty less than three months later, were to haunt US-Panamá relations for nearly a century.

The Chinese ship is now within the first lock. The Canal operators have equalized the water levels with the second lock and are preparing to open the gate seen in the lower left of the photo. The four small electric vehicles attached by cables to either side of the ship's bow are called "mules." In the 19th Century, actual mules were used to pull vessels through the Erie Canal and other man-made waterways. The name is still used more than century after the opening of the Canal.

Proposals for a cross-isthmus canal date all the way back to 1514. In the 19th Century, world trade accelerated, as did canal-building technology. These two factors resulted in a series of plans, schemes, and surveys throughout the century. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman who built the Suez Canal, launched a major construction project in the late 1880s. When the French project collapsed, the US began negotiating with Colombia for the canal rights. Panamá was a province of Colombia at the time. The two nations reached an agreement, called the Hay-Herrán Treaty, but it was subsequently rejected by the Colombian legislature. Colombian political leaders felt the proposed compensation would be inadequate, particularly given the expected economic value of the canal to the US. Panamá's business and political elites, who had been pushing for a canal for decades, saw their dreams once again thwarted. They immediately began plotting to break away from Colombia and sign their own deal with the Americans. The US government--which was at peace with Colombia--was no innocent bystander in this conspiracy to dismember a friendly country.

Water drains from the Sextans' lock while another ship enters the parallel lock. The Sextans' deck is now nearly level with the side of the lock. The mules continue to inch the big ship forward toward the gates of the next lock. The container ship in the background is the Hansa Europe, out of Hamburg, Germany.

Theodore Roosevelt was US President in 1903 and he had little patience for international law, and less for pesky Latin American governments that got in his way. His policy was to "speak softly and carry a big stick" and the stick he wielded was called "gunboat diplomacy." There was no essential difference between his approach and that of 19th and early 20th Century European imperialists who colonized the globe by seizing other people's territory. He let it be known to the Panamanian conspirators that the US looked favorably upon their plans and would assist them with military force if necessary. This, of course, was based on their willingness to go along with US treaty terms. The conspirators readily agreed, anticipating personal financial gains on a stupendous scale.

The Sextans has passed the first lock, the gates have closed, and the lock is refilling. In the parallel channel, the Hansa Europe has begun dropping as the water is drained from its lock.

In late 1903, the Colombian government caught wind of trouble in Panamá and ordered troops to land at the port of Colón, cross the isthmus to Panamá City, and put down any revolt. They immediately ran into trouble. US Navy ships from the Caribbean fleet maneuvered to delay the debarkation of the troops. When they were finally ashore, the Colombians attempted to use the railroad to move their forces. However, theAmerican government had bought the railroad from the French in 1902. Its officials used various stratagems to obstruct the efforts of the Colombian force to reach Panamá City. On November 2, 1903, a US Navy gunboat landed Marines in Panamá City to block the Colombian troops when they arrived. No less than ten US warships patrolled the coast to prevent any landing of Colombian forces from the Pacific side.

The control center of the Hansa Europe sits ten stories above the main deck. The level below the sign containing the ship's name is called the bridge. It is the command center. Projecting up from the very top level are masts for communications and radar. The ship, built in 2012, is 239.47 m (786 ft) long and displaces 47,266 tons.

Although a Colombian Navy ship did lob a few shells into Panamá City, killing a Chinese resident, the affair was otherwise bloodless. In fact, many of the key Colombian military officials already stationed in Panamá were part of the conspiracy. When the troops arrived from Colón, their officers were arrested and the local military officers took over. The whole operation was swiftly completed. On November 3, the day after the Marines landed, Panamanian business and political leaders declared independence from Colombia. Three days later, the US recognized the new nation. Forty-four years before the birth of the CIA, the US government was already quite adept at stage-managing coups against foreign governments to further American strategic and economic interests.

Hans Europe's officers peer over the bridge's railing to check their progress. Wings extend out from each side of the bridge so that the officers can get an unobstructed bow-to-stern view of the huge ship.

On November 18, 1903, twelve days after the declaration of independence, a canal treaty was signed by US Secretary of State John Hay and Phillipe-Jean Bunau-Varilla. The Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty immediately became controversial. This was due not only to its terms, but also to the fact that Bunau-Varilla was the sole negotiator and signer for Panama. He was French rather than Panamanian, and had not lived in Panamá for 17 years. After signing the document, Bunau-Varilla never returned to Panamá, probably for good reason. When he sat down with Secretary Hay, the Frenchman ignored virtually all the instructions he had received from Panamanian leaders regarding the treaty's terms. No doubt Hay was more than happy to have so pliable a bargaining partner. When the signed treaty reached Panamá, its newly installed leaders nearly rejected it. US officials told them that if they did, the US would withdraw its support. To increase the pressure. 2000 additional Marines landed in Panamá City and the implication was clear. They weren't there to fight Colombians this time. The Panamanian leaders caved in and added their signatures to the agreement.

A large, covered lifeboat hangs on the side of the Hansa Europe. Anyone who has seen the movie "Captain Phillips" should immediately recognize this type of lifeboat. When Somalian pirates captured a similar ship, its captain ended up spending several days crammed into an identical lifeboat with his captors before they were killed and he was rescued.

When the Colombian government learned of the collapse of their military effort, the subsequent declaration of Panamanian independence, and the signing of the Hay-Buneau-Varilla agreement, they scrambled to salvage the situation. Their government hastily sent a delegation to meet with the Panamanian leaders, hoping to persuade them to rescind their independence. Significantly, the meeting did not occur in a neutral location, but aboard the US Navy ship Mayflower and under the watchful eye of its officers. The Panamanians rejected all proposals for reconciliation and stood by their declaration. It was not until 1921 that Colombia recognized Panamá's independence, and that was only after a US payment of $25 million and the passage by the US Senate of a formal apology for the American intervention.

A telephoto shot shows the mules gently tugging their huge burden through the locks. In a later posting, I'll give you a detailed look at one of these homely, but absolutely essential, little vehicles.

Some of my blog readers might consider my take on the US acquisition of the Panamá Canal Zone to be a bit harsh. Perhaps I am just using 21st Century hindsight? Could it be that people simply looked at things differently in those days? Actually, the public reaction in the United States in 1903 was much harsher than anything I have said. The New York Times called it "an act of sordid conquest," while the New York Evening Post described it as "a vulgar and mercenary venture." Early 20th Century political cartoonists had a field day. One striking creation shows a covered wagon with "Panama or Bust" painted on its side. The wagon is pulled by a rampaging Republican elephant, while a whip-wielding Roosevelt sits in the driver's seat. Hanging on for dear life beside him sits a tiny child wearing a sombrero. The small figure represents the Panamanian leadership. The elephant and its wagon are shown flattening small obstacles marked "international law,""Colombian protest," and "precedent." In his memoirs, Teddy Roosevelt himself stated that "I took Panama, and while the Congress debated that, I built the canal."

The crew of the Sextans gives a friendly wave as their ship passes. The Canal is a meeting point for all the world's maritime nations.

The Panamá Canal was one of the great engineering feats of all time. The project took ten years, from 1904 to 1914, finishing just as World War 1 broke out. The US officials who led the project learned a key lesson from the French disaster under de Lesseps. The most important ingredient for success was a healthy, well-fed workforce. The first task, therefore, was to curb malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases that had decimated the French project's workers and their engineers. The US Army Medical Corps had learned a great deal about tropical diseases in Cuba during the 1898 Spanish-American War. These lessons were effectively transferred to Panama and, after an intense and comprehensive health campaign, the project moved forward. Most of the actual work was performed by thousands of West Indians of African descent who arrived from the various Caribbean islands. In spite of health and safety measures, more than 5,600 men died during the course of the American project. This actually compares favorably with the 25,000+ who died under French leadership.

The final lock fills to receive the Sextans. The churning water along the right side of the lock shows where the water is pouring in under the surface. In earlier times, the water pumped into the locks was simply wasted when it poured out to the open sea. This became an issue when Panamá suffered a severe drought that lowered the levels of Lago Gatun, the major water supply for the Canal. Now, water from a series of holding ponds is used to supply the locks and is pumped back into the ponds when the locks are drained.

The building of the Canal required the removal of 252 million cubic yards of earth along the 50 mile route. This was in addition to what the French had moved during their failed project. Much of the earth was transported by railroad back to Gatun to build the dam that created the lake that would keep the locks operating. The cost of the US project was $352 million, the equivalent in today's US dollars of $7.5 billion. This was on top of almost $300 million that the French spent. The US project ended up spending 2.1 times its original construction budget. However the economic advantages the Canal provided to American businesses were great. In addition, there was the strategic advantage of easier passage for the US Navy's fleet between the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.

The last lock is now filled and awaits the opening of the gates to allow the Sextans to proceed. On average, it takes 8-10 hours for a ship to pass all the way through the Canal. This doesn't include time spent waiting for a ship's turn to move through. As of 2010, more than 1 million vessels have made this journey. Since, on average, 13,500 vessels pass through every year, as of April 2015, an additional 58,450 have transited.

The Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty remained in effect as signed in 1903 until 1936 when modest improvements were negotiated. How did it work out for the US and Panamá and why were its terms so controversial among Panamanians? The agreement included an initial payment to Panamá of $10 million in gold coins, along with an annual rent of $250,000 in gold coins. When originally offered this amount, the Colombian legislature had rejected it and demanded at least $25 million, on the basis that the US had paid the French $40 million for their failed canal company.

The water has now equalized between locks and the gates begin to open. When they are fully opened, the gates will fold back flush against the walls of the locks, allowing smooth passage of the ships through the narrow channel.

For the $10 million initial payment and annual rent, the treaty gave the US control of a 10-mile-wide strip of land extending across the isthmus, as well as access to any lakes and bodies of water nearby which might be used in constructing and operating the canal. US control was to extend "in perpetuity" and, in effect, the Canal Zone became a territory of the United States. The US could build whatever fortifications and use whatever military means it chose to defend the Canal. It had complete operational control over the Canal and full rights to use the ports of Colón and Panamá City. In the construction process, the US was not required to use Panamanian labor, but could import as many workers as it chose from any nation it chose. Under the terms of the treaty, no change of government or laws in Panama could effect the treaty. Panamá itself became a "protectorate" of the US, a term often used by imperial powers to describe their colonies. The "protectorate" status provided the legal framework for repeated US military interventions whenever the Panamanians became restive about their lack of sovereignty.

A mule moves down a ramp created to allow its passage between levels. While the ships are raised and lowered by water levels in the locks, the mules travel by land and so must utilize these ramps.

So, the US used a thinly disguised imperialistic strategy to acquire the rights to the Canal Zone, then negotiated a thoroughly one-sided treaty to nail down those rights, and finally compelled the treaty's acceptance at the point of a gun. But surely Panama itself benefited from the Canal? Not remotely as much as the US benefitted, it seems. An economic analysis of the distribution of benefits does show some initial positive results in terms of Panamá's economic growth between 1915-1930. However, during the life of the US Canal Zone, the returns to Panamá were paltry. The chief beneficiaries were US corporations, whose shipping times and expenses were radically cut, especially for oil companies with operations in Southern California. The ships of other nations pass through the Canal, it is true, but the lion's share of traffic has always been American.

The Sextans has now moved into Miraflores' last lock. As soon as the gates shut behind the ship, water will begin to drain, lowering the craft to the level of the harbor and the Pacific.

Panamanians were angered when some of the great economic benefits from the new Canal failed to materialize. These included the opportunity to sell goods and services to the Canal Zone, and to the transiting ships, and to work in the Canal Zone itself. As it turned out, US policy explicitly prohibited either the Canal Zone or the ships to purchase from Panamanian businesses. In addition, West Indians were given hiring preference over native Panamanians in Canal Zone employment, just as had happened during the construction phase. The best jobs were part of what was called the Gold List, while all others fell under the Silver List. In the early days, some Panamanians could access the Gold List, but after a while only white Americans could get those jobs. Canal Zone workers, whether American, Panamanian, or West Indian, used their pay in US-government owned stores to buy goods imported from America. Passing ships could only buy supplies from those same stores. Panamanians were further angered when the US refused to turn over the initial $10 million payment directly to Panamá's government. Instead, the funds were handed to the financier J.P. Morgan who was given the job of investing them "on Panama's behalf." Part of the money he used to speculate in New York real estate and the remainder he deposited in Wall Street banks. The Panamanians had intended to invest most of the $10 million in fixed income securities. Morgan's investments produced a rate of return below that which Panamá could have earned by investing on its own.

The final set of gates opens and the Sextans is finally floating at sea level. It was unclear to me whether she would anchor in Panamá City's harbor to take on supplies, or steam directly out into the Pacific.

From almost before the ink was dry on the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, Panamanians resented it and the arrogant and selfish way US officials chose to operate the Canal Zone. They also objected to repeated US military interventions, not just in the Canal Zone but throughout the Republic of Panamá. US troops were used to break strikes, intervene in elections to protect favored officials, break up student demonstrations over sovereignty issues, and otherwise "put down public disturbances." Such interventions occurred in 1904, 1908, 1912, 1918, 1920, 1921, 1925. In 1936 the treaty was revised and the US agreed to increase the annual payments to Panamá and give up the right to intervene in the Republic of Panamá. Despite this, interventions occurred in 1958, 1964, and 1989. In the last case, the US sent a massive force to remove General Manuel Noriega, ostensibly because of his involvement with drug smugglers. In fact, Noriega had been a paid agent of the CIA from 1967 until 1988, just before the invasion. His real offense appears to have been his growing friendliness to Cuba and Nicaragua. The Panamanian politicians the US installed to replace Noriega were themselves heavily involved in money laundering for Colombian drug cartels, a fact well known to US officials at the time. During the invasion, as many as 1000 Panamanians, most of them civilians, were killed and an entire neighborhood was flattened.

And off she goes! The Sextans has now left the Miraflores locks and faces open water at last. Her passage through the Miraflores locks had been smooth, rapid, and without incident.

The 1964 intervention was the result of a student demonstration. The students entered the Canal Zone and tried to raise a Panamanian flag to fly next to the US flag. The incident escalated into violence in which 19 Panamanians and 2 US military personnel were killed. Which side initiated the violence is still disputed. However, the incident convinced US President Lyndon Johnson that things would finally have to change. A series of negotiations then began. Both sides sat down with the understanding that the 1903 treaty would have to be abrogated in favor of a new treaty that would recognize Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone. US control would not longer be "in perpetuity" but would have a specific ending date. The negotiations ultimately resulted in the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaty. In 1999, Panamá assumed full control and jurisdiction over all of its territory including the Canal Zone and all US military bases. Panamá was finally a free and independent nation and in possession of one of the most important economic waterways in the world.

This concludes Part 6 of my Panama series. I hope you have enjoyed it. If so, feel free to leave comments or questions either in the Comments section below, or by emailing me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section PLEASE leave your email address so that I may respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

An Emberá village leader gives a demonstration of palm weaving. He wears an impressive crown fashioned from hammered silver coins and topped with the profile of a hawk. Although there were older men in the village when we visited, this man took the lead with a quiet authority. For me, the high point of our Panamá adventure was a visit to this remote village located along the banks of the Rio Gatun (Gatun River) near where it empties into Lago de Gatun (Lake Gatun). The huge lake was created during the construction of the Panamá Canal as a transportation link, water supply, and source of hydroelectric power. In order to reach the Emberá village, we had to travel by small boat across the lake and up the river. This area of central Panamá is part of a national park. Monkeys frolic in the trees and crocodiles doze on the sunny river banks. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the village enables the people to carry on their traditions with a minimum of outside interference. These gentle, indigenous people conduct their lives in a manner not too different from the moment when the first European set foot in Panamá in 1500 AD.

The village

A family lines up to greet us in a large, open-sided, communal structure. The building is made from tree trunks and large branches while the roof is thatched with palm fronds. The people live in smaller but similarly constructed houses scattered along the river bank. There is a rustic wooden bench that stretches around the perimeter of the communal building. This is where community members (and visitors like ourselves) sit facing each other in a broad circle. The open, central area is used by speakers during village meetings, and for religious ceremonies and dancing. During our visit, the dirt floor was swept immaculately clean.

A middle-aged couple stands in front of a display of Emberá crafts. In spite of the rather stern pose they assumed for the camera, they were actually quite warm and friendly. The woman's hair is adorned with hibiscus blossoms and she wears a locally crafted silver necklace and earrings. The silver coins, some of them from the 19th Century, are used for personal decoration and jewelry rather than currency. The coins are traditionally passed down from mother to daughter. Her skirt, called a paruma, wraps around her like a sarong. In the more remote villages, the women and girls go topless. However, this village gets fairly regular visits from tourists, so the women have learned to cover their breasts with various garments or ornaments so the foreigners won't be embarrassed. The men and boys wear loin cloths called guayucos. They were bare-chested except for the long strands of beads that crossed over their chests like bandoliers. Both men and women decorate their faces and bodies with painted-on tattoo designs called jagua. The tattoos are made from the juice of a local fruit and last about two weeks.

A young girl wears a head band and a top made from beads. The beads come from the outside world, but are assembled into garments here. While these villagers are sedentary, elsewhere in Panamá the Emberá are semi-nomadic. This group is somewhat of an outlier from the main population. The villagers won permission to occupy this site within a national park by promising not to hunt the animals. They grow plantains, bananas, yams, manioc and rice. In addition, they are allowed to supplement their diet with fish they catch in the Rio Gatun. The main population of Emberá lives in the wild jungle of the Darien Gap that straddles the border between Panamá and Colombia. The Emberá occupy areas on both sides of the border, with 20,000 living in Panamá and another 40,000 in Colombia. To them, the international boundary between the two nations is just an imaginary line politicians drew across their almost impenetrably dense jungle.

A rustic ladder, hand-carved from a log, leads up into a hut raised on stilts. The colorful plastic sandals are evidence of outside influence, but no one in any of my photos is wearing them. The houses were all raised on stilts. This helps keep them dry in this damp climate, and also keeps the forest animals out. At night, the log ladder will be turned over so that no unwanted critters can climb in while the family sleeps. Even though it is an outlier, this community is, in many ways, typical of those found throughout the Emberá world. The villages are usually scattered along the banks of a river, with about a half day's walk between them. They are also generally small, each containing only 5-20 houses. Usually there are no more than three villages along any given tributary.

A young boy, wearing only a guayaco, sprints for shelter from the rain. Just as I took this shot, the heavens opened for one of those sudden downpours that are so typical of the tropics. Behind the boy, you can see the stout posts on which the house sits. Like the communal hall, the walls are open and the roofs are thatched with palm fronds. Hammocks, baskets, pots, bows and arrows, and clothing hang from the supporting posts. Each house possesses a square, clay platform for cooking fires. Pots are suspended over the fire from tripods made with sturdy sticks.

The dancing

"You should have seen the fish that got away, he was this big!" The young village leader jokes with the tourists as he explains various aspects of their culture. Under his red guayaco, he wears another garment made of colorful beads, called a taparabo. The Emberá govern themselves according to their own unwritten rules and do not participate in, or rely upon, the Panamanian or Colombian governments. The land is communally owned and tilled. In the areas where Emberá are allowed to hunt, if a large animal caught, it is shared with other members of the community. For their health care, they use their own shamans.

Kickin' back and takin' in some tunes. A boy relaxes on the communal hall's bench while a quartet of village musicians plays a flute, two drums, and a set of rattles. They were tuning up for the impending dance performance. All the instruments were hand-made from forest materials. Both men and boys wear "bowl-cut" hair styles.

Puttin' down some steps. These two girls gave a vigorous performance of Emberá dances. The whole community joined in dances that circled the center post of the communal hall. Women and girls wear their hair long, sometimes hanging free as seen above and sometimes pulled back in pony-tails.

Showing the foreigners how it's done. At the finale of the performance, the villagers each took the hand of a tourist of the opposite sex and led them around the center post in a somewhat more sedate version of the dances performed previously.

Grooving' on the music. His eyes closed, the boy slaps his legs in time with the drums. The Emberá culture is under threat from resource extraction industries like logging, as well as drug smuggling and clashes between guerrillas and the Colombian government. In the face of this, they organized themselves and persuaded the Panamanian government to set aside about 300,000 hectares in the Darien as the Emberá reserve. Even so, illegal logging and other negative activities continue. In addition, pharmaceutical companies want to exploit their knowledge of medicinal plants, and this may mean more problems in the future.

The crafts

A woman smiles from behind a display of the Emberá's exquisite handicrafts. Her jagua tattoos are clearly visible. To make geometric patterns, the ink is sometimes applied with carved wooden blocks. Part of the village's income is based on sales of crafts to visiting tourists. The Emberá are famed for their finely woven basketry. The designs include both abstract shapes and animal representations, as can be seen on the baskets that frame the woman's head.

These cords were braided and colored from natural materials obtained locally. The villagers passed them around for the tourists to examine, along with a variety of other crafts.

The young leader displays the vivid cloth used to make the women's parumas. While the parumas were originally made from palm fibers, they are now more commonly made from commercial cotton purchased in nearby towns. The Emberá use the wildly colorful flowers of their world as the inspiration for the designs.

This little cat mask demonstrates Emberá skill with weaving natural materials. Carole and I collect indigenous masks and we couldn't resist this one. It is about the size a small child would wear and cost about $10 (USD). It was beautifully made and fairly inexpensive and we were glad to contribute to the village's economy.

The kids

Two of the young dancers enjoy posing for a photo. I get my best "people shots" with kids. Although some are shy, most love the attention, particularly if I show them the immediate result of a digital photo. Given a little encouragement, their natural openness and beauty shine through.

Taking a break from the music. I found this young fellow especially photogenic. What appears to be dirt on his arms and legs is actually the smudged remains of his temporary jagua tattoos. There is a smaller sub-group within this culture called the Wounaan that speaks a separate dialect. Both of the names Emberá and Wounaan can be translated to mean "the People." The two groups were once collectively known as the Chocó. However, the term Chocó actually refers to their language group. The people themselves prefer to be called Emberá or Wounaan.

A little shy, but still amenable to a photo. The cloth hanging behind her is of the same general design as the paruma she is wearing. Pieces of this cloth were available for purchase at the craft tables.

Hardly more than a toddler, this little boy stared boldly at my camera. There appears to be no age differentiation for attire among the Emberá. From the oldest adults to the youngest children, all wear the same traditional clothing and adornments.

This young woman shows the same gentle but proud demeanor of her fellow villagers. She was among a large group who accompanied us to the dock. Just before we descended the ramp, small children appeared and grasped the hands of each tourist, acting as our personal escorts to the boat. It was a charming sendoff. The Emberá are struggling hard to maintain their culture and traditions in the face of intrusions from the outside world. I hoped that our intrusion was at least neutral and possibly contributed resources to support their effort.

This completes Part 7 of my Panamá series. I hope you enjoyed it and that you will leave your thoughts and questions in the Comments section below. If you do leave a question PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

A tree frog dozes on its perch at Panamá's Nispero Zoo and Botanical Garden. Panamá has been described as a "fountain of biodiversity" and a "bridge of life". This tiny Central American country, about the size of Ireland, possesses more species of amphibians, birds, and other animals and insects than the United States and Canada combined. Just as Panamá's key geographical position has affected its trade and economic history, that geography has also impacted its ecology. The narrow isthmus is the land bridge between North and South America, allowing species to move in both directions. In addition, it forms a land barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This alters wind patterns, water currents, and salinity, causing species to evolve in different directions depending on their geographic relationship to the coasts. During our visit to Panamá, Carole and I observed some of this fantastic diversity. I say "some" because, with all we saw, we still encountered only a tiny fraction of what is there. Of that which we did see, I can only display a few of the many different creatures I photographed. I tried to pick a representative sample of the most interesting and regret that space does not allow me to include many more.

Animals along the Rio Chagres

A tourist boat cruises along the shore of Rio Chagres looking for interesting critters. As a photographer, I have learned that it is helpful to maneuver your way into a seat in the front row so you don't have to shoot over the heads and shoulders of your fellow passengers. This is easier said than done if there is a large group, but still worth the attempt. The jungle comes right to the water's edge in most places and the overhanging trees are full of animal life.

A cocodrilo conceals itself while waiting for lunch to happen by. This one is young, probably only 1 m (3.28 ft) long. The little croc was partially concealed under the pier from which we embarked. It would probably not be a good idea to sit on the edge of the pier, cooling your bare toes in the water. Although this croc is not big enough to kill you, it could still give you a nasty bite. At the other end of the scale, the biggest croc every found in Panamá measures 5.5 m (18 ft) and weighs in at 998 kg (2,200 lbs). That privately-owned, 111-year-old reptile is named Cassie (short for Cassius Clay). Cassie would be about as big as the tourist boat seen in photo #2. Best to depart the river--rapidly--if you encounter one that size.

Crocodiles like to hang out in the shallows or sun themselves on the river bank. This one is lying curled so that the tip of its ridged tail is almost even with its snout. Because I took the shot with a telephoto zoom, it is difficult to accurately estimate the croc's length, but I would guess about 3-3.6 m (10-12 ft). There have been three fatal attacks by crocs along the Panamá canal during the last three years. Typically, the crocs go after fishermen along the bank or people wading or swimming close to shore. The attacks are sudden and the croc disappears underwater with its victim within seconds. None of the bodies of the three victims were ever recovered.

A white-headed capuchin monkey moves easily among the branches.Cebus capucinus is found throughout Panamá. The males average 3.7 kg (8.09 lbs) and the females about 7.7 kg (5.9 lbs). Because they are so widespread and plentiful, their conservation status is one of "least concern."

A capuchin approaches a tourist as our boat edges into the trees. The monkeys have learned that they will sometimes get a treat from a guide if they come down to a boat. Attempting to touch or pet them is not a good idea. They are wild animals and can deliver a serious bite if they feel threatened. Notice how the monkey curls its tail around the canopy support to ensure its balance.

A Black-headed spider monkey feeds on leaves and fruit it finds in the forest canopy. Unlike the capuchin, the Black-headed spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps) is considered "critically endangered." 80% of the species have been lost in the last 45 years due to predation and loss of habitat. In captivity, they have been known to live for 24 years.

The sloth's reputation for laziness gained it the nickname "nature's brother-in-law". Above, a two-toed sloth (there is also a three-toed version) kicks back in the crook of a tree branch. I took numerous shots and, after examining the photos, I discovered that the creature had not moved an inch the whole time. The wild sloths are not as laid-back as those in captivity. The sloths in zoos sleep an average of 15 hours a day, while the wild ones only snooze for 9 1/2. Wild or free, their metabolism is so slow that they only urinate or defecate once a week. Their toes are shaped in such a way that some have been found dead, still clinging to the tree branch from which they were hanging when they died. Too lazy to let go?

Mesoamerican slider/mud turtle climbs out of the water in a quiet inlet.Trachemys venusta panamensis is the Panamanian species of a turtle that ranges from Mexico to Colombia.

Animals of the Nispero Zoo and Botanical Garden

Clouds and mist cloak the wooded ridges overlooking the Nispera Zoo and Botanical Garden. Nispera is located in El Valle de Anton, a village in Coclé Province about two hours by bus from Panamá City. The village is located at the bottom of the caldera of an ancient volcano. The ridges surrounding El Valle rise 1000 m (3280 ft) above the valley floor, forming the caldera's lip The altitude gives the area a cool, moist climate, very welcome after the warm, humid lowlands. The town and surrounding area are popular tourist attractions. Admission to the Nispera Zoo and Botanical Garden is $3.00. For a Google map showing the location of El Valle de Anton, click here.

Amphibians

A large green Climbing Toad posed on a stump. Incilius coniferus can be found from Nicaragua to Ecuador in lowlands and mountain forests. The toad breeds in ponds, rivers, and streams. The population status is "lesser concern" with some threats coming from habitat loss and pollution. This guy was about the size of the hardball used in a baseball game.

This Smokey jungle frog blends in well with his habitat. The habitat of the Leptodactylus savagei stretches from the lowland jungles of Honduras to the mountains of Colombia. The population status is also "lesser concern". It faces the same threats as the Climbing Toad. The Smokey Jungle Frog is a bit bigger than the Climbing Toad. This one looked about the size of a softball.

In contrast to the previous two amphibians, the Green and Black Poison Dart Frogs are tiny. The bigger frog above was about the size of a glass marble. In spite of their size, these little guys are dangerous, as you might guess from their name. The Dendrobates auratus can be found from Central America to northwestern South America and its conservation status is "least concern." As to its name, the frog exudes a poison that is strong enough to stop a human heart. However, it only releases the poison if it feels threatened. Some people even keep these guys as pets. Talk about living dangerously! On the other hand, you could also be the proud owner of Cassie.

Birds

A White Cockatoo climbs the fence to commune with a visitor. This one appears to be molting. Cockatoos are not native to Panamá and their normal habitat is Indonesia. However, all the animals in Nispera are rescues, so this guy can be considered a naturalized citizen. When excited, they raise their plumes, as you can see above. Cockatoos can't speak quite as well as parrots, but they nevertheless tend to be quite friendly and chatty. They love cuddling with people. One got separated from its owner and sat in a tree plaintively calling "Daddy! Daddy1". A concerned woman came looking for the small child she assumed was in distress and was dumbfounded when she realized it was a White Cockatoo.

A large green parrot was taking a snooze but woke up when I approached. There are many types of parrots in Panamá, but I couldn't seem to locate any that look like this one. There was no identification on the cage. If anyone can help on this, please let me know in the Comments section below.

A Silver Pheasant struts elegantly around his cage. As my father used to say, this one is wearing his "Sunday Go-to-Meetin' clothes." This Silver Pheasant (Lophura nycthemera) is another rescued resident of Nispera. His normal habitat is Southeast Asia and eastern and southern China.

A Toucan displays his magnificent multi-colored beak. Toucans like to hang out in the tops of forest trees. They range from Honduras to Western Ecuador. Their various populations in Panamá have declined drastically because of deforestation and human predation.

A pair of stately ostriches are also among the rescues. The one in the foreground was quite curious about my camera. He walked very close to me and attempted to look right in the lens. Unfortunately, this ended up blurring the photo, so I couldn't use it. He was quite entertaining. Ostriches are flightless and are native to Africa. They are often found in desert areas quite different from the cool cloudy highlands of Panamá.

Mammals

Baird's Tapir is one of four species of the mammal found in Latin America. It was named for American naturalist Spencer Fullerton Bairds who observed the animals during a trip to Mexico in 1843. With a length of 2 m (6.6 ft) and a body that can weigh up to 440 kg (880 lbs), the tapir is the largest land mammal in Central America. It is a solitary animal that likes to forage at night on leaves and fruit and soak in cool ponds with just its snout above water. While it is herbivorous, it can be dangerous and has been known to charge and gore humans when threatened.

The Lowland Paca (Cuniculus paca) is a large tropical rodent. It ranges from Mexico to Argentina and is about the size of a small dog. A large paca can weigh as much as 12 kg (26 lbs). The paca has been given many names by the people in the wide area it inhabits. In Panamá it is called conejo pintado (painted rabbit). When threatened, a paca will swim out into a river or climb a tall tree. In addition, its burrows usually contain more than one exit. Pacas are related to agoutis.

The common agouti has a wide range, from Mexico to South America and the Lesser Antilles. There are several species of agouti under the genus Dasyprocta. In addition to pacas, the agouti are related to guinea pigs. They tend to be smaller than pacas, weighing up to about 6 kg (13.2 lbs). In the wild, they flee humans, but become trusting in captivity. Agouti can run very fast and will keep a pack of dogs occupied for hours.

A pair of jaguars nap in the warm afternoon sun. Jaguars are the largest of the cats that live in Panamá, or the whole Western Hemisphere for that matter. They are exceeded in size only by the African lion and the Asian tiger. They hunt by stealth, not speed, and will ambush unwary prey. Unlike other cats, who strangle their prey with their jaws, jaguars pierce the skull and brain with their fangs.

Kind of makes you want to reach out and tickle him on the whiskers, doesn't it? Jaguars average about 100 kg (220 lbs). Prehispanic people as early as the Olmecs (1500 BC) viewed jaguars as a link with the underworld because of their preference for hunting in the dark.

This completes Part 8 of my Panamá series. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment and leave your thoughts in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Figure dressed for the Dance of the Moors and the Christians. Although the North African Moors were a brown-skinned people, indigenous mask makers in Mexico usually portray them with white faces. Behind the Moorish mannequin is a large photo of a mask-maker at work. Las Danzas de los Moros y Cristianos commemorate the 700-year struggle of Christians to expel the Muslim Moors from Spain. In my previous posting on the National Mask Museum, we looked at indigenous masks with pre-hispanic themes. This week I'll show how the masks changed after the 16th Century Spanish Conquest. In the last section of the posting, you'll see some of the gorgeous masquerade costumes of Venice, Italy. These were part of a short-term, traveling display.

Portrayals of the Spanish Conquerors

Masks with white faces from Guerrero State. The people who wore these wood masks portrayed various characters in the Dance of the Moors and the Christians. All the faces are male with white or pink skin and long noses. Most of the faces show beards and/or mustaches. Many have rouged cheeks that give them an almost clown-like appearance. This was probably due to the sunburns that the light-skinned Spanish would have acquired from Guerrero's intense sun.

Mask expressing the duality of the cosmos.Duality was a fundamental concept in the pre-hispanic world. Everything has its opposite, and together they form a whole. Each part is inextricably connected with its other side: male-female, day-night, life-death, etc. Each can only be understood, or even exist, in relation to its opposite. Above, this Janus-like mask expresses duality using two blonde figures, male and female. The native people often portrayed the Spanish satirically, so this double mask might express the two-faced nature of white overlords. One the one hand, the Conquistadors brought Christianity, on the other, enslavement and cultural genocide.

A sun-burnt Spanish Conquistador, wearing a golden helmet. This carved, wooden mask from Guerrero gives us an idea of how the conquerors appeared to the native people. When the Spanish arrived in Guerrero, most of the indigenous people fled the fertile Pacific Coast plains to the safety of the mountainous interior. Consequently, the Spaniards had to work their own fields, at least at first. Eventually, they imported African slaves to do the work. The mix of Spanish, African, and indigenous cultures gives this part of Mexico an interesting cultural twist.

This dancer portrays a doddering old man, leaning on a cane and wearing a white mask.La Danza de los Viejos (Dance of the Old Men) originated in Michoacan State and is famous throughout Mexico. The dancers are actually very athletic young men who start their performances with slow creaky movements. Gradually, they increase the tempo to a very energetic and acrobatic level. The dance was created by the Purépecha people to covertly mock their Spanish rulers. The indigenous people did all the actual physical work in colonial Nueva España. The Spaniards sat comfortably on their horses and watched, never getting any real exercise. Consequently, they aged rapidly and became old and hunched, as portrayed by the dancers. We have seen this entertaining dance performed in the plazas of the Michoacan cities of Patzcuaro and Morelia.

Wooden mask from la Danza de los Locos (Dance of the Crazies). According to Yolanda Lastra, in her book Adoring the Saints: Fiestas in Central Mexico, "A type of crazies, men dressed as women, existed in pre-Columbian times and were adapted immediately after the Conquest as characters to mock the Spaniards...today, groups of crazies who take part in patron saint fiestas continue this tradition... the crazies and the giant puppets are two of the bawdiest, most grotesque, and satirical components of the patron saint fiesta."

La Danza de los Moros y Cristianos

An elaborate, brightly ribboned mask of a goateed Moor. In 711 AD, a Moorish army crossed from North Africa to Gibraltar and began the invasion of Spain. The army consisted of North African Berbers but was officered by Arabs accountable to the vast Umayyad Caliphate that would eventually stretch from southern France to modern Iraq. The conquest of Spain took only seven years, but holding it was another matter. For a time, the Moors controlled nearly all of Spain and even extended their reach across the Pyrenees Mountains into southern France. Eventually they were forced back into Spain. Internal dynastic squabbles weakened them, as did a series of religious coups by groups that were increasingly more radical in their interpretation of Islam. Christian rulers in the remaining non-Muslim pockets of Spain used these Moorish divisions to begin La Reconquista (the Re-Conquest).

The mask of the Moorish King Pilates is topped with an elaborate head dress. The wooden mask is from Apaxtla, Guerrero. The Dance of the Moors and the Christians commemorates the Battle of Clavijo which occurred in either 841 or 844 AD, depending on your source. According to the legend, this early Christian victory was the start of la Reconquista. As the story goes, Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moor Slayer) appeared at a critical moment in the battle and led the Christian forces to victory over Pilates and his Moors. This was how the Apostle James gained the nickname Matamoros. Most historians don't believe the battle actually happened. Apparently it was invented hundreds of years later by people who wanted to rally Spanish support for la Reconquista by making Santiago Matamoros the patron saint of Spain.

Mask of a bearded Christian warrior with a fanatical stare. This fierce-looking wooden mask was made in Ostotitlán, Guerrero for the Danza de los Santiagos. The danceis one of the innumerable versions of the Danzas de los Moros y Cristianos. From the time of the Moorish invasion through the mid-10th Century, there were continual wars and skirmishes between the Moors and Christians. However, these appear to have been more territorial than religious. At times Moorish princes would enlist Christians as allies or mercenaries to fight their Moorish rivals. Sometimes the Christian feudal lords, while squabbling among themselves, would use Moorish troops for the same purpose. It was all very messy but, over time, the Christian-controlled regions gradually expanded. The Muslims were steadily forced back toward the south and east coasts of Spain.

Mask of the Christian King, made in Apaxtla, Guerrero. Toward the end of the 11th Century, la Reconquista mutated from simple territorial skirmishes into a full-scale religious war. This process accelerated when, in 1095 AD, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to free the Holy Land. This First Crusade was one of several waged over the following centuries. The Crusades drew Christian warriors from all over Europe into conflicts with various parts of the Muslim world, including Spain. Some of the early Crusades were successful for a time because the Muslims were relatively unprepared. However, the Muslims ultimately recovered nearly all the territory the Crusaders captured. The only unqualified Crusader success was la Reconquista. In 1492, the south-coast principality of Granada was the last remaining Moorish stronghold in Spain. When it fell to the husband-and-wife team of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille, the 700-year Reconquista was complete. During the last stages of their siege of Granada, a young Italian named Christopher Columbus waited impatiently in Ferdinand and Isabella's camp. He was eager to present a proposal to sail westward over the Atlantic in hopes of landing in Asia. As it turned out, he discovered a New World, transforming Spain from a poor, barely-unified medieval state into the seat of one of the largest and richest empires the world had ever seen.

Santiago Matamoros, in typical dress and mounted on a white charger. When the figure portraying Santiago is not mounted on a real horse, the dancer will wear a small, wooden horse's head protruding from the front of his costume. Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors used lessons learned fighting the Moors to conquer their new overseas empire. La Reconquista had produced a Spanish army that was filled with highly trained, battle-hardened, and ambitious soldiers. Arguably they were the best in the world at that time, but they were a dangerous group to keep standing around idle. The New World was a good place to send them and they proved spectacularly successful. In addition, the Spanish had developed the encomienda system to handle newly-conquered Moorish lands. Transferred to the New World, this system allowed a Spaniard who subdued a local population to be granted an encomienda, or the right to demand free labor. On his part, the new overlord had the responsibility to ensure that the locals were properly Christianized. New World encomiendas were very beneficial to the Spanish conquistadors but disastrous to the native populations. Lastly, the bloody-handed but victorious Santiago Matamoros became the patron saint of those fighting to conquer the New World's non-Christians. Newly-arrived Spanish priests pushed the indigenous people to celebrate the Spanish defeat of the Moors. The resulting fiestas became imbued with all sorts of pre-hispanic meanings not intended and probably not understood by the priests. To see an example of this, check out the Danza de los Tastoanes, held annually in Tonalá, near Guadalajara.

Danzas de la Santa Semana (Holy Week Dances)

One of the Semana Santa dances in Nayarit State features this "borrado" or Jew. Semana Santa is the week-long Christian tradition also known as Easter Week. Catholic priests taught the Cora people of the Sierra del Nayar that the Jews were the persecutors of Christ. The figure above represents the Cora vision of what a borrado, or Jew, would look like. Shortly after la Reconquista, Queen Isabella banished the Jews from Spain. After a couple of generations, the Spanish priests themselves probably had no idea of what a real Jew looked like. In addition to the strange beak and horns, the dancers paint their bodies from the neck down with horizontal black and white stripes. At the end of the dance, the borrados proceed to a local river where they symbolically immerse themselves. Their stripes are washed away, their masks float off with the current, and the dancers emerge again as good Christians. Interestingly, according to a pre-hispanic Cora tradition, their sun god Tayau was buried and reborn. This similarity to the Christian resurrection story was probably used by Catholic priests to help evangelize them.

This Semana Santa dancer is dressed as a Jewish fariseo (Pharisee). The goat skin masks of these Mayo dancers of Sonora State typically have grotesque features. Part of the function of the the fariseos is to walk around the pueblo asking for limosna (alms) to help cover the cost of the fiesta. During the dances, the fariseos circulate, playing tricks and practical jokes. At the end of the dance, they doff their masks and costumes and throw them in a great bonfire to demonstrate the triumph of good over evil. Queen Isabella was a religious fanatic who favored forced conversions of Jews (and Muslims) and expelled any who refused. In her view, the Jews, led by the Pharisees, were Christ-killers. This prejudice survived well into the 20th Century among many Christians. The masks and dances of some of Mexico's indigenous groups reflect the beliefs they have been taught by the Church from the earliest days of the Conquest.

Mask from Guerrero showing a grinning Roman Centurion with huge fangs. The Romans are the other evil-doers in Semana Santa pageants. The Romans, after all, are the ones who carried out the actual crucifixion. This huge wooden mask must have sat very heavily on the shoulders of the dancer wearing it.

Masks of the Venetian Masquerade

An elegant figure with a gold mask displays a lacy fan. The gold mask is called a volto (Italian for "face"). It was not clear to me whether this is a male or female figure. Given the fan, I'd probably vote female. While most of the National Mask Museum is devoted to its permanent displays, there are also temporary displays from other parts of the world. When we visited, the Museo was showing the masks and costumes of the Venice Masquerade. The mannequins of the display fit in perfectly with the elegant salons and drawing rooms of the 19th Century mansion formerly belonging to the Marti family.

The cap with the bells indicates that this figure is some sort of court jester. The mask appears to be of the style called bauta. The Masquerade is a part of the activities occurring during the Carnival of Venice. This great festival begins in January and ends on the first Tuesday in March (Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras). According to legend, the Venice Carnival began as a celebration of the victory of the Republic of Venice over the Patriarch of Aquileia in 1162 AD. During the Renaissance, the Carnival became an officially sponsored event. At the end of the 18th Century, when Venice was ruled by the King Austria, the event was outlawed and the use of masks forbidden. The Carnival was revived in the 19th Century, but mostly for private parties. In 1979, the Italian Government once again sponsored the Carnival as a way of bringing back the history and culture of Venice.

An elegant couple wear two distinctly different types of masks. The woman (left) wears a Columbina covering the upper half of her face. Her lower face is covered by a sort of fringed veil hanging from the bottom of the mask. The male figure (right) wears a volto, along with a tricorn hat and a cape. In Medieval and Renaissance Venice, there were many occasions throughout the year when people wore masks, in addition to the Carnival. In fact, the wearing of masks and cloaks by men in public meetings was required as a way of keeping their identity secret when they voted. This seems to have been an early expression of the secret ballot. While dressed for this public purpose, men were forbidden to carry weapons. In 1339 AD Venetians were also forbidden to wear masks and vulgar disguises while visiting convents. This may have been to inhibit carnal activity with the nuns.

This figure wears a gold volto, topped with a bishop's mitre (hat). The figure seems to be a female but, since the purpose of masks and disguises is concealment, who knows? The makers of the Venetian masks were called mascherari. Their craft was officially recognised by law in 1436 AD. They were sometimes assisted by sign-painters who helped decorate the masks with detailed designs.

A Medico della peste rests in a chair while clutching his stick. A Medico della peste (Plague Doctor) was a physician who dressed like this to treat plague victims, not to celebrate. The outfit was developed by the French doctor Charles de Lorme in the 17th Century. The mask and spectacles were used to protect against catching the disease. Medicos della peste moved their patients using the stick to avoid touching them. This was the 17th Century's version of a modern Ebola "HazMat" suit. Use of this costume in the Carnival is entirely modern, but very popular.

This concludes Part 6 of my San Luis Potosí series. It is also the last of the National Mask Museum. I hope you enjoyed this amazing museum and that you take the time to visit it if you get to San Luis. I always appreciate comments and questions. If you'd like to make one, please leave it in the Comments section below or email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Orchids at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort Orchid Nursery. The flower above is called Ascocenda Brighton Fuchsia. It likes warm climates and blooms in summer and fall. Gamboa Rainforest resort was one of the high points during our trip to Panamá. While there we stayed at a luxury hotel situated in central Panama's Gamboa rainforest. In this, the last of my Panamá series, we'll take a look at the 5-star hotel, the surrounding rainforest, and the resort's Orchid Nursery and Butterfly Sanctuary. For a Google map of this area, click here.

The Gamboa Rainforest Resort Hotel

The hotel sits on a hillside above the Rio Chagres near its confluence with the Panamá Canal. The 164 rooms have balconies to provide a panoramic view of the rainforest and the river flowing through it. We stayed in one of the upper rooms seen on the right side of the photo. The rainforest is part of the Soberania Nation Forest and the resort is the only one of its kind in the area.

Our balcony was equipped with a comfy hammock to help enjoy the serenity of the scene. Through the trees, you can glimpse the Rio Chagres. The Chagres, although short, is one of the most important rivers in the world because of its essential relationship to the Panamá Canal. It is also the only river in the world that empties into two oceans. The hotel grounds include 340 lush acres of lawns, pastures, and forest. The Rainforest Resort is located almost exactly in the middle of the narrowest section of the Panamanian isthmus. From here you are less than an hour's drive from either Panamá City on the Pacific or Colón on the Caribbean. The roads are excellent, so this would be an ideal base for exploring the country.

A terrace containing a swimming pool, jacuzzi, and massage tables lies below the hotel. In addition to the many tours available, one can just hang out here and enjoy the amenities of the hotel itself. If I were to return to Panamá, I would seriously consider staying here for the full visit. This place is truly a paradise.

Rental canoes are available at a dock on the river. The thick jungle grows right down to the banks of the river. The rainforest canopy is filled with birds, monkeys, and other wildlife. Among the other creatures inhabiting the river are large crocodiles. It is always good to remember that you are a visitor in a true wilderness. You don't want to become someone else's lunch. Even paradise has its dangers.

Much of the jungle is almost impenetrable. In the early 16th Century, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa struggled through jungle just like this on his way to "discover" the Pacific Ocean. Aside from crocodiles and deadly snakes, Europeans (and later American '49ers) encountered ferocious insects and deadly diseases like Chagres fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Thousands who attempted the crossing died in the effort. Many thousands more perished while building the cross-isthmus railroad in the 1850's and working on the abortive French canal project and the successful American one.

An agouti explores the hotel lawns in search of edible seeds. The agouti is a rodent about the size of a large house cat or a small dog. There were several that roamed the grounds and they seemed unfazed by hotel guests taking their photos.

The Orchid Nursery

Schombergkia lueddemannii is a rather startling member of the orchid family. It grows in tropical forests located from sea level to about 600 m (1,960 ft). It is named after a 19th Century German botanist who explored British Guiana. I don't recall seeing anyone at my high school prom wearing one of these. The Schombergkia was the only orchid I photographed with an identifying sign. I have tried to be as accurate as possible in naming the plants shown below, but I am sure to have mistaken some. If you are an authority on orchids, please feel free to correct any errors.

Phalaenopsis. This is also called Golden Leopard Orchid. Orchids are one of the two largest families of flowering plants.There are between 21,950 and 26,049 accepted species in the orchid family found within 880 genera. The number of orchid species nearly equals that of bony fishes, is double that of birds, and four times that of mammals. Between 6-11% of all seeding plants are orchids.

In the 19th Century, horticulturist began to cultivate wild orchid species. Since then more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars have been created. Orchis is the genus and the name comes from the ancient Greek word for testicle. It refers to the shape of some orchid tubers. As to the orchid shown above, I have been unable to identify it. If anyone can supply the name, I would appreciate it.

White Dendrobium. Orchids have often been associated with virility. The Aztecs drank a mixture of vanilla orchids and chocolate to give them strength. On the other hand, the Chinese used orchids to cure coughs and lung problems.

Cosmos sulphureus, also known as the Sulpher Cosmos. In addition to orchids, the nursery contains a number of other flowers, such as this Cosmos. The Sulpher Cosmos is native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. The plant can grow as tall as 2.13 m (7 ft) and is considered an invasive exotic pest in the Southeastern US.

Some Bromeliads are epiphytes. This means that although they may grow on other plants, or on the trunks or branches of trees, but they are not parasitic. The roots serve only to anchor them to their host. They gather food and moisture from rain and mist. Epiphytic bromeliads are very common in tropical forests.

Epidendrum nocturnum are autogamous, or self-pollinating. Nocturnal Epidendrums are members of the Orchid Family range from Florida in the US to the Bahamas, West Indies, and northern Brazil and the Guianas.

Purple Dendrobium. Purple orchids, because of their royal color, are often called the "true queen of the flower kingdom." The Chinese consider orchids to be a symbol of refinement and childlike innocence.

The Butterfly Sanctuary

The Rainforest Resort employs nature guides like the young woman above. Our guide, whose name is Marta, gently grasped a Giant Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus) to display its remarkable wing features. She was very knowledgable and seemed to enjoy showing us around. There are a very large number of butterflies in the sanctuary, many of which I couldn't photograph because of technical difficulties. Of the ones I did shoot, I could include only a small number here.

Larva of the Giant Owl Butterfly. This guy is about 7.6 cm (3 in) long and has spines sticking out of his back. The face is striped vertically and has a fringe on either side. Because he appears to have feelers on either end, at first I couldn't tell the tail from the head.

The Giant Owl Butterfly gets its name from the large "eyes" on the lower part of each wing. When the wings are opened, they bear a striking resemblance to the face of an owl, hence the name. The eye spots may be a defense mechanism to fool predators into thinking the butterfly is another predator. The creatures can grow as large as 20 cm (7.9 in).

Marta also showed us a Morpho helenor achilleana with brilliant blue wings. This one appears to have gotten chomped once or twice on the lower part of its wings. This species has a very wide range in the tropical areas of Central and South America.

Cypriote stelenese biplagiata, with its wings fully spread. This is also known as the Malachite Butterfly because of its coloring. It is the most common butterfly species in Central and Southern America.

Morpho helenor helenor is related to the Morpho helenor achilliana. There is some disagreement among butterfly specialists about Morpho helenor. Currently these butterflies are classified into a number of subspecies, but some of these may be entirely separate species. Certainly this one and the one with the beautiful blue wings seem very different. The Butterfly Sanctuary is a part of the Rainforest Resort that is definitely worth a visit.

This concludes Part 9 of my Panamá series, and also concludes the series itself. Panamá is wonderful and we encourage anyone interested to visit if you can. I hope you enjoyed this posting. If you did, I encourage you to put any thoughts in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Entrance to the casa grande of the historic Hacienda La Venta del Astillero. Several years ago, I began recruiting a group of fellow expats to help me search for old haciendas. We go out into the state of Jalisco's back country once a month and spend a full day locating these historic old sites. Generally we can find three or four sites during one of these jaunts. After a while, Carole began calling us the "Hacienda Hunters" and it stuck. Recently we created an embroidered logo to sew on our shirts, hats, or backpacks. We haven't yet invented a secret handshake, but who knows? Our hard-core group is 4-6 people, with another half a dozen or so who come and go according to the season. I do all the background research on the sites, and attempt to pin down their exact locations in advance of the adventure. This is not an easy task and, in the process, I have assembled a considerable library about Mexican haciendas. Even with all that information, it can still be challenging, because few sources specify precise locations. Many of the old ruins can only be found at the end of some remote, nameless, dirt road. As my father used to say, places like this are "out beyond where God buried his bicycle." Some sites I will show in this series will be close to the bicycle. However, the two I will show in this posting are not quite that remote. They can be found very close to the Bosque de la Primavera, one of my favorite hiking sites located just west of Guadalajara.

Hacienda La Venta de Astillero

This arched gate is one of the oldest portions of the hacienda. The casa grande (main house) is the long building on the left. Hacienda La Venta del Astillero is located in the pueblo of the same name about 7 km (4.3 mi) west of Guadalajara along Federal Highway 15. The area around the hacienda used to be completely agricultural, but has now been swallowed up by light industrial sprawl. The casa grande used to stretch along the whole block, but part of it is now used as a tequila factory. The remaining historical parts are owned by a company that rents the site out for events such as weddings. Getting hitched in an old hacienda is apparently very popular in Mexico, because we have found quite a number of sites devoted to this purpose. For those wishing to find Hacienda La Venta, follow Highway 15 to the town of La Venta del Astillero. Near the east end of town, turn right just past the Pemex gas station and go two blocks before turning left. Then drive five blocks until you come to the arched gate. When we visited, no one was available to let us in, but we were able to photograph many interesting features of the exterior. Maybe you will be luckier and gain entrance.

A carved stone monolith shaped like a crown sits on top of the center of the arched gate. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the whole site because of the words "Carlos V," inscribed on the surface. Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (1500-1558) was also the King of Spain during the conquest and early settlement of Nueva España (Mexico). During his rule, Cristóbal de Oñate founded the nearby City of Guadalajara in 1542. The monolith indicates that this hacienda was one of the earliest established in the area to support Guadalajara.

A view through the gate's wall to the front of the casa grande. When searching for these old sites, there are a number of clues which help us. The nature of the construction is one. Rough stone walls, like the one in the foreground, indicate an origin in at least the 18th Century, and possibly as early as the late 16th. The early construction of this one is betrayed by the irregular chunks of stone, which are fitted together using pebbles to fill the spaces between the large rocks. The arched portales, seen beyond the stone wall, are typical of old haciendas, although they are still a very popular architectural feature in Mexico. Often the buildings will be equipped with cylindrical bastions slotted for guns, an indication of the perilous isolation of the typical hacienda. Out-buildings, and the interior walls of older casas grandes, will often be made with bricks of dried mud held together with straw, called adobe, sometimes covered with layers of plaster. This is a very ancient method of construction. Sometimes the plaster covering falls away, picturesquely revealing the old adobe underneath.

The campanario over the entrance contains two spires. The bells of a hacienda's campanario (bell tower) served several functions. They summoned the residents to religious services, often twice a day in the morning and evening. In addition, the bells were rung to signal the beginning of the work day and the time for the mid-day meal. They could also be used to alert everyone to the approach of strangers, particularly bandits or rebel armies.

The front wall over the entrance contains a niche with a small statue of San Miguel de Belén. In the late 18th Century, the hacienda was owned by Fray Antonio Alcalde, Bishop of Guadalajara. In 1788, he founded Hospital San Miguel de Belén, which was to be operated by the Orden de los Hermanos de Nuestra Señora de Bethlehem, also known as the Betlemitas. The Betlemitas, founded in Guatemala in 1656, were the first Catholic religious order created in the New World. They dedicated themselves to providing assistance to the poor. The Bishop donated Hacienda La Venta del Astillero as a means of funding the hospital, hence the statue in the niche. In his words "the health of the people is the supreme law." It was common during colonial times for convents, religious orders, and even individual priests and friars to own haciendas, despite their vows of poverty and Spanish laws forbidding such ownership. The Betlemitas owned the hacienda for 100 years, until 1888, and during this time it was known as Hacienda Belén. Although no longer associated with the hacienda, or the Betlemitas, the hospital is still in operation and is now known as the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara.

The entrances to both the casa grande and the capilla are on the left end of the row of portales.The arched door of the casa grande is on the right, while the capilla's door is on the left. This close association between the hacienda's main house and a chapel is quite typical. Hacendados (hacienda owners) were intensely religious, even when the property was not associated with a religious order like the Betlemites. The hacendado expected everyone to attend religious services, including his family, peons living on the property, and even the slaves he might own. A hacendado who could afford his own resident vicar possessed high status. Others had to settle for periodic visits by a circuit priest. In 1901, a visiting parish priest noted that the capilla was in a good state of repair, with decorations and sacred vases that allowed the proper celebration of mass. That same year, the little chapel was dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

An unidentified piece of farm equipment stands near the casa grande's entrance. In 1888, the Betlemites sold the hacienda to Ricardo Lancaster-Jones (1831-1922), a British-Mexican banker and entrepreneur who later became Mayor of Guadalajara and Treasurer of the State of Jalisco. The Lancaster-Jones family were some of the most prominent hacendados during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. When he purchased the property, the hacienda was completely inventoried, giving us a snapshot of a La Venta del Astillero at that moment. It possessed 39,036 acres of pasture land for cattle and horses, as well as "good lands for the cultivation of corn, beans, barley, wheat, and maguey." There was also a small factory for distilling the maguey into tequila. Nearby were "springs of thermal water for relief of sick persons." In 1897, the City of Zapopan set up a police station at the hacienda, an indication of its political importance. At that point in time, the hacienda had 447 inhabitants, making it quite a sizable operation. In 1910, Mexican Revolution erupted, leading to the exile of Porfirio Diaz. Over the years that followed, the hacienda was broken up into parcels which were distributed to landless peons.

*A Vision of the Haciendas of Zapopan, Municipal Archives, Zapopan, Jalisco, 2003

Hacienda La Primavera

A high adobe wall, with stout buttresses and a rough stone foundation, surrounds the old casco.Ironically, I had passed by this wall a number of times on my way to hike in Bosque de la Primavera. It was only when I read that Hacienda La Primvera was situated in this area that I remembered this structure. We stopped at a local tienda (small family-run store) and, sure enough, they pointed to a gate in a wall across the street. This turned out to be the entrance to the casco. The Spanish word "casco" means helmet or shell. In the context of a hacienda, the casco is the nerve center of the operation, typically including the casa grande, capilla, the stables for the hacendado's personal mounts, a garden/orchard to provide food for the owner's table, and the administrative offices of the operation. Surrounding it all will be a high wall like the one above. Such walls are sometimes crenelated like a fortress, with gun slits and defensive bastions at the corners.

Entrance to the capilla, still strung with decorations from a previous fiesta. The capilla entrance is located just inside the main gate. Hanging above the capilla's door is an old, hand-carved wooden plow, with no metal parts. While the arches on either side of the capilla door are brick, probably dating from the 19th Century, the area around the door itself is adobe. This indicates that it is part of a much older structure. Unfortunately, the capilla door was locked, so we couldn't get a look inside. The property's caretaker is woman who works for the U.S. owners. She let us look around the courtyard a bit, but she was very reluctant to allow any other access. Since it is her job to protect the owner's property, we respected her position. We weren't too disappointed, because the rest of the complex looked to be of modern construction. We decided to move on to the ruins of the hacienda's old fabrica (factory). The fabrica property has different owners than the casa grande and is located a couple of hundred meters down the road leading to the Bosque de la Primavera.

Chuck and Efren pass through an old arched doorway to the interior of the fabrica. Efren rents the property and farms the area immediately around the ruins. He was happy to show us around and tell us what he knew about the place. Efren is one of those "salt of the earth" folk we run into so often in our back-country explorations. He was hospitable and generous with his time. I suspect that we provided him with some free entertainment and that he later regaled his neighbors with tales of our visit.

The long rectangular building is divided lengthwise by this set of supporting arches. Chuck can be seen in the distance wearing a yellow shirt. He is a good photographer and one of our core group of Hacienda Hunters. The quality of his photography is such that I sometimes use his shots in my blogs. My information about the history of Hacienda La Primavera is limited. I do know that during the last part of the 19th Century, it was owned by a man named Pantaleón Orozco Camarena, who willed it to his son, Pantaleón Orozco. In 1917, it passed into the hands of Ricardo Lancaster-Jones, the British-Mexican owner of nearby Hacienda La Venta del Astillero. It is not at all unusual for a family, or even a single individual, to own several haciendas. Land in Mexico, prior to the Revolution, was highly concentrated into a few hands.

These old buildings are massively built, with thick walls and supporting buttresses. One of the buttresses can be seen on the left. The corner of the building (foreground) was supported by a four-sided tower made of brick covered with a thick layer of plaster. Other parts are constructed with adobe. The casco of the hacienda, which would have included both the casa grande and this fabrica, encompassed an area of 135 hectares (333.45 acres). The overall property was composed of three sitios de ganado mayor (land for large livestock) spread over 13,000 acres, and 238 fanegas (2116 acres) of cropland devoted to maiz, wheat, and maguey.

A narrow window cuts through thick walls. The narrowness of the window indicates that it may have been a defensive position for riflemen. Raiding bandits or plundering armies were threats through most of Mexico's history. The real wealth of a hacienda was its grain and casks of tequila stored in a building like this. In addition, horses, cattle, pigs and sheep could be brought inside in times of danger. Hungry raiders were often as much or more interested in these than the money or silverware hidden by the hacendado in his casa grande.

Allan photographs the interior of the fabrica while Efren's grandson looks on. Allan and his wife Catherine are newcomers to Mexico, but they have taken to hacienda hunting like ducks to water. The little boy tagged along with us, fascinated by all these strange foreigners. The ruined walls are draped with vines and trees grow up in rooms once bustling with activity. The impact of the Revolution can be seen in official government population figures. In 1910, the year the Revolution started, Hacienda La Primavera's population was 652. By 1920, this had dropped to 290, and ten years later it had further declined to 202. By 1940 there were only 173 people in residence in and around the old property. However, over the following 60 years, the population recovered and in 2000 there were 1,745 people living in the pueblo of La Primavera that grew up around the ruins of the old hacienda.

The long rooms separated by the row of portales once had arched ceilings. Covering both rooms was a peaked roof. A nopal cactus now grows at the peak of one end of the roof, symbolic of the ultimate triumph of nature over man's boastful creations. The hacienda passed into the hands of Óscar Casillas Cabrini in 1937, but by that time land reform had reduced it to a fragment of its old size. Many of the buildings had already begun to deteriorate and without the land, there was little money to repair them. Some of the structures were no doubt cannibalized by local people for materials to build their own homes or stores.

Jim B. and his wife Brenda chuckle about a remark by Efren, in the background. Jim and Brenda are two of the most stalwart of the Hacienda Hunters. Jim speaks passable Spanish and is always willing to drive his high clearance vehicle, making him a key figure in these adventures. He and Brenda have become true aficionados of hacienda exploration.

As we prepared to leave the area, we encountered this lone horseman. I snapped a quick shot and only later noticed the interesting juxtaposition of the rider, the car, and the advertisement for high-tech bicycles. These three different forms of Mexican transportation, all in one photo, range from the most ancient to the modern.

This concludes Part 1 of my series on the haciendas of Zapopan. I hope you have enjoyed it and, if so, that you will leave your thoughts in the Comments section or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Hacienda Santa Lucia was once one of the Guadalajara area's great estates. The casa grande (main house) is the rust colored building with the row of arches. The capilla (chapel) looms above it. Both are still in excellent condition. Between the mid-17th Century and the early 20th, the families that owned this hacienda wielded great economic and political power in the Guadalajara area. Hacienda Santa Lucia is located in Tesistán, a small city within the Municipalidad de Zapopan, northwest of Guadalajara. When the Spanish arrived in 1545, Santa Lucia was an indigenous pueblo called Nochistanejo. The pueblo was renamed for Santa Lucia, a Catholic saint, in 1570. By that time Spanish settlers had begun claiming estancias (livestock pasture) and caballerías (crop land), but these were still scattered and fairly limited in scale. Hacienda Santa Lucia was not established as a large estate until the middle of the 17th Century, and did not become a real powerhouse until the middle of the 18th. The hacienda lies about 10 km (6.2 mi) north of Hacienda La Venta del Astillero (see in Part 1 of this series).

Gate to the complex of buildings that forms the nerve center of a hacienda, known as the casco. Notice the campanario, or belfry, over the gate. The bell which once hung there summoned workers at the beginning and end of the work day. It also warned of the approach of visitors, sometimes friendly, sometimes otherwise. Within the casco's walls are the casa grande, the capilla, the caballeriza (horse stable), and the taberna (factory where tequila was produced and sold in bulk). Today, many of the structures within the old casco are private homes, like those seen above on the right. Other parts are used for special events and weddings. In the earliest years of settlement, Spanish Viceroys found it difficult to persuade people to move to this area because of incessant Chichimeca attacks. The general term "Chichimeca" refers to various tribes of fierce nomadic people from northern Mexico. These warriors had plagued Mesoamerican civilizations for fifteen hundred years before the Spanish arrived. What is now the Mexican state of Jalisco had long been the frontier between the Chichimecs and the civilized societies to the south. In 1540, shortly after the Spanish arrived in western Mexico, the Mixtón rebellion erupted. The situation became so desperate that Viceroy Antonio Mendoza came from Mexico City to take personal command. He finally defeated that particular group of indigenous rebels, but the Chichimeca tribes continued to pose a threat for another 150 years. Guadalajara was founded in this area in 1542, the year the uprising ended.

The zaguán (entrance hall) of the casa grande contains this 17th Century retablo. Often elaborately carved and painted, retablos are display cases with niches for statues of saints or the various incarnations of the Virgin Mary. A retablo usually stands behind an altar in a church or chapel, so this is probably not its original location. Below the first and third niches are small white faces framed with wings. These angelitos (little angels) are very common features in 17th Century Baroque decorations. After crushing the Mixtón revolt, Viceroy Mendoza realized he needed a buffer zone to protect central Mexico against future uprisings. He began liberally granting estancias and caballerías, and authorized the founding of Spanish towns such as the one at Nochistanejo. Then, in 1546, the conquistador Juan de Tolosa discovered a vast silver lode in Zacatecas, 246 km (153 mi) north of Guadalajara. The natural route for supplies to the miners ran through the Zapopan area to Guadalajara. Merchants began to use the newly formed new city as the supply point for the mines. It also became the center of civil and religious administration in western Mexico. The settlers in Santa Lucia soon responded to the growing markets of Guadalajara and Zacatecas by stocking their newly-granted estancias with cattle and sheep and planting maiz (corn) on their caballerías.

The zaguán also contains this small wooden table, decorated with a Pegasus on each corner. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico (or Nueva España, as it was called in colonial times) cattle didn't exist in the New World. They had few natural predators and--particularly in lightly-populated western Mexico--vast open lands upon which to graze. Great feral herds soon developed from mostrencos (unbranded strays). The cattle were so numerous that one author compared them to the 19th Century bison of the western US. The result was a mad scramble to acquire estancias on which to collect and fatten the cattle before herding them to markets in Guadalajara, Zacatecas, or even Mexico City. Cattle estancias each measured 10.9 sq km (6.7 sq mi) in size, while sheep estancias were smaller, measuring 4.8 sq km (3 sq mi). While some settlers acquired their estancias legally through grants from the Viceroy, other Spaniards obtained theirs using shady subterfuges. Sometimes, settlers simply occupied lands illegally that belonged to indigenous villages or to the Crown. However they were acquired, over time individual estancias were sold, or transferred through the bankruptcy, inheritance, or dowry processes. Gradually, they obtained a kind of defacto legality. More and more, these properties came into the hands of men intent on assembling large feudal estates on the European model. It was in this context that Hacienda Santa Lucia was founded in 1630. I have no information on the original founder but, in 1662, Agustin Gamboa became the hacienda's owner. By 1697, he had built the property up to 3 cattle estancias (13,167 acres), 3 sheep estancias (5784 acres), 15 caballerías (at 105 acres each), 11 suertes de huerta (vegetable and fruit plots) and 2 mill sites. The Gamboa family continued to own and expand the hacienda until 1736.

The zaguán, viewed from inside the patio looking out. Just inside the beautiful wrought-iron screen is the Pegasus table. In the foreground is a silver-trimmed saddle. From the time the Gamboa family took ownership to the middle of the next century, cattle were the main economic focus of haciendas throughout western Mexico. Although Hacienda Santa Lucia was raising maiz on some of its 15 caballerías in 1697, not all of the land was planted and agriculture was not yet the central focus of the hacienda. There were several good reasons for this. For one, the indigenous villages around Guadalajara still possessed sufficient land to produce a substantial maiz surplus and thus could compete with Spanish growers in the Guadalajara market. For another, unlike cattle herding, crop cultivation is labor intensive. The indigenous people were not inclined to work on Spanish farms, particularly if they had land of their own. Forced labor was available, of course, at least in the first century or so after the Conquest. However, protests by some religious orders against Spanish abuses caused the restriction and gradual elimination of the Spanish right to free labor. Thirdly, even as the practice of forced labor was gradually restricted, the actual supply of labor was dramatically decreasing. A variety of European diseases decimated the indigenous people beginning early in the 16th Century. In some areas, the native population plummeted by 90% or more. It was not until the mid-18th Century that the population recovered and labor again became plentiful.

This silver-trimmed saddle was a working tool and not just for decoration. Notice the machete in its scabbard, ready for slashing back thorny acacia or other brush that might block the horseman in the rough back-country. This area is the heart of Mexican "cowboy country". The famous Charro Tradition of horsemanship and roping skills began here in Jalisco State. Two hundred years before the first US cowboy strapped on his spurs, the Mexicans were already experts in the entire cowboy technology. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, cattle were plentiful, pasture land was cheap and easy to obtain, and cattle could be driven to market by a relative handful of seasonal workers. In 1781, Hacienda Santa Lucia was producing 7% of all the beef sold in Guadalajara. Between 1803-1807, the hacienda held the government beef monopoly for the entire city. The seasonal vaqueros (cowboys) drifted from one cattle drive to another, sometimes returning to their villages to tend their maiz crop. Hacendados who were good employers gained the loyalty of these men. In times of Chichimec threat or civil unrest, some hacienda owners could mobilize hundreds of these expert horsemen to form irregular cavalry units. Often, a grateful Viceroy would reward the hacendado with the military rank of captain, as well as additional estancia and caballería grants.

An exquisite statue of the Virgin of the Rosary stands in one of the niches in the patio. The 16th and 17th Centuries were a time of religious fervor. This was especially the case with hacendados and their families. Nearly every casco contained a capilla, always located in close proximity to the casa grande. If they could afford it, hacendados kept a resident vicar on the payroll to conduct mass in the chapel and to otherwise tend to the religious life of the hacienda. It was not uncommon for a son or daughter to become a priest or nun. To support them, the hacendado would establish a capellanía, or benefice, charged against the income of the hacienda. The owner often tried to secure his place in heaven by including money in his will, again charged against the hacienda, to pay for regular prayers for his soul. If a son or daughter inherited a hacienda and chose to take holy orders, he or she might donate part of the hacienda's income--or even the entire estate--to a convent or school. As a result, various Catholic religious organizations became wealthy and, by the end of the 18th Century, the Church owned or controlled as much as 1/2 of the arable land in Mexico. Many haciendas, however, staggered under the load of these religious financial encumbrances.

Yet another version of the Virgin Mary. The niche in which she stands is beautifully carved and contains one of the small white-faced angelitos at the bottom. The relationship between hacienda owners and the Church extended well beyond religion. The lack of a banking system in Nueva España left the hacendados constantly scrambling for ways to finance their operations. Cattle driving was risky, due to Chichimec raids, bandits, storms, river crossings, and stampedes. Crops failed from drought, floods, or were trampled by feral cattle. Grain prices for maiz and trigo (wheat) could fluctuate wildly. To secure operating and investment capital, hacendados tapped the growing wealth of the Church organizations. This further encumbered estates already paying for vicar's salaries, capellanías, prayers for deceased owners, dowries, and lavish homes and lifestyles in Guadalajara. Bankruptcy auctions, as well as sales for other reasons, occurred with surprising regularity. For example, Hacienda Copala, not far from Santa Lucia, was sold 10 times between 1697 and 1791. Nearby Hacienda La Magdalena turned over 6 times between 1727 and 1808. In contrast, Hacienda Santa Lucia remained within just two families for over 150 years, although there were at least a couple sales between family members during that time. The first sale was in 1722, apparently by one member of the Gamboa family to another. Then, in the 1730s, the Gamboas became linked through marriage to a family of Guadalajara merchants named Leñero. When the Gamboa owner of Santa Lucia died, her nephew, a Leñero, bought the hacienda from her estate. Several generations of the Leñeros then owned the hacienda for over a century. Among the family were men who used their shrewd business acumen to make Santa Lucia prosper even when other hacendados around them failed.

The ziguán leads into the patio of the casa grande, complete with bubbling fountain. Hacienda Santa Lucia is quite large and complex and includes several courtyards and gardens. In 1736, the hacienda was owned by Angela de Amesqua y Gamboa, who had inherited it from her father. She married a rising young Guadalajara merchant named Gabriel Sánchez Leñero, an emigrant from Toledo, Spain. His business interests included supplying mines and haciendas. While Gabriel got a boost up the social ladder through marrying Angela, a member of the land-owning elite, the Gamboa-Leñero alliance also contributed greatly to the economic stability of the hacienda. The weakness of the hacienda system had always been its limited access to capital. Raising livestock and crops both carried numerous risks, and profits could vary drastically from year to year. The construction of dams, irrigation projects, large storage buildings, and long walls to protect crops from livestock required large-scale, long-term investments. Capital for such investments had to come from sources other than the uncertain profits of the haciendas themselves. As already noted, some hacendados sought capital from church loans, and the mortgages which encumbered their properties often forced foreclosures and auction sales. Gabriel and other members of the Leñero family used the profits from their commercial operations to support needed investments at Santa Lucia and, conversely, used their business contacts to market the hacienda's various products. The deft balancing of these interests enabled the hacienda to become one of the most important estates in the Guadalajara area.

A iron-bound wooden door stands behind the arched portales facing a cobblestone courtyard. This is now the entrance to of one of several private homes within Santa Lucia's casco. Starting in the late 17th, and continuing through the middle of the 18th Centuries, a great shift occurred in the economic focus of many haciendas. This involved a switch from cattle to raising grain crops, particularly wheat. These changes required major capital investments. There were three reasons for this. First, the over-harvesting of the feral cattle had resulted in a significant decline in the great herds. Second, by the middle of the 18th Century, the indigenous population had developed some immunity to European diseases and had largely recovered from the precipitous drop of the previous century. In addition, the growing mestizo population (mixed Spanish and indigenous) was also resistant to those diseases. As the labor supply increased, the ability to conduct large-scale agriculture increased with it. At last there was someone to put behind that plow! Third, Guadalajara's growing population created a corresponding demand for grain, particularly wheat. When it was founded in 1542, the city contained about 200 people, including 63 Spaniards. By the beginning of the War of Independence in 1810, the population had reached about 35,000. As the size and wealth of the city grew, so did its taste for bread made from flour. Wheat prices rapidly increased, spurring production. However, wheat requires considerably more water than corn, hence the demand for capital to build dams and irrigation projects. This resulted in bumper crops, which tended to depress prices. Investment in large stone storage buildings enabled haciendas to hold their grain off the market until prices improved. By contrast, small farmers and the indigenous villagers lacked these facilities and had to sell at harvest time, regardless of price. The mercantile capital the Leñeros could access gave them a significant advantage not only over small farmers, but over many of their fellow hacendados.

Another part of the casa grande, now also functioning as a private home. Gabriel Sánchez Leñero's family were not of the land-owning elite, but they were prominent in colonial society nonetheless. His father had been Alcalde Mayor (District Magistrate) of Aguascalientes at the beginning of the 18th Century. His cousin was a wealthy merchant in Mexico City. Gabriel himself served as Alcalde Ordinario (Municipal Magistrate) of Guadalajara, and financial administrator of the Convent of Santa Maria de Gracia and the Guadalajara Cathedral. In the mid-18th Century, Juan Alfonso Sánchez Leñero, Gabriel's nephew, came to Nueva España from Toledo. He took a job as a cajero (clerk) in his Uncle Gabriel's business. This was a time-honored way for an ambitious young man to get his start in the New World. He worked for Gabriel for several years and invested in a small store of his own, in partnership with his Aunt Angela. Gabriel died in 1760, and Angela a few years later. Upon her death, Juan Alphonso purchased Hacienda Santa Lucia from her estate for 37,000 pesos. He enjoyed a thirty-year career as both a merchant and an hacendado, amassing a huge fortune through silver-banking, livestock trading, and trade in general merchandise, as well as the profits from his hacienda's production. Upon his death in 1793, the estate of Juan Alfonso Sánchez Leñero--including Santa Lucia--was worth 500,000 pesos. Hacienda Santa Lucia alone was valued at 100,000 pesos, three times what Juan Alfonso paid for it!

Some of my sources of information for this posting:

Hacienda and Market in 18th Century Mexico, the Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820, Eric Van Young, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2nd Ed. 2006

Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, the Great Hacienda, Francois Chevalier, University of California Press, 1970

Haciendas and Economic Development, Guadalajara, Mexico at Independence, Richard B. Lindley, University of Texas Press, 1983

This completes Part 2 of my Historic Haciendas of Zapopan series. In the next installment, we will look at Santa Lucia's 17th Century capilla, the remains of its tequila-making taberna, and continue with the story of this beautiful old estate and its place in Guadalajara's history. I hope you liked this posting. If so, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the Comments section below, or email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

A wagon wheel, wooden cask, and part of a column found in Santa Lucia's old tequila taberna. In my previous posting, I showed you some of the exterior and interior features of Hacienda Santa Lucia'scasa grande (main house). In this one, I will focus on the capilla (chapel) and the taberna (a small factory where tequila was manufactured and sold in bulk). I will also give you a brief history of the origins of Mexico's famous tequila and its relationship to haciendas like Santa Lucia.

La Capilla de Santa Lucia

The capilla sits at the intersection of two wings of the casa grande. The large grassy area in the foreground was once used to stage bullfights. A capilla can nearly always be found directly connected, or immediately adjacent, to a hacienda's casa grande. When these old estates came into being in the late 16th and 17th centuries, religion was interwoven into every part of daily life. Sometimes this included economic issues. For the first century or so after the Conquest, Spaniards could obtain encomiendas (the right to demand forced labor from local indigenous people). Such forced labor provided the workforce that built the great estates as well as many churches, cathedrals, and convents. In return, a Spanish encomendero was expected to provide for instruction in Christianity--a pretty good deal, if you are on the right end of it. However, religion was not used simply as a cynical ploy to get free labor. From the Conquest through at least the first half of the 20th century, people of all classes in Mexico believed deeply and fervently in Catholicism. Many still do. After the 1910 Revolution, a large percentage of haciendas were reduced to ruins. Often, the only surviving structure was the old capilla, which was preserved to become the community's church.

Symbols of peace and war stand closely together. The capilla is topped by a three-bell campanario (bell tower). Just to the left of the bell tower is a cylindrical brick bastion with gun slits. Since it was built in the 17th Century, this capilla has been used for masses, baptisms, weddings and funerals.

The bastion provides a defensive position from which most of the casco can be easily observed. In the 16th and 17th centuries, structures like this helped protect against raids by the fierce nomadic warriors known as Chichimecs. During the 18th century, bandits became the main threat. After the turn of the 19th century, the threats multiplied. Haciendas had to be defended against assaults by rival armies during the War of Independence (1810-1821), the Reform Wars of the mid-century, the invasions by the United States (1846-48) and then France (1862-1867). Bandit raids continued to be a problem during intervals between periods of organized warfare through the end of the century. In the 20th century, the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910 and violent aftershocks lasted into the early 1930s. One of the fiercest of these was the Cristero War which raged through this area between 1926-1929. Many haciendas still contain traces of these struggles including rifle-slitted bastions, high walls topped with battlements, pockmarks from bullets, wooden gates studded with iron and topped with warning bells, and escape tunnels to hide the hacendados' money, silverware, and women.

Arched portales line one side of a long corridor along one side of the casa grande. From this shady terraza, the hacendado and his family could view the bullfights and other activities conducted in the broad plaza beyond.

At one end of the corridor stands the tall, wooden, main entrance of the capilla. Chuck, one of our most dedicated Hacienda Hunters, can be seen emerging from the capilla. He is of medium height. This provides a sense of scale for the tall entrance.

The main altar, with a confessional booth on the left and a pulpit on the right. Although its campanario and entrance door are impressive, the capilla's interior is relatively small. The tall, wooden retablo behind the altar contains statues of Jesus (middle), the Virgin Mary (left), and San José (right). Most of the decor seems to be 19th century Neo-classic style. Notice the fresh flowers on the altar, a sure sign that this capilla still sees regular use.

A niche in one wall contains a statue of Santa Lucia, patroness of the hacienda. The hacienda was founded in 1630 and the hacendado adopted the name of the adjacent town, which had been established about 80 years previously. When the Spanish originally settled here in 1545, the town was called Nochistanejo. In 1570, it was renamed Santa Lucia(Saint Lucy), a young Christian from a wealthy Roman family. She was martyred during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 304 AD. As the story goes, Lucia persuaded her mother to give away her wealth to the poor. At the time, Lucia was betrothed to a young Roman pagan. He became enraged by this charitable act because he considered the money to be part of Lucia's dowery. As a result, he betrayed Lucia, revealing her Christianity to the Roman authorities. Her martyrdom story was considerably embellished over the centuries. According to the early versions, Lucia refused to sacrifice at the altar to the Emperor. The local governor then ordered her to be defiled in a brothel. However, her guards were unable to remove her from her cell, even with a team of oxen. Next, they attempted to burn her alive but the wood wouldn't light. Finally she was killed with a sword. Later versions claim that her eyes were gouged out by her guards, but after her martyrdom, they reappeared in her head, intact. Still another story says she plucked out her own eyes to discourage an unwanted suitor. Because of this, and because Lucia means light in latin, Santa Lucia became the patroness of the blind and those with eye troubles.

The confessional booth was crafted in the same peaked style as the altar's retablo. Notice the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall next to the booth. It is a rare church in Mexico that doesn't display some image of the nation's patroness. The elaborately painted walls are typical of decorations found in 19th century haciendas and townhouses.

La Taberna de Tequila

Adjacent to the casa grande is the thick-walled old taberna. Within this building, barrels of tequila were produced for shipment to Guadalajara, Zacatecas, and other markets. Several old wooden casks, similar to those which once contained the fiery liquor, are stacked in the lower right of the photo. A tall chimney rises behind the taberna. It was used in the cooking process.

The walls and part of the roof have collapsed on one end of the taberna. In the foreground is a small iron boiler which may have been part of the distilling process. In the back wall, you can see a circular hole that was the mouth of a furnace. Indigenous people had been making use of the maguey plant for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived. In addition to using the leaves for fiber, and their spiny tips for needles, they crushed and fermented the heart of the plant to make pulque, a milky and mildly alcoholic beverage. Pulque is still a popular drink in rural areas of Mexico, although beer has superseded it in urban areas. When the Spanish settled, they began to distill the agave's juice into a fiery liquor.

The adobe wall of the taberna contains several circular furnace mouths for feeding in the fuel. The openings have been sealed over or filled with debris, like the one above. You can see a second mouth to the right of the truncated pilaster. The Spanish got into distilling maguey because of the royal monopolies on alcoholic drinks like wine, rum, and brandy made them too expensive for any but the wealthy. The liquor produced from maguey is called mescal everywhere but in the area around the small city of Tequila, to the west of Guadalajara. There, a maguey variety called blue agave is used to make the famous drink called tequila. Today, only liquor made from the blue agave from the area around Tequila can be called by that name. At first, mescal (or tequila) was produced in small quantities intended for consumption on the local haciendas where it was distilled.

The high ceiling of the taverna is supported by arches held up by graceful columns. I am always impressed by the architectural beauty of the workaday buildings on haciendas I visit. What modern architect would design a factory or warehouse this lovely? By the end of the 16th century, hacendados were beginning to realize that their popular liquor had commercial possibilities. In 1600, a hacendado named Pedro Sanchez de Tagle established the first large-scale distillery, based in Tequila. To produce the necessary raw material, he began to cultivate thousands of agave plants. However, while tequila production in the 17th century was increasingly lucrative, the primary focus of most haciendas--including Santa Lucia--continued to be livestock, grain crops, and sugar.

One end of the taberna is roofless, but the thick walls are intact. Nopal cactus grows on the top of one adobe wall, while bougainvillea spills over another. In the 18th century, tequila took off as a major business activity. In the 1770s, José Prudencia de Cuervo was a modestly prosperous merchant and small scale money-lender. He came from a Guadalajara family that was not among the first rank, but was prominent nonetheless. His father, typical of many Guadalajara merchants, had emigrated from Spain early in the century. A brother held a high position in the Guadalajara's Royal Treasury. José began to acquire land with the earnings of his mercantile and lending activities, another typical move for someone in his position. In 1785, he purchased the sugar-producing Hacienda Guadalupe. A year later he bought the 30,000 acre Hacienda San Martin. Growing on Cuervo's various properties were 50,000 agave plants. By the time of his death in 1811, his agave had increased to 400,000 plants and he was heavily invested in distilling and barreling his product. José Cuervo had become the preeminent producer of tequila in Mexico, and his family continued the business.

The Corinthian-style cap from a long-disappeared column rests on the floor of the taberna. There are many picturesque old relics of the hacienda's architectural decorations lying about. With the success of José Prudencia de Cuervo, the tequila industry had come of age. Haciendas like Santa Lucia began to devote significant portions of their land to agave cultivation, and to distill, barrel, and sell their own stocks. The owners of Hacienda Santa Lucia considered their tequila operation important enough to include it within the walls of their casco, the nerve center of the estate.

Today, the old taberna produces weddings rather than liquor. The building is a popular site for wedding photos. Mexico is a country deeply influenced by tradition. José Cuervo is still the name of one of the most popular tequila brands in the world and many other tequilas also bear the names of old haciendas. In the town of Tesistán, very near Hacienda Santa Lucia, the Distileria Santa Lucia produces a fine brand of tequila.

This completes Part 3 of my Haciendas of Zapopan series. I hope you have enjoyed it and, if so, you will leave any thoughts in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Edificio Ipiña occupies the whole block forming the west side of the Plaza de los Fundadores. The building was named after Don Encarnación Ipiña who commissioned it in an attempt to recreate the famous Rue Rivoli of Paris. Carole and I visited San Luis Potosí in August of 2013, after we had stopped briefly at Aguascalientes on the way. The city is located 138 km (86 mi) to the east of Aguascalientes in the central western part of the huge state of San Luis Potosí. Even after five intensive days of exploring the city and a bit of the area around it, we only managed to scratch the surface of all that is there. San Luis Potosí is on the main route between Laredo, Texas and the foreign communities around Lake Chapala, south of Guadalajara. Many of the expats traveling to and from Lake Chapala have chosen the bypass road around the San Luis to avoid passing through it. Few have stopped to savour what San Luis has to offer. Those who passed it by have missed much as a result. In this posting, and the series that will follow, we'll take a look at this clean, well-organised, and beautifully preserved colonial city. For a Google map of the city San Luis Potosí, click here.

Plaza de los Fundadores

Map of the Centro Historico showing the large number of plazas and parks.Plaza de los Fundadores (Founder's Plaza) is the small grey rectangle just left of center on the corner of Calles Ignacio Aldama and Alvaro Obregon. It will be the focus of Part 1. As you can see, there are six other plazas and public gardens in the area, many interconnected by pedestrian-only streets. The streets on the map are just the major ones in the area. Many others are not shown. Most of the cities we have visited in Mexico have only one central plaza. San Luis Potosí is unusual in having many major plazas, each containing architecturally-significant churches and public and private buildings. These are of a variety of styles from the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. The streets connecting these plazas and gardens are themselves lined with beautifully preserved architecture. The anadores (walking streets) enabled us to enjoy all of this without having to dodge noisy, smelly traffic. (Map is from the website of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí)

View of the Plaza de los Fundadores and the San Luis skyline from our hotel window. The red-brick building stretching across the left-center is the headquarters of the University. It has been the site of a school since the Jesuits founded their college in 1624. To put that in context, San Luis Potosí had a school of higher learning while the Pilgrims were still huddling in primitive huts on Cape Cod, having landed at Plymouth Rock only three years before. The city spreads out over a gently rolling high desert landscape at the base of rugged peaks. At the time of San Luis' founding in 1592, these mountains were full of gold and silver deposits, but the mines have mostly been exhausted. San Luis Potosí's elevation is 1,850 m (6,070 ft) and it contains a population of about 736,000 people. Temperatures are generally mild, ranging from a low of 5.5C (41.9F) in January to a high of 28.3C (82.9F) in April. There is usually little or no humidity. August, when we visited, is an especially pleasant time of year.

A woman walks past a voluminous display of balloons. Two things are ubiquitous in Mexican plazas: ice cream parlors and balloon vendors. Because his wares are filled with air or helium, a single vendor can move a display like this fairly easily. The building on the right in the background is Banorte, a national bank chain. ATMs have hit Mexico big time and, at certain times of the day, there are long lines of customers waiting to access their money. In spite of such electronic banking, Mexico is still largely a cash economy. While 88% of US adults possess a bank account, only 27% of Mexican adults have one.

Another view from our hotel window, this time over the Edificio Ipiñia. As you can see, the structure fills most of the city block, covering an area of 110 x 55 m (361 x 180 ft). In 1592, there was a small spring at this side, which encouraged the founding conquistadors to settle here. In the 19th Century, a tannery occupied part of the block. Encarnación Ipiña acquired most of the property but, in the end, could obtain only 70% of the block. The other parcels are now ground-level parking lots. Señor Ipiña gave the job of construction to his son-in-law, the engineer Octavian Ipiña Cabrera. Don Ipiña also attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade the owners of other blocks along the street to imitate his plan, which was to recreate the luxurious Rue Rivoli of Paris. Finally finished in 1913, Edificio Ipiñia's carefully planned layout made it unique in Mexico. Shops offering pricey goods lined the ground floor behind the long rows of portales (arches) along the south and east sides. The second floor contained business offices and luxury apartments. The Engineer Ipiña Cabrera installed his family in one of these but, in 1914, they had to flee to Mexico City to avoid the Revolution. In the meantime, revolutionary Gen. Matias Ramos used the building as a fortress and barracks for his troops. When Ipiña Cabrera finally returned, he found the place stripped even of its carpets. After the Revolution, the building recovered, but it never again achieved its initial glory.

The early morning slant of the sun leaves a deep shadow over Calle Venustiano Carranza.This street runs along the south side of Plaza de los Fundadores, and extends, from the point above, east toward Plaza de Armas. Narrow streets, overhanging balconies and old gaslights (now electrified) typify this part of San Luis. In 1590, the ferocious 50-year Chichimec War finally ended with a peaceful, negotiated settlement. Two years later, a mixed party of Spanish soldiers, priests, and indigenous mercenaries arrived in the area of what is now San Luis Potosí. They were commanded by a very able mestizo soldier, Captain Miguel Caldera. His indigenous troops came from Tlaxcala, one of Hernán Cortés' earliest allies against the Mexica (Aztec) Empire. Also present were Franciscan evangelists, bent on converting the Guachichiles, one of the fiercest of the Chichamec tribes. Within a very shot time, the Spanish discovered gold and silver in the nearby mountains.

Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí

The headquarters of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi (UASLP). This building fills the north side of Founder's Plaza, along with the attached Jesuit Temple and Chapel. The original Jesuit school opened in 1624 and was named Colegio Guadalupano Josefino. The Colegio taught Humanities, Philosophy, Theology, and Law. In 1630, Medicine was added. In 1767, the Jesuit Order was expelled from all Spanish possessions, but the school continued as a Roman Catholic institution. In 1923, following the Mexican Revolution, San Luis Potosí Governor Rafael Nieto signed a decree which took over the Colegio and created the UASLP, a public university.

The leafy courtyard of the university building was almost empty of students when we visited. The few that were present were engaged in setting up large speakers for an evening musical event. That left us free to wander about and enjoy the old colonial building. The new Spanish pueblo of San Luis Potosí got the first part of its name from Louis IX, King of France (1214-1270 AD). In Spanish he is called San Luis Rey. Louis was a pious man, widely viewed as a good and just king. He went on two Crusades and died on the second of them. Twenty-seven years after his death, he was sainted. "Potosí", the second part of the name, reflected the new mining community's desire to be compared to the rich mines of Potosí, Boliva. The town's site was picked because of plentiful water, something the mining areas themselves lacked.

Carole strolls the arcade surrounding one of the two courtyards inside the building. Notice the massive pillars supporting the overhead structure. When the school was opened in 1624, it was endowed with lands and money by the wealthy miner Juan de Zevala. The building seen above was originally constructed in the second half of the 17th Century, but various changes were made in the 19th Century. The term "autonomous" in the university's name means that, although the school receives funding from the government, it is free to set up and change its own programs.

The second floor arcade looks out on the leafy branches of the courtyard's trees. The place was suffused with a feeling of ancient serenity. However, when classes are in session and boisterous students roam the arcades and courtyards, I suspect that this feeling may diminish a bit.

Templo de la Compañía

Capilla de Loreto (left) and Templo de la Compañia (right) occupy the northwestern corner. The university stands on their right. Both churches were built by the Jesuits as parts of the educational complex. They can be entered through their external doors, seen above, or through an internal door that connects them. Originally the property belonged to the Franciscans, but they ceded it to the Jesuits who then built their Templo in 1654 and completed the Capilla in 1724.

The interior of the Templo de la Compañia shows strong Neo-classical influence. The original structure was built in the Baroque style popular in the 17th Century but, during the 18th Century, many churches were remodelled along Neo-classical lines. The "Compañia" referred to in the Templo's name is the Company of Jesus or the Jesuit Order. It was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a soldier who had a battlefield revelation after he was wounded. He set up his Order along military lines and the members referred to themselves as "Soldiers of God". Discipline was tight, education was stressed, and expectations were high. This made the Jesuits a formidable religious order.

On the left wall of the nave, next to the door leading to the Capilla, stands San Nicolas. He was a 4th Century bishop in the Greek city of Myra. He gained the name "Nicolas the Wonderworker" from the many miracles attributed to him. San Nicolas was believed to leave coins in shoes left out for this purpose. This is the origin of the Santa Claus story and the stockings attached to the mantlepiece. Nicolas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, pawnbrokers, and students. The last of these may be why his statue stands in a Templo (chapel) attached to a school.

The main altar of the Templo is strongly Neo-classic with one exception. On the lower right of the photo is one of the famed "Cane Christs" made in the 16th Century by the indigenous craftsmen of Michoacan. The material used was a paste made from maize (corn) and the images are usually very lifelike and powerful. During the colonial era, they were shipped to churches all over New Spain, including this one.

A sleeping man is the central figure in this astonishing painting on the Templo's wall. I haven't quite put together the meaning of all the symbolic elements. In the painting, a man dressed as a 19th Century gentleman dozes in his chair, a bottle and glass by his elbow. To his left, an angel whispers in his ear. Her wing partially protects him from the skeleton hovering over his right shoulder, probably representing Death or evil forces. Under his chair lies an open sack with coins spilling out. In front of it is a pistol. If anyone out there can enlighten me on meaning of this picture, please do so!

Interior of the dome. I always enjoy the mandala-like effect of the domes of Mexican churches. In 1767, Spanish King Charles III expelled the Jesuit Order from Spain and all its possessions. In this he was following the lead of France, Portugal, and other European monarchies. This drastic action was taken for political and economic reasons, rather than religious. The Jesuits had become politically powerful and were viewed by Europe's Catholic monarchs as a dangerously independent force answering only to the Pope. The Order was also extremely wealthy, with extensive holdings, including La Parada, one of the most important haciendas near San Luis Potosí. Monarchs who were centralising their own power were jealous of perceived outside interference. Many of those who surrounded Charles III cast covetous eyes on Jesuit properties. When the king's order came down, the Jesuits had to give up everything and leave New Spain. This included their Colegio in San Luis Potosí and the two churches next to it.

In the choir loft at the rear of the church stands a beautifully carved pipe organ. I grew up in a Presbyterian family, although I am not today a religious person. The choir in our church was placed at the front of the sanctuary and to the side of the minister. I have visited many Catholic churches in Mexico and have found the placement of choir lofts at the rear and above the congregation to be a very curious arrangement. Looking into it further, I found there are some specific reasons for it. While the Catholic choir is certainly intended to be heard, the church leadership does not want to distract the faithful by placing it fully on view. A typical solution is to place the choir above and behind the pews on the main floor. In addition, the choir are members of the congregation and should be able to participate in the Mass. Therefore, it was decided that they should face forward toward the altar as the rest of the congregation does. Finally, the altar area, or sanctuary, is reserved for the "Ministers of the Mass" such as priests, bishops, and acolytes and is not seen as an appropriate place for either the choir or the congregation during Mass.

The Templo de la Compañía is connected to the Capilla de Loreto by this impressive doorway. To the left of the door is the statue of San Nicolas. When the Jesuits left New Spain, their properties were either taken over by other religious orders or were seized by the colonial government and sold off. Many a Spanish hacendado greatly increased his holdings through acquiring former Jesuit haciendas like La Parada. It probably made little difference to the peones working there. The Jesuits exploited their haciendas like any of the other hacendados. However, in addition to being ruthlessly worked, if you were a peon on a Jesuit hacienda and failed to attend Mass, you might be whipped.

La Capilla de Loreto

A two level Baroque retablo stands behind the altar at the head of the small chapel.Capilla de Loreto was built between 1709 and 1724 under the direction of the Jesuit Fathers Francisco González, Cristóbal Cordero, and Ignacio Mayorga. One of the primary purposes of this chapel was to house a facsimile of the Santa Casa (Holy House). The original is located within a Basilica in Loreto, Italy. According to legend, the Santa Casa in Italy was the actual structure from Nazareth where Jesus was conceived and grew up. After the crucifixion, the house became a meeting place for the faithful and eventually a shrine for pilgrims. Emperor Constantine (272-337 AD), the first Christian Roman Emperor, built a Basilica over it. Then came the Age of the Crusades. Hostility between Christians and Muslims reached fever pitch and twice, in 1090 AD and 1263 AD, the Basilica was destroyed. Somehow, the Santa Casa within it survived.

The upper part of the elaborately-carved retablo contains a painting of the Virgin Mary. Her picture is framed by four estípite columns. Covered with intricate floral designs, these are typical of the last phase of the Baroque style. Behind the image of Mary, you can see a simple structure that represents the Santa Casa. In 1263 AD, after the second destruction of the Basilica, the house stood defenceless. In 1291, it mysteriously disappeared from Nazareth and began a migration during which it reappeared in Croatia, and then in Italy, first in Recanti and finally Loreto. According to legend, it was transported each time by angels.

A simple crucifix in the center of the retablo is set in an elaborately decorated niche. The work that went into carving the details of this area alone must have been extraordinary. After the Santa Casa's mysterious arrival in Loreto, a Basilica was again built over it. Modern scholars, including Catholics, have expressed considerable doubt about this whole story. In fact, there is no mention in any records of such a house in Nazareth, nor of its heavenly migrations, until the 15th Century AD. This was well after the Basilica in Loreto had been built. Still, it was a good story, and pilgrims came from near and far to visit Loreto's Santa Casa. Apparently, no one at the time wanted to look into the matter very closely.

The Capilla has a dome with an unusual shape. The corners of its supports contain beautiful paintings of biblical figures. When the Jesuits of San Luis Potosí built their Capilla de Loreto at the beginning of the 18th Century, they provided it with an exact replica--right down to the measurements--of the Santa Casa in Italy. Mexico has several other Capillas de Loreto, also containing replicas, but the one in San Luis Potosí is acknowledged to be the finest of the group. However, the Capilla today no longer contains its Santa Casa. The last record of its presence is from 1840. What became of it is not mentioned in any of the literature I researched, only that it was no longer there as of that date. Perhaps the angels came for it again.

Spiraling Solomonic columns frame the outside doorway of the Capilla. Carved stone birds flutter among the foliage. The figs and grapes on the column symbolise the Eucharist. The inclusion of the columns was not just a Baroque fancy. The Capilla itself was designed by the Jesuits to imitate certain aspects of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Thus, a replica of one holy place was built to surround a replica of another.

The belfry and roof of the Capilla. Notice the line of drains, built to look like long-barrelled cannon. Given the flat roots typical of colonial buildings, such drains were necessary to remove excess rainwater.

In the street beside the Capilla, I encountered this corn seller. He offered fresh corn on the cob, boiled in the washtub mounted on his bicycle-driven cart. He was a friendly guy who posed with a smile even though I wasn't really a customer. Little operations like this can be found in large and small communities all over Mexico.

This completes Part 1 of my San Luis Potosí series. I hope you enjoyed it and, if so, please feel free to leave a comment below in the Comments section. If you are part of my blog announcement list, you can just email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

La Catedral Metropolitana de San Luis Rey glows in the late afternoon sun.The Catedral stands on the southeast corner of the Plaza de Armas, also known as the Plaza Principal. In this posting we'll first take a look at the Baroque decoration of the exterior. Then I'll show you the interior, which was remodelled in the Neo-classic style in the late 19th Century. Of San Luis Potosí's many architectural jewels, I found this church to be the most outstanding.

The south steeple and the clock tower. In 1593, the newly-arrived colonists erected a rather humble adobe and shingle parish church on this spot. That early primitive structure was later replaced by a much larger church, owing to the town's rapid growth as the nearby silver mines boomed. The wealth of the mine owners, merchants and hacendados rapidly grew during the 17th Century. By 1670, these men felt that the town deserved a truly spectacular church. That year, the parish church which had replaced the first rustic structure was itself demolished and first stone was laid for the grand new church.

Solomonic columns frame the openings in the bell tower. This kind of spiralling column, decorated profusely with floral designs, was typical of Late Baroque architecture. There are twelve Solomonic columns on each of the three levels of the steeple. Between 1670 and 1701, construction was delayed repeatedly. In 1701, master architect Nicolás Sánchez took over direction, but work still proceeded slowly. The church would not be officially blessed until 1730. At that time, there was only one steeple, the south bell tower you see above. The north steeple was not added until 180 years later, in 1910, to celebrate the Centennial of the War of Independence. The second steeple exactly copied the design of the first, except for the grey stone the architects used.

Bell-ringing the old fashioned way. The large bells in this church are rung by sheer muscle power, the same method used for hundreds of years. The man seen above grabs the base of the bell and pushes until he achieves a swinging motion. The great bell is carefully balanced on its shaft, and as it swings in a wider and wider arc, less force is required. If bell-ringers like this don't wear ear plugs, I imagine they will end up with serious hearing problems.

Between the two steeples, a small cupola stands over a clock. Within the cupola are three bells, placed one above the other, hanging over an unidentified statue of a woman. The figure, which may be one of the many versions of the Virgin Mary, holds a bundle of flowers over one arm with her hands clasped in prayer. The bells above the statue may be connected to the clock, which was installed in 1866. Between the statue and the clock is a niche containing a bishop's miter (pointed hat) set over a shepherd's crook. Just below the clock is an oval plaque commemorating Pope Pius IX's elevation of the church to cathedral status in 1854. By this act, it became the headquarters of the diocese and the seat of the Bishop of San Luis Potosí.

The main entrance of the church is designed as a stone imitation of a retablo. Retablos are tall structures, often made of intricately carved wood, which contain niches for statues or paintings. They are usually found behind altars, but Baroque churches sometimes use the retablo format for the facade of a whole church, as in this case. There are a total of twelve niches on the two levels of the main facade. Each niche contains a statue of one of the Twelve Apostles. The two statues facing outward on the bottom level are each framed by two spiralling Solomonic columns, another typically Baroque feature.

The marble statues were elegantly carved. The original statues installed in 1730 had been made of a softer, more easily weathered stone. By 1896, they were worn and broken. As part of San Luis' celebration of its Jubilee, Bishop Montes de Oca ordered the statues replaced. The Biaggi brothers modelled the beautiful carrera marble statues on the images found in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. In addition to the twelve figures in the niches around the facade, there are twelve additional Apostles lining the roof, making this is the only church in the world with a total of 24 Apostle statues.

The winged bust of an angel stares down from atop a window. Each of the four windows framing the facade contains a similar angelic figure. I was impressed that even relatively unimportant features like these windows would be so richly decorated. But, then, that's Baroque for you.

The interior of the Catedral

View the rear of the main nave. There are three naves in the Catedral. The main one runs down the middle of the church from the entrance to the altar, with another on each side. The naves are separated by lines of tall Doric columns joined at their tops by semi-circular arches.

Statue of San Sebastian, the only Catholic saint who was martyred twice. The figure stands at the base of one of the two Doric columns which frame the entrance of the main nave. The statue was sculpted in France at the Maison Raffi. San Sebastian (256 AD - 288 AD) was born in Gaul and became a captain of the Praetorian Guard, Emperor Diocletian's bodyguard. After he converted to Christianity, Sebastian refused to make sacrifices to the Emperor, who was considered a god. This resulted in his arrest. He converted his jailor, who promptly released him. However, on the Emperor's orders, he was re-arrested, tied to a stake, and archers shot him full arrows. After a woman named Irene retrieved his body, she discovered he was still alive and nursed him back to health. During his recovery, Sebastian began to perform miracles. Finally back on his feet, he denounced Diocletian as the Emperor was passing in a procession. Determined to finish the job, Diocletian ordered Sebastian clubbed to death and his body thrown in a privy. This second martyrdom proved more successful than the first. San Sebastian is the patron of soldiers, those afflicted with plague and--ironically--archers.

The main altar, at the far end of the nave from San Sebastian's arrow-riddled statue. Gold-painted Corinthian columns enclose a statue of San Luis Rey. During the 18th and 19th Centuries, a new generation of architects reacted against the florid emotionalism of the Baroque style. They were influenced by the political and scientific rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment. These new architects created a style called Neo-classic, which imitated many of the features of classical Roman and Greek buildings. The altar above is clearly of the Neo-classic style. Enclosed by the blue curtains around the cupola on top is the Virgin of the Expectation. She represents Mary while pregnant with Jesus.

San Luis Rey, shown inside the cupola of the main altar.Louis IX of France (1214 AD -1270 AD) was a French king sainted because of his exceptionally pious and just reign. It seemed strange to me, at first, that a Spanish colonial church would have as its patron saint a French king. However, it should be remembered that the Catholic Church has always been an international institution. That is not to say that the Church doesn't take on certain characteristics of the nations in which it is established. Even so, saints from any number of lands might be venerated in the churches of a particular country.

The choir loft and pipe organ are set behind the altar, an unusual placement. In many Mexican Catholic churches, the choir and organ are placed on an upper level at the rear of the church. The pipe organ comes from Guadalajara, where it was built in 1866 by the Fermin Francisco Orriza brothers.

The tops of the great pillars that seem to open out like blossoming flowers. The columns and their graceful arches create a feeling of soaring space. The interior of the Catedral was originally constructed in the Baroque style of the 17th Century but these were largely eliminated and replaced by the Neo-classic features when the church was remodelled in 1896. Bishop Montes de Oca ordered the remodelling and selected the Italian Giuseppe Claudio Molina as the project's architect. Molina's previous work included beautiful palaces in Constantinople, Russia, and Alexandria, Egypt. Unlike the interior, the Baroque features of the exterior of the Catedral were left largely intact.

View of the ceiling of the left nave, looking toward the back of the church. The triangular spaces created by the arches feel like windows looking out onto a galaxy-filled universe.

The interior of the dome provides a mesmerising, mandala-like effect. Notice the four Doctors of the Church in the triangular panels at the corners of the dome. They are St. Gregory the Great, St.Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome. In their own times, they were each great scholars who had a large impact on Catholic theology. Their work earned the name Doctors of the Church.

Feast of the Assumption

We encountered a religious procession when we first visited the Catedral. The band is passing in front of the Palacio Municipal, which was the Episcopal Palace of the Bishop before the Revolution. We had arrived during la Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.

The Virgin of the Assumption is carried on the palanquin by the faithful. She is shown with a group of cherubs under her feet, lifting her toward heaven. It is Catholic Church dogma that the Virgin Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed (raised) to heaven with her body intact. La Asunción (the Assumption), celebrated every August 15, is a major event on the Catholic calendar.

This completes Part 3 of my San Luis Potosí series, which I hope you have found interesting and enjoyable. Your comments and questions are welcomed and you can leave them either in the Comments section below, or you can email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

A large bronze fountain forms the centrepiece of the Plaza del Carmen. This lovely plaza lies two blocks east of Plaza de Armas on Calle Manuel José Othón. The first of those two blocks is another of San Luis Potosí's delightful walking streets. Behind the fountain, lit by the fading sunset, stands a former colonial mansion and federal building which is now the Museo Nacional de la Máscara (National Mask Museum). In this posting, I will show you the main features of the plaza, including some of the best of San Luis' colonial and 19th Century architecture. However, the plaza is not only about beautiful buildings. It is also one of the liveliest and most entertaining places in the city, as you will soon see. To view a Google map of the plaza area, click here.

The pink cantera of the Templo del Carmen and the Teatro de la Paz glow in the late sunlight. Between them, obscured by the trees, stands the Museo del Virreinato (the Viceroyalty Museum). It was once the Carmelite convent attached to the Templo. Now, it contains a large collection of fascinating artefacts from the city's colonial past. Together, the three structures form the east side of Plaza del Carmen. Two future posts will focus on the Templo and the contents of the Museo.

The clear notes of a flute wafted through the plaza as we strolled around. Like most street musicians, this one plays for tips which can be deposited in the cloth cap on the ground between his feet. He is probably a music student attending one of San Luis' several universities.

Commerical buildings form the north and west side of the broad plaza. In the center of the background you can see the multi-story Villa Carmela restaurant. Although we never ate there, it looked like a good spot to enjoy lunch while viewing the activities occurring below.

The central fountain (seen previously) is supported by four gaping-mouthed bronze fish. Despite much Googling, I could initially find little information on this fountain. Finally, I thought of Lori Jones owner of the Operatour Potosina, a tour agency we used during our visit. Lori is an excellent, English-speaking tour guide and I emailed her for information. She asked around and reported back that the sculpture was done by Joaquin Arias Méndez (1913-2013), a famous Mexican sculptor. He is also responsible for a sculpture in the plaza's Teatro de la Paz as well as many others around Mexico, including the famous Minerva statue in Guadalajara. The fountain was inaugurated in August 25, 1973, when the plaza was remodeled.

Near the fountain, we encountered this rather spooky-looking figure. The statue is called "El Cofrade"(the Friar). It commemorates the Procession of Silence, the most important annual civic event in San Luis Potosí. Every Semana Santa (Easter Week), the procession gathers in this plaza and then winds through the streets of the city. Participants include many of the Catholic brotherhoods dressed in special costumes, some of which include the pointed hoods seen above. The multitude moves in complete silence in order to respect the solemnity of the occasion. Among the many other groups participating are the bullfighters. They come to honor their special patron, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (Our Lady of Solitude). The tradition of a silent Easter procession was introduced very early in the colonial period by the Carmelite Order of Mexico City. However, San Luis' procession was not organised until 1954. At that time, a bullfighter named Fermin Rivera and a Carmelite priest named Nicolás de San José put together the first event here. The Procession of Silence is considered part of the cultural heritage of San Luis Potosí and draws 160,000 visitors to the city from all over the world.

A group of young students expresses a less solemn attitude. Gather some students, hold up a camera, and they never fail to adopt the most outrageous poses they can think up, given a moment's notice. Boisterous friendliness seems to be an attribute of youngsters like this all over Mexico, and perhaps worldwide.

Templo del Carmen is one of the finest examples of Churrigueresque Baroque in San Luis. The construction of church and convent was begun in 1747. The church was officially blessed in 1764, although the tower was not completed until 1768. Unfortunately, many of the great art works it once contained have been lost or destroyed. During more than a century of conflict between the beginning of the War of Independence in 1810 and the end of the Revolution in 1921, much of value was lost to Mexico. However, in 1936, the Templo del Carmen was declared a national monument.

Clowns entertain a group of students in front of the Museo del Virreinato.I have rarely visited a city in Mexico without encountering at least one clown. Usually there are whole troupes of them. These two had the "happy" and "sad" routine down pat. When I took this shot, the clown on the right had just spotted me. The sly grin on this face did not bode well.

The "sad" clown tests his blade as he looks me over like a butcher considers a piglet. As a foreigner with a camera, I often become a target for clown humour, so I try to remain discreetly in the background lest I be drawn into the act. Discretion being the better part of valour, I moved off across the plaza.

The Teatro de la Paz stands next door to the Museo del Virreinato. The Teatro is clearly a product of the late 19th Century Porfirato. The Neo-classical facade, with its stately Corinthian-capped pillars, is typical of the great theatres constructed all over the nation during that period. The Porfirato is named for President Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's dictator from 1876 to 1911. The first stones were laid in 1889, under the direction of architect José Noriega, and the building was completed in 1894. The Teatro can seat 1450 people and is decorated throughout with sculptures. The dome is covered with Belgian bronze.

Again, a group of students cavorts while I take their picture. This was a different group on a different day, but the attitude was almost identical. I began to suspect there might be an instruction booklet for students: "This is how you act when a strange-looking foreigner points his camera at you." Both the kids and I had a lot of fun with it.

Directly across from the Teatro stands the Museo Nacional de la Máscara. The Mask Museum occupies the southwest corner of the plaza. The building was constructed in 1897 as a mansion for a wealthy miner and landowner named Marti. Even without the museum, the building would be worth visiting because it is an architectural jewel. In later years, the Marti mansion was taken over by the federal government to house various agencies. Finally, in 1982, it became the Museo Nacional de la Máscara. The museum houses approximately 25,000 masks, largely from the Victor José Moya collection. Most of the masks were created by Mexico's various indigenous groups, but some are from other parts of the world. Wandering through the many rooms of this museum takes you through a world that ranges from nightmarish to hilarious.

Monumento al Padre sits on a bench at the side of the Mask Museum. The Monument to the Father has a simple theme, showing a man playing with his young son and daughter. A pair of brothers, Joel and Mario Cuevas, sculpted this affecting work. It was inaugurated in 2008 and a plaque beside it reads:

"Only a parent possesses the necessary art of being able to inspire in their children respect, love, and friendship, all at the same time."

Restaurante Nicolle is another that sits above the plaza. The west side of the plaza is filled with commercial establishments like this second floor restaurant, as well as the internet cafe and artisan shop below it. There is something to be said for an open-air restaurant high above a street. If this were a sidewalk cafe, the heavy traffic, noise, and fumes would create an unpleasant ambiance.

A tall, colourful catrina decorates the roof of still another restaurant. The Plaza del Carmen is a lot of fun to visit, as you have seen. The architecture is gorgeous and varied, the museums are full of fascinating exhibits, and people-watching opportunities are plentiful. Just watch out that you don't get roped into a clown's act.

This completes Part 4 of my San Luis Potosí series. In my next two postings, we'll take a look at the Virreinato and Máscara museums. I hope you have enjoyed this post and, if so, please feel free to comment or ask questions. You can do so either by using the Comments section below or by emailing me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Wooden devil mask from the state of Michoacan. Carole and I have always been fascinated by the indigenous masks of Mexico, as well as the dances associated with them. In fact, we have assembled our own small mask collection from Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca and elsewhere. The use of masks for religious and spiritual purposes extends back at least to the Olmecs, thousands of years into pre-hispanic times. When the Spanish arrived, the indigenous people incorporated Catholicism into their ancient beliefs. Masks that seem to be about Catholic themes will often carry pre-hispanic meanings. In addition, some of the masks were used in dances that covertly ridiculed the white oppressors. San Luis Potosí's Museo Nacional de las Máscarasis located in an opulent former 19th Century mansion. The mansion occupies the southwest corner of the Plaza del Carmen. To find the Mask Museum on a Google map, click here:

The Marti Mansion

The beautiful Marti Mansion would be worth a visit, even without the Mask Museum. The large, two-story structure was built by a wealthy miner and hacienda owner named Ramon Marti. In 1894, at the height of the opulent era called the Porfirato, Marti purchased and demolished five adjoining homes. Using the engineer Enrique Campos, Marti erected this Neo-classic palace. Campos finished the work in 1897.

The central courtyard is occupied by a complex set of interlocking staircases. The effect is graceful and airy, rather than ponderous and imposing. The rooms surrounding the courtyard on both levels are now occupied by the display salons and museum offices.

The salons show the typical decorative elements of Porfirato architecture. The Porfirato was named for Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's dictator for the 35 years between 1876 and 1911. During this era, Mexico's wealth increased dramatically as foreign investment brought railroads, telegraph networks, new ports, and many new industries. However, the overwhelming majority of this new wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small number of Mexicans surrounding Diaz. Beautiful homes like this were only possible because the mines, industries and haciendas owned by men like Marti paid their workers just enough to survive and sometimes not even that. Labor unrest in the mines and factories was kept in check by the iron hand of Diaz' secret police and military. Farm workers who tried to escape the debt slavery system of the haciendas were caught and returned by Diaz' fearsome rural police force called the Rurales.

Ornate plaster cherubs and floral motifs adorn the ceiling. Ramon Marti didn't get to enjoy his pleasure palace for long. He died in 1898, only a year after construction was finished. His heirs apparently viewed it as a "white elephant" and sold the property in 1903 to a Diaz supporter, General Bernardo Reyes. He, in turn, sold the house to the federal government in 1907. For the next 75 years, the Marti Mansion served as the Palacio Federal, housing a variety of agencies such as the Federal Public Ministry, the League of Agrarian Communities, the Mining Council, and the National Telegraph of Mexico.

This ceiling shows a winged cherub frolicking among colorful flowers. After decades of wear-and-tear, in 1982 architect Fernando Valdez Lozno remodeled the building. That same year, the current museum was created. The 2,500 piece collection of Victor José Moya Rubio and his wife Mildred Dingleberry Himm became the core display. Then, in 1998, the building had to be rehabilitated because of cracks that threatened to split the structure in two. The Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia (INAH) has designated the Marti Mansion as a historic monument.

Masks and mask-making in Mexico

Masks have been and still are used in dances and rituals in virtually every corner of Mexico. A few examples typical of their region can be found on the map of Mexico seen above. At the time of the Conquest there were between 100 and 200 distinct tribal groups within the borders of what is now Mexico. Even today, there are still at least 60 distinct indigenous languages spoken here. The themes of the masks and the materials from which they are made vary from region to region according to local resources and traditions.

Skull mask of Tezcatlipoca, one of the most powerful gods of the Aztec pantheon. The surface of the mask is inlaid with bone and turquoise. The turquoise was brought down from what is now New Mexico to the Aztec Empire. For more information on Tezcatlipoca, see my posting on the Aztec Cosmos. However, the Aztecs were relative latecomers to the world of mask-making. 2,500 years before them, the Olmecs were carving extraordinarily fine stone masks of various sizes. Some of these have been recovered from sites along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz and Tabasco. Others have been found in Colima on Mexico's West Coast and in Costa Rica to the south.

Masks are made from a variety of materials, including finely woven natural fibres. The kinds of materials used include sisal agave, dehydrated cactus leaves, dried corn husks, gourds, and coconut fruit rind. The use of these fibres goes back to the very dawn of Mesoamerican civilization. Some modern mask makers still use such materials.

This Huichol mask uses both human hair and wood. The painted designs include a deer, which is one of the most sacred symbols of this culture. The Huichol have tenaciously maintained their traditions, rituals, and mode of dress. As a mask material, wood is highly preferred by many indigenous craftspeople, including the Huichol. It is easy to acquire, durable, malleable, and possesses healing and magical qualities. To obtain the wood, trees are cut ceremonially, at precise times and under particular conditions relating to climate and astronomy. Among the favored woods are pine, copal, mesquite, cedar, and avocado.

Another natural fibre mask of a more primitive design. This mask was unidentified, but may have come from northern deserts of Mexico once inhabited by nomadic hunter-gatherers called Chichimecs. These nomads tended to favour such light materials because, lacking fixed abodes or draft animals, they had to carry all their possessions from place to place.

Settled groups could afford to use more delicate materials like clay. Masks such as these are favored in places like Oaxaca, where the local black clay is used to produce especially fine work. The Zapotecs of Oaxaca were contemporaries of both the Olmecs and the Aztecs, giving them one of the longest continuous histories in Mexico. Other places specializing in clay masks include Metepec in Mexico State, and Tonalá and Tlaquepaque in Jalisco State. As with the wooden Huichol masks, the ones above are adorned with human hair. Notice the eye slits just above the painted eyeballs.

Güe Gües and Devil Dancers

A Güe Güe sporting a huge blonde "Afro"holds a characteristic whip.Güe Gües appear at many indigenous fiestas and dances. They wear terrifying masks and crack their whips as they move around the fringes of the mass of dancers. I have seen them in action at dance fiestas as widely separated as Tuxpan in southern Jalisco and the northern Puebla State mountain town of Zacatlán.

Another Güe Güe wears a horned mask and clutches a small doll. Dolls are often carried by these characters and may symbolize fertility. Güe Gües are associated with both devils and the aged. They represent the on-going struggle between good and evil, a post-Conquest concept which has been incorporated by indigenous peoples into their fiesta rituals.

This Güe Güe looks like a "flasher" from a horror movie. His mask is both terrifying and hilarious. The whip he carries in his right hand will be used to exact "penance" from dance participants. Some authorities think the whips carried by Güe Gües are related to the experience of African slaves imported into Vera Cruz and Guerrero States. Over time, the slaves inter-married with indigenous people and the result was a amalgam of African and the New World cultural traditions.

Diablo de la Pastorela mixes indigenous with biblical imagery. Pastorelas are plays that recreate biblical passages related to the Nativity. In that story shepherds were alerted to the birth of Jesus by an angel who directs them to look for him. These plays were introduced by evangelizing friars as a way of teaching Christianity to the newly conquered-and-converted indigenous populations. In the Pastorela plays, devil figures wearing masks like this try to distract and mislead the shepherds from their quest. This mask comes from the Purépecha crafts workers of Michoacan. They are an indigenous people who are famously skilled at woodworking.

Three wood and polychrome masks from Chilacapa, Guerrero. These masks were used in the Danza de los Siete Vicios (Dance of the Seven Vices). Although the masks above seem rather nightmarish, the diablos or devils of Mexican dances are typically irreverent or satirical characters. Their goal is to subvert morality and they will often provoke laughter in the spectators through their vulgar comments. Notice that the tongue of the mask on the left is the head of a serpent.

The sly smirk on this fellow's face indicates he is up to no good. This wooden mask from Guerrero includes a human-hair beard. Underdlying the good vs evil dichotomy imposed by the Church are indigenous meanings that are much more complex. The figures represent beings of the spirit world that carry a wide range human attributes, as well as attributes of the ancient gods.

Masks and the Animal World

Both in life and in the indigenous spiritual world, the jaguar is extremely powerful. It is the largest and most powerful non-human land predator in the Western Hemisphere. In the world, only the Indian tiger and the African lion are larger. This animal has been the symbol of warriors, nobility, and the underworld from the earliest times. The Olmecs left many stone monuments showing half-human, half-jaguar figures. Some of these were carved so that they appear to be emerging from underworld caves. The physical manifestation of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca was a jaguar. The great Toltec and Aztec military empires and the Maya city-state of Chichen Itza all fielded armies led by jaguar warrior-societies. Since it hunts at night, the big cat was believed to possess the power to cross over to the dark world of the spirits. The brightly-painted wooden mask above uses stiff animal hair to represent the jaguar's whiskers and eyebrows.

Masks used in la Danza de los Murciélegos (the Dance of the Bats). These animals have been considered sacred for thousands of years because of their association with darkness and caves--seen as entrances to the underworld. The Aztecs revered a Bat god called Camazotz. However, worship of bats may have originated with the Zapotecs, almost 1,400 years before the Aztecs made an appearance. A beautifully caved bat mask made of jade with shell eyes and teeth has been unearthed at the ancient Zapotec capital of Monte Alban and archeologists date it to 150 BC. The masks above are from Guerrero State and were carved from wood.

Crocodiles are another important symbolic animal. Sometimes masks, like the wooden one above, depict only the head of the croc. Others are constructed to show the whole animal and are worn around the waist of the dancer. The head and mouth extend in front of the dancer and the tail stretches out behind his back. Crocodiles were called Cipactli by the Aztecs and were associated with the cardinal direction of east. The 260-day Aztec religious calendar was divided into twenty segments of 13 days, with each segment related to a particular god. The crocodile was the symbol of one of these segments and the associated god was Ometeotl, god of duality and creator of all the other gods. The god Tezcatlipoca was one of Ometeotl's sons. According to the mythology, he lost his foot to a great crocodile monster. Perhaps the message was: don't mess with Dad's pet.

This extraordinary mask and head dress may come from the Colima area. There was no informational sign about its origin, but I encountered a very similar mask when we visited a crafts workshop in the City of Colima. The head dress worn by this kneeling figure is huge and must be quite heavy. However, its size and weight are not the most unusual aspects of this work.

The open mouth of the bull mask contains another mask with a stylised human face. I have seen a lot of masks in Mexico, but have encountered few that contain a mask-within-a-mask. In addition to that oddity, the wearer can manipulate the head dress with the tasseled cord in this left hand, as well as the one hanging down on the right. What exactly happens when he pulls the cords is still a mystery to me, but the effect is no doubt spectacular.

This completes Part 5 of my series on San Luis Potosí. Next time, we will continue with the Mask Museum to see masks that reflect the Spanish Conquest and the imposition of Catholicism on the native population. If you enjoyed this posting, don't hesitate to leave a comment or a question. You can do so either by leaving your message in the Comments section or by emailing me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Beautifully crafted keys and locks on display at San Luis'Museo del Virreinato. This fine museum is devoted to the 300-year colonial period when Spain ruled Nueva España (today's Mexico). Carole and I visited Museo Virreinato (Museum of the Viceroyalty) during our stay in San Luis Potosí in August of 2013. The museum illustrates the life of the Spanish overlords who dominated an overwhelmingly indigenous, mestizo (mixed race), and African slave population. The locks and keys seen above are a fitting metaphor for the tight control that Spain maintained for nearly three centuries over its New World colonies. Ironically, the stultifying political, social, and economic effects of that control led to the violent revolts, including the 1810 Mexican War of Independence. By the late 1820s, Spain had lost control of nearly all of Latin America. The Museo Virreinato is located on the east side of the Plaza del Carmen, between the Templo del Carmen and the Teatro de la Paz.

Museo Virreinato

The Museo is housed in an 18th Century Carmelite convent. The central courtyard is reached by walking through an entrance hall called a zaguan. The term zaguan dirives from an Arabic word, and much of Spanish colonial architecture was heavily influenced by Arabic/Moorish styles from Spain. The Carmelite Order built the convent between 1768 and 1771. During the mid-19th Century reforms of Benito Juarez, the building was confiscated and partly destroyed. Over time, it was used as a barracks, warehouse, jail, and for offices. In 1936, the building was declared a national monument and now serves as a museum.

The pillars around the courtyard are of the simple Doric style. The central courtyard is surrounded on all four sides by an open arcade bordered by pillars separated by arches. These are called portales. The rooms of the building are generally accessed from the arcade, although there are internal passageways between some of them. The slightly overgrown garden is laid out in an 18th Century style. Architectural styles in Nueva España were heavily influenced by those that were popular in Spain at various times, including Gothic, Roman, Baroque, and Neo-Classical, among others.

Religious artefacts of the Colonial Era

Painting of San Francisco de Assisi. The portrait was painted by an anonymous artist toward the end of the 19th Century. In May of 1524, Martin de Valencia led twelve Franciscans off a ship at Vera Cruz. Because they arrived just after the fall of the Aztec Empire, the Franciscan Order were able to "get in on the ground floor." The Dominicans, Augustinians, and other religious orders did not show up until some years later. In fact, the Franciscans had already started the New World's first evangelization project in 1500 when they built their mission on the island of Santo Domingo (today's Dominican Republic). Thus, before they ever set foot in Nueva España, the Franciscans already had almost a quarter century's experience evangelizing indigenous people of the New World. Consequently, a very large proportion of the churches, convents, and other religious facilities built in the 16th Century were associated with the Franciscan Order.

Typical habit of a Franciscan friar. In 1570, the Franciscans established themselves in San Luis Potosí and, once again, they were the pathfinders for all other religious orders. The Augustinians arrived in 1599, the Juaninos (Hospitaller Order of St. John of God) in 1607, the Jesuits in 1621, the Mercedarios in 1628, and the Carmelites in 1743. The Dominicans didn't show up until the beginning of the 20th Century. As wave after wave of friars arrived, 16th Century historian Gonzalo Fernandez Olviedo wrote "It seems to me that these lands are flooded with friars; but none are greying, all being less than thirty years old. I pray to God that they are capable of serving Him."

Habit worn by the Mercedarios. The Orden de Mercedarios(The Royal Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of Captives) was founded in 1218, at the height of the Crusades. At that time many Christians were held captive by the Muslims. From the earliest days of Spanish involvement in the New World, even before the discovery and conquest of Nueva España, the various Orders had profound differences of opinion about the nature of indigenous people. Even within particular Orders there were disputes. Some thought the native people were soulless beasts, not even human, and fit only for slavery. Others thought they possessed human souls but had the minds of children, with only a limited ability to reason. A few, such as the Bartolome de las Casas in Chiapas and Vasco de Quiroga in Michoacan, thought the New World's original inhabitants were fully human and, as such, had rights that should be protected from greedy and rapacious conquistadors. Unfortunately, the view of native soullessness fit all too nicely with the interests of gold-hungry Spaniards, eager for slaves to work their mines and other projects. This was also how many of the great churches, cathedrals, and convents of the 16th and 17th Centuries were built.

A finely embroidered 18th Century chasuble, along with a chalice used in the Eurcharist. A chasuble is an outer vestment, worn only during the ceremony of the Eurcharist (also known as Communion). The chalice, seen on the pedestal to the right, will be used to hold wine for the ceremony. Chasubles originated as ancient Roman outer garments. Over the millennia, they were gradually transformed into a garment worn in one of the most important Catholic rituals. While this garment may have been imported from Spain, it might also have been crafted locally. Indigenous women were--and still are--highly skilled at embroidery.

A wood sculpture carved using the estofado technique. This sculpture of a Doctor of the Church was carved at the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th Century. Wood was the most common material for colonial sculpture, and estofado was the most common method of carving it. The process was complicated, but a key part involved the application of paint made from gold leaf which helped preserve the wood. This piece may once have been part of a tall wooden retablo standing behind an altar.

San Joaquin and Santa Anna, dressed as if they were royalty. These figures were crafted sometime in the last third of the 19th Century. According to Catholic tradition, Joaquin and Anna were the parents of the Virgin Mary. However, there is no mention of either of them in the Bible, and their feast day was not included in the official Roman Catholic calendar until 1584. The date for the feast migrated around over the centuries until 1969, when it was finally set for July 26. The creator of the statues apparently considered royal clothing appropriate for of the parents of the Virgin Mary. Although the Virreinato ended in 1821, a number of displays from later periods are included in the exhibits.

Clothing styles across the centuries

Fashionable dress of 18th Century Nueva España. The society of the Virreinato was organized as a rigid caste system. Those at the top were all born in Spain, and known as peninsulares. They filled all the key political and military posts of Nueva España. Those who had Spanish parents, but were born in the New World, were called criollos. Many criollos became immensely rich through mining, commercial interests, and great haciendas. However, for 300 years a glass ceiling separated them from the posts at the top. Under this system, the callowest youth from the mother country outranked a mature criollo, regardless of his great estates and years of experience. Over time, the criollos chafed at the unfairness and sheer lack of sense behind this system. Many of the criollos who supported the insurgency during the War of Independence (1810-1821) were not particularly interested in creating a socially just society. Their first priority was removing the barriers that separated them from the lucrative top posts. From the point of view of the non-Spanish mestizos, indigenous people, or black slaves, the triumph of the criollos over the peninsulares was simply a case of "here comes the new boss, same as the old boss."

An early 19th Century mother and her daughter. The first European women to arrive in the New World came on the third voyage of Colombus. Throughout the 16th Century, there were Spanish women in Nueva España, but only a few at first. During this early period, Spanish men created the mestizo class through cohabitation, casual contact, or even outright rape of indigenous women. However, by the beginning of the 17th Century, European women had become well-established in colonial society. Like men, they were either peninsulares or criollos. During the Virreinato, women were considered the property of their fathers, initially, and later their husbands. Depending on her marital status, either the father or the husband had the right to kill her if she brought shame upon the family. Interestingly, in terms of controlling property, single women had far more rights than those who married.

This 19th Century wedding dress looks quite modern. Despite all the restrictions, women sometimes became powerful "silent partners" in their father's or husband's business affairs. Women who never married, or became widows, sometimes ran the family business or hacienda on their own. Occasionally, women who showed great intellectual promise were allowed to develop those gifts. Such a person was Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, an intellectual, poet, and 17th Century feminist. At an early age, she was taken under the wing of the Viceroy's family. While living in the palace, she studied philosophy, science and poetry. Sor Juana eventually became a nun, but her feminist writings about the double standard between men and women deeply angered Church authorities. She was forced to do penance, which included giving up her 4000 book library. Sor Juana died a tragic figure during an epidemic in 1695, but her fame did not die with her. Her life, writings, and poetry are still studied today and the 200 peso bill of Mexican currency contains a serene portrait of this early feminist.

Spanish homes in Nueva España

Finely carved furniture such as this would have graced the Virreinato's salons. When the Spanish arrived, only the Aztec elite possessed any significant amount of furniture. This was made in the equipalestyle, with leather and wood strips. Equipale is still highly popular in Mexico today, and my home in Ajijic is furnished with it. The colonial homes of the 16th Century were fairly austere, containing mainly rough-cut benches, tables and stools. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the growing wealth of the Spanish inhabitants allowed them to import furniture from Spain, and to employ indigenous artisans to make furniture locally in the European style. People tend to emulate the styles of those they see as their social betters. The peninsulares, with their supreme positions, set the style, and that was of the Mother Country. The criollos copied them and the mestizos followed suit, if they could afford it.

Blue and white china from the Far East. This plate is from the last third of the 18th Century. Dishware like this arrived on the treasure galleons that sailed a regular round-trip route between Manila, in the Philippines, and Acapulco, on the southwest coast of Nueva España. The dishware originated in China and was among the many luxury items collected from all over the Far East. Manila was the collection point, and thus was a key base for the world-wide Spanish trade network. After arriving in Acapulco, many of these luxury items were carried by pack-mules cross-country to Vera Cruz, and then to Spain. However, some of the items were sold to local merchants who then offered them for resale to furnish the Spanish homes of Nueva España. The Manila/Acapulco treasure galleons were preyed upon by the many pirates who rampaged over the oceans during the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. England's Sir Francis Drake was one of the most famous of these. The Spanish, of course, thought him thoroughly infamous. In modern terms, Drake's exploits would look quite a bit like terrorism, so perhaps the Spanish were right.

Silver ware such as this was used to set the tables of colonial mansions. Although mining centers such as Zacatecas and Guanajuato produced immense amounts of silver, it was generally sent to Spain in the form of ingots. Spanish artisans in the Mother Country would manufacture silver items for sale in Spain, Europe, or for shipment back to the markets of Nueva España. Most forms of colonial manufacturing were severely restricted. From the home country's point of view, the purpose of the colonies was two-fold: first, to supply raw materials, and second, to provide markets for goods the home country manufactured from those materials. In the end, the restrictions fomented resentment, inhibited the development of Nueva España's economy, and produced considerable smuggling to feed a lively black market.

Various objects familiar to colonial homes. On the lower left is a high-relief, crystal bowl. Above it sits an object called a "porta veladora." I am not sure of its function, but the name implies that it was used to carry candles. On the upper right are a glass fruit bowl and a silver candlestick. At the bottom center is an ink blotter used to soak up excess ink from writing with a quill pen.

A sturdy, iron-bound chest ensured that possessions remained secure while traveling. Notice the painted scene on the inside of the lid. Carriages with matched horses like those portrayed would have been common sights on the streets of San Luis Potosí. The chest is made from wood and covered with leather. It was strengthened with iron rivets and fittings and has a large circular lock on the front. The chest was crafted in the last third of the 18th Century.

A brass bed is bracketed with carved wood nightstands topped with white marble. Colonial beds often seem a bit short to me, but then people were shorter then too. I have visited many ruins of old haciendas and, among the rubble, found beds and nightstands very similar to these.

Metalwork in Nueva España

Oil lamps and a padlock with keys. The lamps appear to be made from pewter or tin, while the lock is clearly made of finely wrought iron. Metal work was still at a very early stage among the indigenous groups when the Spanish arrived. The Aztecs possessed a limited number of metal objects, mostly gold jewelry and some copper items like bells. The most advanced metal-working was found in the Tarascan Empire, just west of the Aztec Empire. The Tarascans maintained their independence from the Aztecs in good part through their possession of copper weapons and tools. They were on the verge of a Bronze Age but, before they had a chance to make this leap, their society was destroyed by Spanish steel.

Finely crafted bridles and spurs were the mark of Spanish elite. The Spaniard was the Man on Horseback who dominated all about him. Because of military necessity, the Spanish brought blacksmiths along from the earliest days of the Conquest. They were needed to make and repair weapons, armor, equipment for horses, and every sort of tool. Over time, their skills were passed along to their mestizo descendants and to indigenous craftsmen. The ironworkers of Nueva España adopted the customs of Old Spain, including the Medieval associations of craftsmen called gremios. The gremio associations developed to ensure the quality of the various crafts produced and to protect the interests of the craftsmen. Gremios still exist as worker associations in Mexico today, but their function is more to organize worker support for various religious fiestas.

An old balance scale. Balance scales were invented to measure weights for purposes of trade. The earliest balance scales discovered date back to 2000 BC and were found in the Indus River Valley. The balance principle for weighing objects was not supplanted until 1770, when British inventor Richard Salter invented the spring scale. In the late 20th Century, digital scales began to replace the spring scale. However, scales based on the old balance principle can still be found in modern gyms and doctors' offices.

This completes Part 7 of my San Luis Potosí series. I hope you enjoyed this posting and that you take the time to visit the Museo Virreinato if you come to San Luis Potosí. If you would like to comment or leave a question, please do so in the Comments section below, or email me directly.

If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Inside the great dome of the Templo del Carmen. Any visit to San Luis's Plaza del Carmen should include a look at this ornate church. Of the great complex built by the Orden de Carmelitas Descalzos (the Order of the Barefoot Carmelites), the Templo is the only remaining structure still used for religious purposes. This view of the dome's interior provides a sense of the intricate ornamentation that distinguishes the Baroque style, particularly the version called Churrigueresque. To locate Templo del Carmen on an interactive map, click here.

The Templo's Exterior

The facade and tower of the Templo, with the main dome on the left. The Plaza del Carmen, in front of the church, was once occupied by various structures that were part of a large religious complex. The area that formerly served as the convent's orchard is now a huge park called Alameda Juan Sarabia. Museo del Virreinato (Museum of the Viceroyalty), the building to the right of the church, used to be the Carmelite Convent where the friars lived, prayed, and worked.

The two-tiered steeple is supported by spiraling Solomonic columns. Solomonic columns are a typical Baroque feature. The Carmelite Order originated in the early 13th Century among hermits living a life of poverty and contemplation on the slopes of Mt. Carmel in the Holy Land. Their name comes from their adoption of the Virgen del Carmen (Virgin of Mt. Carmel) as their patron. As a result of Christian military reverses during the Crusades, the Carmelitas were forced to leave for Europe. There, they traded their hermetic life for that of friars and nuns. However, faced with the Hundred Years War, the Black Plague, and the Renaissance, the Order became worldly and somewhat demoralized. In 1562, an extraordinary woman named Santa Teresa attempted to revive the Mt. Carmel tradition of isolation, contemplation, and prayer. She founded the Convento de San José for nuns in Ávila, Spain. Since poverty was a key element of the tradition, the nuns were called Carmelitas Descalzos (Barefoot Carmelites). Santa Teresa worked closely with a man called San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross), who founded a convent for friars with a similar orientation. In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII recognized the Carmelitas Descalzos as an independent unit of the overall Carmelite Order.

The exuberance of Churrigueresque Baroque can be seen in the facade of the Templo. The facade is designed with three sections, one above the other. The section on the bottom and middle are rectangular, while the one at the top is triangular. Each section is filled with intricately decorated columns, floral ornamentation, and niches containing saints. The first Carmelite convent in New Spain was founded in Mexico City in 1586, followed by several more in other parts of the country over the next few decades. When, exactly, the first Carmelites arrived in San Luis Potosi appears to be a matter of some dispute. Various sources cite the dates of 1735, 1738, and 1743. There is some agreement that Friar Nicolas de Jesus Maria and Friar Joseph of the Assumption were the first to arrive. They managed to obtain a license for a Hospice in San Luis three years later. In 1747, King Philip V of Spain gave the Carmelites permission to found a convent. The first stone for the present church was laid on February 23, 1749.

The triangular top level is filled with religious figures and symbols. Along the roof line are six ornaments called finials. At the peak is a statue of the Arcangel San Miguel. Just below the roof line, cherubs lift a veil to reveal the face of God. Below that, in the center, is a niche containing the statue of the Virgin with the Christ Child. Four pilasters carved in the estipite style are on either side of her. A pilaster is a kind of false column. It functions as an architectural decoration and doesn't support any weight. Between the pilasters are Santa Magdelena de Pazzi on the left and San Angelo on the right. The construction of the Templo and its convent were greatly assisted by funds from the estate of Nicolas I. Fernando Torres, a Spaniard from Seville who married a rich woman named Dona Gertrudis Maldonado Zapata. Using her fortune as a base, he became even wealthier and eventually acquired the Haciendas del Pozo and Peotillos. The marriage produced no heirs and, upon his death in 1752, Fernando Torres left a will dedicating his fortune to the Carmelita Convent and Templo, and also to found Colegio de San Nicolas, a school for girls.

The middle section of the facade centers on the stained glass choir window. Once again four pilasters surround the window, two on each side. Between each set of pilasters is a niche containing the two founders of the Carmelitas Descalzos, Santa Teresa on the left, and San Juan de la Cruz on the right. Notice the intricate designs on the pilasters and the area around the window. Construction continued from 1749 until 1763, when the church was officially blessed. However, the steeple wasn't completed until 1768. The blessing of the church that year was a huge event in San Luis Potosi. Attendees included all the other religious Orders, the civil officials, and the people of the city. In particular, the neighborhood of San Sebastian was invited, because the masons who did the extraordinary stonework lived there. Chief among them was an illiterate--but very skilled--indigenous artisan named José Lorenzo. Today, when viewing a masterful work like the Templo del Carmen, it is all too easy to forget that humble people like José Lorenzo were its actual creators.

The bottom section is centered on the main entrance of the Templo. At the base of a towering Solomonic column, a vendor squats, hoping for a sale to an emerging worshiper. Once again, there are four columns, two on a side, each bracketing a niche. The niche to the left of the door contains San Elias and the right holds San Eliseo, his disciple. Those two are Old Testament figures associated with Mt. Carmel that the Carmelites claim as early founders. Unlike the pilasters on the upper two sections, the Solomonic columns are load-bearing. In 1758, while the upper sections were still under construction, a master architect named Miguel Espinosa de los Monteros visited the site. He was famed for his work on Mexico City's great Cathedral and the Royal Palace (now the Palacio Nacional). He used estipite pilasters in those projects and it is thought that their use on the Templo del Carmen was due to his influence.

Two huge, carved, wooden doors guard the main entrance. On the left door, the figure of the Virgen del Carmen holds the Christ Child. The right door contains the image of San José, her husband. San José is the patron of workers and ordinary people. The convent next door to the Templo did not have a long life. At the beginning of the 1810 War of Independence, two of the key friars supported the insurgent side and had to flee. By the end of the war there were only four friars left and the convent was effectively abandoned. The 1859 Reform Laws of Benito Juarez resulted in the seizure of the convent building and grounds. The orchard, which once produced food for the inhabitants of the convent, became Alameda Juan Sarabia, a public park. The convent building underwent a succession of uses, including barracks, warehouse, jail, gunpowder depot, Palace of Justice and, eventually, the Museo del Virreinato. Teatro de la Paz, situated next to the Museo del Virreinato, was also once part of the convent. Through the efforts of Bishop Montes de Oca, the Templo was recovered by the Church in 1886. It was finally returned to the Carmelitas Descalzos in 1923, and they have administered up to the present day.

The Main Nave

The main nave of the Templo contains more than a dozen carved and gilded retablos. Above, Carole inspects the retablos lining the sides of the main nave. Because there are so many, I will only show a selection. In the 19th Century, the interior of the church was remodeled with many Neo-classic features. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras was the architect responsible for those changes. Several years before he worked on this Templo, he rebuilt the Carmelite church in Celaya. All over Mexico, examples of his work can be found. In addition to being an architect, Tresguerras was also an accomplished painter and sculptor. He was also a political activist and was jailed briefly by the Spanish during the War of Independence.

The richly decorated pulpit stands next to one of the tall, gilded retablos. Raised pulpits evolved from acoustical needs of the Church. From the earliest times, churches were constructed to amplify natural acoustics. The raised position of a pulpit, allows the speaker to be heard and seen clearly by the congregation. The elaborate decoration of the pulpit is intended to emphasize the importance of what is said, just as its positioning enhances the sound level. To the right of the pulpit is the retablo of Santa Teresa.

The altar designed by Tresguerras shows a strong Neo-classical influence. The four tall Corinthian-capped columns are typical features of Neo-classical design. As its name implies, this style imitates that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The old altar was destroyed and replaced by this one in 1824-25. The lines of its Neo-classic replacement are clean, with far less adornment and detail than the Baroque altar contained. The figure in the center of the sunburst is, once again, the Virgen del Carmen.

The interior of the dome seen in the first photo of this posting.Catholic churches are often laid out in a cruciform (cross-like) design. The long rectangular room where the congregation sits is called the nave because it resembles Noah's Ark and the Barque of St. Peter. The nave typically has an altar at one end and a raised choir loft at the other. The transept is a shorter rectangle which crosses the nave just in front of the altar area. The arms of the transept are often used as side-chapels devoted to the Virgen de Guadalupe or other saints. The main dome is situated directly above the point at which the two rectangles cross. The base of a dome is often octagonal, and framed by four triangular spaces decorated with portraits or scuptures of the four most important Doctors of the Church. The windows around the base of the dome help illuminate the area in front of the altar. In addition, they throw light upward onto the elaborately decorated interior of the dome itself. As you can see, the effect can be mesmerizingly beautiful.

The Retablos

Retablo de Santa Teresa was created between 1777-1780. It forms part of the right transept, just around the corner from the pulpit and the main altar. Elaborately carved and gilded retablos are another signature element of the late Baroque style.

Retablo de San Juan de la Cruz was created at the same time as the one for Santa Teresa. It stands in the left transept, with the altar area to its right. Thus, the two founders of the Carmelitas Descalzos were given positions of great honor. They not only bracket the main exterior door, but flank the main altar itself.

Retablo de los Arcangeles was created in 1790. It has been described as "the most exuberant work of Baroque art in the world." In the three niches on either side, and one at the top center, stand the seven principal Archangels. They are Michael, Gabriel, Rafael, Jehudiel, Azrael, Uriel, and Baraquiel. I found the size and incredible detail of this work to be simply overwhelming.

The Archangel Michael is placed at the top center, clearly the most important position. Michael is seen as the commander of the armies of God. He is revered among Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. In addition to Michael, this one small section of the retablo is populated with a host of cherubs and other figures. The amount of work required to create this rebablo boggles the mind.

Retablo de la Divina Providencia was also created approximately 1790. Some of the figures appearing in its niches include St. Albert of Sicily (lower left), Santa Teresa with the Christ Child (lower right), and San Juan de la Cruz (upper center).

Detail of Retablo de la Divina Providencia. Again, the incredible detail is almost more than one can absorb, even when focusing on just a small section of the retablo.

Camarín del Virgen del Carmen

Camarín de la Virgen del Carmen. A camarín is a ceremonial dressing room where the clothing of the Virgin Mary or another saint is changed. This gilded retablo is in three panels, covered by a huge scalloped shell. The glass case in the center panel holds the Virgen del Carmen. Above her, looking down, is San José. The right and left panels, respectively, contain Santa Ana and San Joaquin.

The scalloped ceiling of the retablo is rich in symbolism. The scallop shell is the symbol of St. James, or Santiago the Moorslayer, patron of the Conquest. The origin of the symbol relates to the transport of the body of Santiago to Spain after his martyrdom. According to legend, as the ship approached shore a great storm washed the body overboard. However, it later washed ashore intact, covered with scallop shells. The lines in the shell, meeting at a central point, also denote the many routes that pilgrims take on their way to visit the tomb of Santiago in Compostela, Spain.

The Virgen del Carmen forms the centerpiece of this magnificent retablo. While the original retablo was destroyed in a fire in 1957, the one above is a faithful replica. In reviewing the photos for this posting, I was struck by the contrast between the ideas of poverty and simplicity upon which the Carmelitas Descalzos were founded, and the incredible wealth it took to build this ornate edifice. One wonders how they reconciled it. I suppose it had something to do with celebrating the "glory of God." But still...

This completes Part 8 of my San Luis Potosí series. I hope you enjoyed it and, if so, you take the time to leave a comment either in the Comments section below or directly by email. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

The blue ridges of the Sierra del Tigre stretch off toward the south west. Several years ago, Carole and I and some others visited a dramatic mirador (viewpoint) on top of a plateau on the South Shore of Lake Chapala. When viewed from across the Lake, the tops of the mountains that overlook the South Shore at first appear to form a sharp east-to-west line. However, several miles of the mountains between the pueblo of Tuxcueca and Cerro Garcia are topped by a broad, rolling plateau. A very steep escarpment runs along the south side of this plateau. The cliffs lining the escarpment drop 1000+ feet to the floor of a long valley that parallels the southern slopes of the South Lake's mountains. Several deep ravines run northwards into the face of the escarpment. The ravines are separated by points of land that end in rocky miradors. These provide stunning views of the valley below and of the Sierra del Tigre stretching off toward the coast. Windy Point is one of these miradores. We had found it through an article in the Guadalajara Reporter written by John Pint, a knowledgeable expat whose writings have inspired a number of my hiking adventures. The Windy Point mirador got its name from the strong afternoon updrafts caused by warm air rising up the steep cliffs. Various species of raptors enjoy riding these air currents, including hawks and turkey vultures. Our first visit in May 2009 was to photograph them. Ever since that visit, I had speculated that a path might follow along the cliffs. I hoped that such a path would provide further broad vistas. Over the following years, I shared my speculations with various fellow hikers, but somehow we didn't get around to doing anything about it. Finally, in late November of 2014, three of my regular hiking companions finally said "enough talk, let's go see!" To locate the Windy Point area on a Google map, click here.

Windy Point Mirador

At the trailhead, we strapped on our gear, picked up our hiking sticks, and posed for a photo. Jerry is on the right, Gary is in the middle and I stand on the left. As Chuck took this photo, his dog Matty sat at my feet, quivering and whining her eagerness to get going. The view here is directly to the west. Cerro Garcia's 9000 foot peak looms in the distance. The escarpment's cliffs drop off less than 50 yards to the left of the photo. To get to the trailhead, we took Highway 15, which runs along the South Shore of the Lake, to a small pueblo located just west of Tuxcueca. A rough farm road switch-backs up the mountainside and across the plateau. After passing through a farm gate, we drove across a meadow and parked only a few minutes walk from Windy Point. Anyone who visits this area should do it in a high clearance vehicle because much of the farm road is pretty rocky and rutted.

Chuck takes a photo at the edge of the precipice. He is facing directly south, with Cerro Garcia to the west in the background. Visitors should be cautious about the footing here because there are no protective rails or barriers. The drop is far enough that you would have some time to think about the errors of your ways before reaching the bottom.

Looking south over the valley toward the pueblo of Citala and the Barranca Yerba Buena. The Barranca (canyon) can be seen in the upper left of the photo. Upon seeing Barranca Yerba Buena for the first time in 2009, I was immediately intrigued and persuaded Larry, another hiking friend, to help me find a way into the canyon. We found some trailheads and later, with more hikers, returned for a series of expeditions into the Barranca. During these adventures, we discovered two huge waterfalls in the deep gorge. Each waterfall drops almost vertically for more than 150 feet into deep pools. The pools are surrounded by sheer canyon walls several hundred feet high. To the best of my knowledge we were the first expat hikers to ever explore this canyon, although local Mexicans, and indigenous people before them, were certainly familiar with the place.

The Barranca cuts through a plateau covered with small farms, then enters a deep gorge. The outer canyon is perhaps 100 feet deep for most of its length, but when it hits the bluffs, the walls rise three or four times that high. In the deep gorge, the base of the canyon is no more than 30 yards wide, with cliffs on either side that rise several hundred feet. Below the two big falls, water rushes down the canyon with considerable force. On the way to the canyon's mouth at Citala, this year-round stream cascades over many smaller falls. In 2009, while on one of our early explorations of the gorge, we met local farmer named Raul. He obligingly guided us to the top of the upper falls. After the hike, Raul invited us to come back in a few weeks for a Corn Harvest Fiesta. This fiesta has become a yearly event. In October of 2014, 28 expats hiked the Barranca and celebrated our Sixth Annual Corn Harvest Fiesta with Raul and his family.

View to the south west, looking toward Tapalpa. The valley floor is a checkered with small farms and dotted with little pueblos like Atotonilco in the center of the photo. The valley continues all the way to the dry lakes that run north and south in the great valley leading from Guadalajara to Colima.

Atotonilco nestles right at the foot of the escarpment. It is a quiet, out-of-the-way little village, filled with friendly, unassuming farm families. They don't make much money, but they seem happy. This whole valley used to be controlled by Hacienda de Citala and Hacienda San Juan de Gracia two estates that had dominated the area since at least the 18th Century. When these haciendas were broken up after the Revolution, the lands were distributed to families whose ancestors had worked those fields for hundreds of years, often earning little more than a pittance. When the hacendados (hacienda owners) lost the lands, they abandoned their sumptuous cases grandes (great houses) and other outbuildings. These buildings then became the centers of the pueblos that grew up around them. In many of these communities, the local church was once the chapel attached to the casa grande of a defunct hacienda.

The Plateau

Jerry prepares to explore the plateau in hopes of finding a trail. Jerry and his wife Lori have been periodically visiting the Lake Chapala area over the last few years. Jerry retired from a small landscaping business and he and Lori now own a home in Hawaii. He is an extraordinarily friendly guy. My wife and I like to joke that Jerry met and befriended more people in Ajijic within a few days of first arriving than we had gotten to know over several years. Lori, as a young woman, narrowly escaped from the killing fields of her native Cambodia. In spite of that dark beginning, she is a bright and cheerful woman. She is also a wonderful cook who loves throwing dinner parties.

The gently rolling plateau is not a difficult hike and has very little elevation gain or loss. Grassy meadows are separated by swathes of thick brush. The trick in getting around lies in thinking like a cow. Each grassy area is connected by a path through the brambles created by the cattle that graze these meadows. Sometimes the paths are faint, but you can find your way through the maze by paying close attention. Spiny acacia brush abounds, as well as nopal cactus seen above. Sticking to open areas and cow paths is the only way to avoid getting scratched up. I recommend long pants and ankle-lenghth boots in this country.

Cempasuchil is the Nahuatl word for wild marigolds. Nahuatlis the language spoken by the Aztecs and still spoken today by many of Mexico's indigenous people. A large number of words and place names in modern Mexican Spanish are of Nahuatl origin. After the fall rains, the little yellow flowers flourished, giving the meadows a yellowish tinge. Cempasuchil is used during the Day of the Dead fiesta at the beginning of November. The flower was one of the symbols of death for the pre-hispanic people.

What NOT to bump into while hiking. The spines on this nopal cactus are 2-3 inches long and needle sharp. However, the flesh of the nopal"paddles" is very nutritious and quite tasty. It is, of course, necessary to carefully shave off the spines. Once that is done, the paddles can be roasted whole, or cut up into strips to be boiled or sauteed. I like to eat the freshly cut strips raw. They are crisp and juicy with a slightly tart taste. Used with a dip, they can be delicious. Nopal cactus grows throughout most of Mexico. It is one of a large variety of natural foods available at little or no cost to those willing to harvest and prepare them.

A large cloud bank engulfs Cerro Garcia. The clouds came in quickly and soon most of the mountain was shrouded. Even as we were exploring the plateau, another group of our hiking friends was climbing to the summit of Garcia. We hoped that they had thought to bring rain ponchos because it looked like it might get wet up there. Getting soaked at 9000 feet would not be fun and hypothermia is always a danger in those conditions. A couple of years ago, I hiked Cerro Garcia during a white-out like this. However, that was in summer. We later learned that everyone returned from the summit safely.

A small herd of brahman cattle dozes in a sunny meadow. Brahmans are generally placid and unaggressive. They were developed by crossing several different breeds of cattle from India and Pakistan. They made their way into Mexico probably by way of the United States and Brazil, both of whom were developing brahman herds in the early to mid-20th Century. The breed is favored because of its ability to stand heat, its resistance to insects, and a long reproductive life span which exceeds that of other kinds of cattle.

Other types of cattle shared the plateau area. This little calf seemed utterly fascinated by us. He followed us for a considerable distance and kept edging closer. Finally he began dancing around us in ever narrowing circles. I had never seen anything like it. Cattle, and particularly calves, are usually very shy and move away from hikers when approached. Finally, Gary stopped and got into a staring contest with the calf. Eventually the little fellow lost interest and moved back to his mom, who had been mooing anxiously in the distance.

Salvia, or sage, grew in moist, shady areas of the plateau. We encountered various flowering plants along our route. Due to the unusually late rains, wildflowers of many types abounded. Generally, the rainy season runs from mid-June to late October, but it has lasted into December this year.

We found this beautifully marked fellow hopping through the grass. The grasshopper was about 4 inches long from the tip of his feelers to his tail. He was relatively easy to catch, so I placed him on this flat rock for a photo. He remained still long enough for the shot but then sprang away into the brush.

There were also many varieties of the spiky maguey plant. Tequila is made from the blue agave, one species of maguey. The pre-hispanic people made many uses of this plant. In addition to pulque, a mildly alcoholic beverage, they used the fibre to make sandals, clothes, and rope. The sharp spines at the end of the leaves provided needles for sewing.

Chuck and Gary emerge from one of the many cow paths through the thick brush. By this point, we had decided that there was no easy route to the east of Windy Point. The brush had gotten thicker and thicker and we encountered one barbed wire fence after another. We reversed course to try our luck in the more open country along the western edge of the cliffs.

This was our first glimpse of Matty's Point, with Cerro Garcia in the background. After thrashing through some brush, we came to the edge of a steep drop-off. In front of us, a deep ravine extended back into the cliff face. Directly across the ravine we saw this point of land. Below it were sheer cliffs. If we could get to the end of the point, we might find another great mirador. First, however, we had to find a way around the ravine. Crossing it was out of the question. To find out how we finally got to the mirador I later named Matty's point, you'll have to wait a week for the second part of this hiking story.

This completes the first of two parts of my series on the Windy Point Trail. I hope you enjoyed it and, if so, please leave your thoughts in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim

Panamá Part 4: Casco Viejo's Plaza Independencia & the Golden Altar of Iglesia San Jose

Panamá Part 5: Modern Panamá City

San Luis Potosí Part 2: The magnificent Plaza de Armas

Panamá Part 6: How the Canal works and how it came to be

Panamá Part 7: The Emberá people of the Rio Chagres

Panamá Part 8: Animals of the isthmus

San Luis Potosi Part 6: Masks of the Post-Conquest Era

Panamá Part 9: The Gamboa Rainforest Resort and its Orchid Nursery and Butterfly Sanctuary

Historic Haciendas of Zapopan Part 1: La Venta del Astillero & La Primavera

Historic Haciendas of Zapopan Part 2: Santa Lucia

Historic Haciendas of Zapopan Part 3: Santa Lucia's chapel and tequila factory

San Luis Potosí Part 1: Silver city on the frontier of the great northern deserts

San Luis Potosí Part 2: The magnificent Plaza de Armas

San Luis Potosí Part 3: The Metropolitan Cathedral of San Luis Rey

San Luis Potosí Part 4: The lovely & lively Plaza del Carmen

San Luis Potosí Part 5: The Marti Mansion and its Mask Museum

San Luis Potosi Part 6: Masks of the Post-Conquest Era

San Luis Potosí Part 7: The colonial-era displays of Museo del Virreinato

San Luis Potosí Part 8: The ornate Templo del Carmen

The lush meadows and dramatic vistas of the Windy Point Trail