Columns

Along with a slew of Christmas-born pastorales that will soon be taking place, especially in rural areas, all the way into February, there are a salto of gracious — and boisterous — holiday gatherings going on right now. This celebratory time turns the final page of the year into a torrent of hen-scratched reminders across a new year’s agenda as we race through dense, exhausting, heady days. So much for dreams of life in the slow-paced Jalisco highlands, where huge haciendas once dominated not only the pace of life but the pace — and health — of the economy. And, yes, even during the Nueva Galicia (as Jalisco was then officially called) Christmas and turn to the new year, the pace was quite different than it is on the very same ground today.

It’s “snowbird season.” Thousands of visitors escaping punishing northern cold are — or soon will be — enjoying Jalisco’s sun and more amiable temperatures.  And that means cultural collision. Last week I overheard several visitors exclaiming that there were fewer cultural differences than they expected, though a couple did concede that some things did puzzle them.

Winter in the Jalisco highlands arrives the second half of October, but this year the fall air didn’t turn chill and crystalline blue until a few weeks after Dia de los Muertos. In the wake of November’s Day of the Dead, along the flanks of Cerro Viejo, which backs into the western crescent of Lake Chapala, one’s breath plumed the air like shreds of pale fabric caught in the morning breeze. The fields of corn had already turned ocher, and now those plots of maiz quilting the lower foothills and the valley below seemed to catch fire as fingers of dawn light reached them. The western slopes of the mountain, facing away from the day’s beginning, remained in the last chill, purple grasp of night.

At the many official and unofficial religious sites in Mexico believers have left engaging painted, drawn and written descriptions of what they consider to be miracles, or at least divine assistance. These informative, culturally revealing, often rustic versions of occurrence and belief have a rich religious and esthetic history in Mexico.

Not long ago two North American couples mentioned seeing plays in different parts of Mexico based on the heart-twisting “La Llorona” legend, a centerpiece of this country’s rich lore and myth. One couple was introduced to the sad apparition in Mexico City; the other applauded the story in Zacatecas.

An acquaintance, an elderly man who lived in a nearby rural community some 20 odd years ago, seemed to be dying. I say “seemed” because he had yet to see a medically trained doctor. He was being treated by a curandera of considerable local reputation. The man’s neighbors said he had cancer. The curandera didn’t talk much to strangers about the illnesses of her clients.