Honor, vengeance and machismo
Bitter are the fruits they eat in Michoacán, black oval fruits the size of an olive, borne in the summer on the capelin tree. Bitter is the story told to me in a mountain pueblo in the northeast corne...
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Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico
Fridays are Indian market days in the fountain-centered Plaza Gertrudis Bocanegra, one of three main squares in Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico. Walkways around the fountain are lined with stalls of good...
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Michoacán's rural education
Michoacán Index
Gracias y Credits
The State:
State Map
Introduction to Michoacán
The Meseta Purepecha - Exploring Michoacán
Alternative Tourism in Michoac...
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"El fantasma de Coalcoman"
Para Julie Black © 1999 Todos Derechos Reservados.
No me considero de esas personas muy místicas y psíquicas, bien versada en la jerga de lo sobrenatural. Pero tampoco soy escéptica. Solo puedo ac...
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The ghost of Coalcoman
By Julie Black © 1999 All Rights Reserved.
I'm not what you would consider one of those mystical psychic types, well versed in the mumbo jumbo of the supernatural. But I'm not a skeptic, either. All ...
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The passion of Christ in Ixtapalapa, a Mexico City neighborhood
The first traces of an awakening sun touch the morning horizon, brushing aside the night's long shadows. On the streets of Ixtapalapa, a working class neighborhood 30 minutes by cab from the center of ...
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Traveling to Mexico with children
My son had a month of low-cost, high-quality art instruction, and a ton of fun
Travel to Mexico with your children? Give yourself some kudos just for considering it! If the cost is daunting - Mexico m...
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Western Mexico: A Traveller's Treasury by Tony Burton
This useful volume is back in a new and updated edition and it’s still as essential as ever. Whether you’re making a brief visit as a tourist, or escaping the northern winter for a few months or checking out the area more extensively as a place to spend one’s retirement years, this is one item you should have in your survival kit. It’s a nice blend of guidebook, travelogue and history text with lots of local color and some ecological notes sprinkled throughout.
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Journey to Patamban, Michoacan
The Fiesta de Cristo Rey has become as famous as many of the Day of the Dead rites in other communities around Mexico. It's the peak of the flower growing season in Michoacán and the residents not only gather the flowers to decorate the streets but they also paint the streets with incredible and startling floral designs.
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Why are there so few ex-pats living in Morelia?
It’s a surprise to visit a likeable, livable city like Morelia for the first time and find there’s almost no gringo community there. In fact, one resident put the number at 100 to 150 total. And only a handful of those are the retirees who are so prevelant in Jalisco. Most Americans, for example, are associated with the university in Morelia, as both teachers and students.
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Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly by Sue Halpern
Monarchs are genuinely fascinating creatures and here's a book that really does justice to their story. The travel accomplished by Monarchs is simply mind-boggling. They fly forty miles a day on average but sometimes - depending on winds and weather - they can manage up to 200 miles between dawn and dusk. Those born to the East of the Rockies usually go to Mexico. Those born to the West mostly go to California. All flying is done in daylight - never at night.
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Michoacán's master craftspeople and their arts
Abdon Punzo Angel's thick hands tapped minute details into the menacing snout of the copper dragon that sat immobilized in a vise, its body seeming to squirm. Beside him, another shiny dragon writhed f...
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Palm Sunday crafts fair in Uruapan
Artisans participating in the competition and crafts fair will come from workshops throughout Michoacán, which has more than 100,000 artisans from more than 200 communities.
Elvia Silva Bartolo belie...
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Paricutín, The Volcano, Michoacán
On February 20th, 1943, after a couple of weeks of ominous earth tremors and strange underground sounds, the Paricutín volcano in Michoacán, erupted among prayers and rogations, fire displays and int...
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Eight - On To Morelia And Patzcuaro
We get out of town, skipping the tianguis of Ajijic.
It was just … time to leave.
Journal, June 4, 2003
We pile into the packed car once again. Destination...
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Pátzcuaro
A family with creamy brown skin walks by, holding hands, swinging arms. Laughing aloud. They are arranged like stair steps - father, mother, big daughter and little daughter, who look to be around ages...
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Did you know? The first Mexico tourist guide books
Comprehensive guide books to Mexico have existed for more than 120 years.
Modern travelers to Mexico are often hard-pressed to choose their favorite guide. Fodor's, Frommer's, Real Guide, Insight Guid...
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Butterflies by the million : the Monarchs of Michoacán
Every winter, more than one hundred million monarch butterflies fly into Mexico from the U.S. and Canada. On arrival they congregate in a dozen localities high in the temperate pine and fir forests of ...
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Did you know? Mexico has one of the world's oldest still-functioning printing presses
One of the oldest printing presses still in operation anywhere in the world is in Tacámbaro, Michoacán.
Juan Pascoe lives on a remote ex-hacienda outside Tacámbaro, Michoacán. Visitors invited to ...
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Did you know? Mexico's Domesday Book
Mexico's equivalent of the Domesday book was compiled in the sixteenth century.
History shows that conquerors often have very little idea of what they have really acquired until it is firmly within th...
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Monarch butterflies in Mexico
Early in 1980, exploring various off the beaten track areas of Mexico looking for potential geography fieldwork sites, one fateful Saturday morning found me standing in the main plaza of the small Mich...
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Did you know? Lots of "real" Aztec gold was only tumbaga.
What the Spanish Conquistadors thought was gold was often only an alloy called tumbaga.
As they explored the New World, the early conquistadors were spurred on by the possibility of finding treasure a...
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