jennifer rose
Aug 13, 2003, 10:39 PM
Post #7 of 8
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Re: [garth] Recently Returned from Morelia
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You’re right, you’re right. I tend to think of Quinceo as only the mountain. (Once a southsider, always a southsider, I guess.)
Santa Maria has seen many iterations from a poor village predating Morelia to the site of Morelianos’ weekend and summer homes in the 19th C., flight during the Revolution, a poor town and a world unto itself once again, a scattering of artists, and gentrification on a slow pace. It is still very much a mixed neighborhood, with the rich as well as the very humble. There are BMWs, Mercedes SUVs, ordinary cars, pickup trucks and low-riders.
The expat community of Morelia is dispersed throughout the city, no longer centered around the Villa Montana in Vista Bella as it was back in the days of Ray Cote. Only a handful of expats live in Santa Maria, even though it’s a desirable address. Those foreigners who do live up here make an effort to simply blend in. In times gone by there were more expats living around here than now.
Those who live in Santa Maria make distinctions between those old families who were here before the Revolution (only four old families remain), those who moved in from other parts of Michoacan, and the Chilangos. Yes, we do have an attitude – those who live below the hill regard Santa Maria as somewhat wild, and we who live in Santa Maria consider ourselves a notch above the rest. Even the very poor who live in Santa Maria consider themselves better than those who live in the valley. For years, there was but one road, unpaved, up the hill. We still think nothing of holding long conversations in the middle of the street, car-to-pedestrian, and we often walk right in the center of the street instead of on the sidewalk.
The area has grown incredibly just in the past few years since Valladolid, the city’s best prepa relocated here, and since then it’s been joined by Monterrey Tech, the Thomas Jefferson School, Paco Medina’s fabulous subdivision, and the Jack Nicklaus golf course. We’re thrilled about the opening of the new Pemex station next to the Benedictine Monastery, two gourmet coffee shops, Trico, and two Japanese restaurants. A deluxe hotel is slated along with a shopping center in the coming years. At the same time, we still have the guy who sells cream, dirt and orchids (not all at the same time) from a donkey and chickens butchered on the street. And Dona Chita who sells cigarettes singly and whose Pastor Aleman fell off the roof into a neighbor’s garden, only to be terrorized by the bullmastiff. And cockfights and the jaripeo. We have Pepe, our resident loco, who proudly announces that he’s too lazy to work, wants to shake everyone’s hand, and occasionally takes the bus down the hill, announcing to everyone that he’s going to America or Europe for the day. It’s a curious blend of Faulkner (a guy someone grabbed off the street to remove the possum from my living room proclaimed it “good eating”).
(This post was edited by jennifer rose on Aug 13, 2003, 10:41 PM)
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