The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
In conversations with North American visitors during Ajijic’s annual Chili Cook-off, several of the questions asked by visitors were surprisingly, refreshingly probing.
Folks with experience in Mexico during the period before, say, the 1990s, tend to be impressed with the unparalleled success by anyone with Enrique Krauze’s Polish-Jewish descent – especially considering Mexico’s relentlessly stern Catholic atmosphere.
After the genius of (1990) Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz had stamped his homeland with brilliantly written, stunningly comprehensive national analyses, there came an expected cluster of criticism, clumsy and brutal, from former president (1970-1976) Luis Echeverria. Sadly for Mexico, that was accompanied by a much smaller, less well-known cluster of stunned writers and periodistas. These often seemingly wanted to merely couple their names regarding any matter with that of Octavio Paz, particularly once he died, April 19, 1998.
Last week’s front-page mention of the Chapala area’s popularity with foreigners prompted echoes of Mexico’s fame in the “beginning” days of the late 1950’s and 60’s and the growing popularity of bullfighting – the corrida.
Following a quiet run of rainless days, a hammering downpour, with no warning, yanked folks out of bed to close windows and double check doors.
Chucha – Maria de Jesus – Anzalda was a wiry, middle-sized woman of about 60 when I first met her in the 1960s. She was easy to remember because of her inventive ways of making a living. She seldom seemed to struggle in doing that, yet was always roughly inventive about it.
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).
