The huge bronze snake head displayed under trees near the soaring “Imolacion de Quetzalcoatl” in Guadalajara’s Plaza Tapatia actually belongs on top of the imposing, twisted snake sculpture that sits in the center of a nearby fountain. “It represents a failure,” says my guide, Alexandra Duncan.
Naked women form the eight columns in the wrought iron kiosk in the Plaza de Armas. People have been trying to cover them up since 1910. I never noticed.
One reason the Callejon del Diablo got its name is that an adjacent building was used for torture during the Inquisition. News to me.
How is it that I’ve lived here for 20 years and didn’t know 90 percent of what Duncan lectures about? In her two-hour morning walking tour of downtown Guadalajara, she led a handful of young European tourists, one young Mexican, and me through about ten sites. I had visited them all more than once, yet Duncan managed to astound me with her encyclopedic knowledge.
She lectures without notes in strong, clear English (Spanish too, if appropriate), and with a folder of large photos to beef up her spiel. “I have 99 percent of a PhD from the University of Alberta in Edmonton,” she explains. “I like this stuff.”
Dressed in fashionably ragged jeans, sandals, a t-shirt and with multiple tattoos (including one of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec plumed-serpent deity), Duncan doesn’t look like docents I’ve seen at art museums. Armed with her education, she has specialized in Guadalajara’s impressive history, art and architecture since arriving here nine years ago. She sometimes works with a company, Camina Mexico, and sometimes on her own.
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