Columns

December 12, in the rural villages throughout Jalisco — and Mexico — early-morning prayers, hymns and celebration began long before daylight, honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Queen of Mexico.

On a recent chilly morning, I stopped at a nearby public market for some hard-crusted bolillos. It was an unseasonably squally January day-a brief drizzle, a slice of sun, then clouds and more chilling drizzle. On the muddy steps of the mercado municipal, I ran into Altagracia Mendez, dueña of my favorite meat-and-salsa puesto. A sepia-complected, plumpish woman with a grand Aztec nose, she was bundled in rebozo covered by an old sarape of her husband’s, Don Lupe.

After the usual pleasantries, she squinted at me. “And then,” she said as if taking up a conversation that had just been interrupted, “you don’t eat anything when you come the mercado, anymore? You don’t say hello to you friends? You’re going back to acting like a gringo, again? Is that what that newspaper mischief is doing to you, otra vez?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “You work too hard at the wrong times, you know that, don’t you?” She smiled, pumping my hand with her callused palm. “Pos, we forgive you. But only if you come up and have something for almuerzo. Listen to me, now.” She wrung my hand. “Without fail.”

We got there early. In the corral behind Eustacio Ortiz’s tarpaper shack, we stacked gunny sacks of chayote, wild camote, jicama, oranges, limones, peanuts and sugared candies.

Two recent explosions at small fireworks workshops in the Ciénega region of Jalisco which claimed the lives of eight people have focused attention on this long-standing craft activity.

On the cusp of May, the hottest month of the Jalisco highlands, campesinos are making a last push to burn off their fields, mend toppled fences of rock, barbed wire and long-spined huisache branches, readying milpas (corn fields) for hand planting before mid-June rains arrive.

When Hernan Cortez, clanking and sweating and swearing in his heavy armor, aided by thousands of Indian allies, destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochitlan on August 13, 1521, he shattered the entire Aztec Empire.