Columns

Corn is about 80,000 years old and was being harvested in western Mexico 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. Corn has cast a metaphysical spell as ancient as the appearance of the first hunter-gatherers who explored Jalisco’s llanos, cerros and arroyos as they pushed south, deeper into Mesoamerica.

Though Mexican appointment books, calendars and even Google declare that May 15 is Dia del Maestro  (Teachers Day), all of the Republic’s campesinos know better.

Sunday, February 5, Constitution Day (now celebrated on the following Monday, February 6), is one of Mexico’s most important patriotic celebrations.

“It has been said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

– Joseph Campbell

As prescription and patent medicines in pharmacies continue to soar in price, many Mexican citizens are returning to less expensive traditional therapies.

Toward the wary end of a scattered, heat-gripped city week, the quiet balm of a portal-shaded cantina table beckons.