Columns

In 1992, planning to build a new bodega, Nacho Lara invited his cousin and me to survey those villages near the Lake where adobon – home-made bricks – were created. “Adobon” was the word once used to identify large local red clay bricks. They measured 36.6 centimeters long, 16.5 centimeters wide and 7.5 centimeters high.  Made of clay and cow dung, low-fired in simple pyramid brick kilns, they cost 500,000 pesos a thousand.  In 1973. adobon cost 1,000 pesos per thousand.  That was a clear marker of Mexico’s uncontrolled inflation.  The price was called “crazy” by most Mexicans, especially when talking to foreign associates, and especially by sane local albañiles (masons).   

The “Gettysburg Address” – a mere 272 words spoken by Abraham Lincoln  on November 19, 1863 – was to become the “Gettysburg formula,” a rhetorical “sleight of hand” strengthening a document that created something no one believed could work: a democratic society born of revolution.  

Thirty years ago this month I was sitting at pueblo cantina with Nacho Mejia, who had worked at La Posada Ajijic some years before that and in the 1960s in Jocotepec’s La Quinta Inn. We were enjoying some nostalgia, including numerous tales of folks we know with a thirst not only for maguey juice and cerveza, but often for more excitement than they knew how to handle.

Last week in this space the differences between Mexican and “gringo” assessments of Jalisco’s early past were viewed.

Last week in a revealing discussion with several normally easy-going Mexican friends, the awareness by some U.S. citizens concerning Jalisco’s early development came under rough assessment. 

Along the north shore of Lake Chapala in the 1960s-70s, medical care was scarce.