Your own celebration of the Day of the Dead
A few months ago I received an email request from a small town in Texas. The writer Ray and his fiance wanted my guidance in celebrating the Day of the Dead. My answer was - celebrate it in your own wa...
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Marianne Carlson and the Maestros del Arte
"In Mexico I have found an outlet for creative talents never tapped before. You can do what ever you want. Pick up a plastic bag and make something out of it. Pick up a seed pod, paint it and add legs,...
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Mythology and legends of the Nahua people: part 3
Mythology and Legends of the Nahua People:
Essays on Ancient Mexico
Part 3: "Creation of the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan"
>By Julie Black © 2000 All Rights Reserved.
In the mytho...
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Mythology and legends of the Nahua people - part 2
Mythology and Legends of the Nahua People:
Essays on Ancient Mexico
Part 2: "Legend of the Fifth Sun"
>By Julie Black © 2000 All Rights Reserved.
In the mythology of the Nahua...
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Mythology and legends of the Nahua people: part 1
As the future unfolds, history is tucked away into the past. We see this past because our ancestors recorded the events of their lives by writing them down in some form or another, be it with chisel, quill or pen. What we know about history, or rather what we think we know is dependent on who wrote those histories and what they chose to include. Going further and further back in time there is less and less information, until one reaches a period of time before the written word, approximately 5000 years ago.
read moreThe Guaymas Chronicles: La Mandadera by David E. Stuart
Although it's about Mexico, this one starts off in Ecuador in the 1960s where the author was doing doctoral fieldwork for a dissertation on haciendas in that country. His work took him to a remote research station on the side of a mountain seventy miles from electricity, running water, telephones, etc. One day while riding his horse along the side of a gorge, with the bottom of a canyon almost a thousand feet below him, the horse stumbled and fell. On its way over the edge it rolled over Stuart and disappeared, leaving him badly crippled. He was rescued and eventually found his way to Guaymas, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, in Mexico, where his fiancé, Iliana, lived. Thus begins the story of his recuperation and, at the same time, the exploration of Mexican society and customs which is described here.
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Mexican Mornings: Essays South of the Border by Michael Hogan
Here's an interesting and entertaining collection of essays, mainly about Mexico, like "The Crawling Things of Paradise", a small tribute to all the crawling, flying, buzzing, poisonous, and non-poisonous insects to be found in the state of Jalisco. In the essay "Connections: Odysseus and the Gran Chingón" we find a quite learned investigation into the prevalence of machismo in Latin American society. On the more sober side there are copious references throughout - both critical and positive - to the Mexican natural environment, the economy and the Mexican character.
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The Mexicans: a personal portrait of a people by Patrick Oster
Author Oster's portraits make this an excellent account of a timeless and yet changing Mexico. His approach is to focus on twenty varied individuals and use them as a reason to discuss the larger issues they represent.
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Mexican Etiquette and Ethics by Boye Lafayette de Mente
"The key to understanding the ‘Mexican Way’ of doing business is to recognize that business management in Mexico has traditionally been an application of cultural attitudes and customs - not the objective, pragmatic function that is associated with management in the United States and other practical-minded countries."
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Agave Marias: Border Crossers, Boundary Breakers by the Lake Chapala Women Writers
Here's an unusual volume with ten individual authors, each of whom is independent of the other nine except for the fact they all reside - either full or part-time - in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico. Their book consists of some 45 or more pieces of fiction and non-fiction plus a poem or three. The non-fiction includes travel tales, accounts of significant events in the authors' past lives, recollections of interesting people and other offbeat memoirs and anecdotes.
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The Mexican Day of the Dead and the Skeleton at the Feast by Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer
This is a compilation of photos, drawings, essays, poems, letters, parts of novels and stories and other sources, all designed to shed light on this unique and enduring Mexican festival. I was also intrigued by the odd coincidence that I happened to read it on the actual Day of the Dead, November 2.
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Mexican Lives by Judith Adler Hellman
Ms. Hellman, who is a Professor of Political and Social Science at York University in Toronto, writes about fifteen Mexicans in all walks of life. They emerge as authentic and likeable people, coping with problems that you and I can scarcely imagine. The people she describes range from well-to-do agri-business people to maids; from industrialists to a coyote who has been successfully smuggling illegals into California almost every night of the week for the last few years.
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Where Divergent Religious Customs Merge: Death Of An Infant In Oaxaca
Between the birth and the death came a crazy-quilt of only-in-Mexico experiences that resonated with my memories
Daniel Pérez González was a beautiful baby. His parents Flor and Jo...
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Exvotos: Folk art and expressions of faith in Mexico
In Mexico, an exvoto is most commonly a personal thank you note to God.
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Mexico, A Love Story: women write about the Mexican experience
Mexico is a country infused with goddess energy. When you're in her arms, you want to stay there, cradled in her warm, moist smells, re-charged by her underbelly of pulsating earth energy, and sustained by a wisdom born of a history filled with extraordinary achievements and major defeats.
read moreXalapa Symphony Orchestra
This past February I had the pleasure of attending the first concert of the 2005 season given by the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra. It was the first time I had heard the orchestra, and I was impressed by t...
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Amate Art of Mexico - (Where the Secular Meets the Sacred)
Nowhere was the cord between man and spirit more tightly bound than in the making of amatl, the sacred paper of the pre-Hispanic peoples. This paper was so important to the spiritual needs of ...
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A Bridge Across Cultures
The well-known American poet Margaret Randall talks about the documentary
"El Corno Emplumado: Una historia de los sesenta"
(El Corno Emplumado: A story of the sixties"). read more
"El Corno Emplumado: Una historia de los sesenta"
(El Corno Emplumado: A story of the sixties"). read more
The Masks Of Mexico (Part 2)
The coming of the Spaniards in 1519 drastically altered the political and religious life of pre-Hispanic America. Cortes, with the help of his mercenaries and priests, decimated the ruling elite and wiped out the existing theocracy, but try as they might, they could not destroy the people's love and need for ritual.
read moreMexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present
In one month, on November 2, it will be "El Dia de los Muertos" (the Day of the Dead), and Jose Guadalupe Posada, or Don Lupe as he was known to his friends, a poor but prolific printm...
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The mariachi
Each year here in Guadalajara, we host an international mariachi meeting, with a musical festival and all of the rest included. Mariachis from all over the world come to celebrate the occasion every year. I've even had the opportunity to listen, believe it or not, to Japanese mariachis!
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Why I Love To Dance Mexican Style
The Mexicans can’t dance my legs off, I’ll tell you that -- oh, well, in the
“barrios” they can, but there the dancing is more like Olympic gymnastics. If you’re just going out in the ...
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Wow, What A Dance That Was! Or Que Bailazo!
"The Twenty-Two Music Professors" squared off against "The "Heavy Metal Charros," (Heavy Metal Cowboys) separated only by the four lanes of a major cross street. Batteries of powerful lights turned an ...
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Did You Know? Consuelo Velázquez and "Bésame mucho".
The song "Bésame mucho" (Kiss me a lot) was written by a young Mexican woman who had never been kissed. This article is a tribute to Consuelo Velázquez, who died January 22, 2005, at the age o...
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Did You Know? Popular children's chorus features cockroaches and pot smoking
La Cucaracha (The Cockroach), one of Mexico's best known corridos, is a comic, satirical song, with infinite possibilities for creative verses. Versions of La Cucaracha have been performed by countless bands and musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Bill Haley & His Comets, Doug Sahm
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