Speaking of Mexico
There is nothing that can compare with the sounds, tastes, and delights of Mexico. Many words have passed through many lips about Mexico, from Herb Alpert to Erik Estrada -- some humorous, some poignan...
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A wedding and christening in rural Oaxaca: The mandate of tradition
Wishes Instead of Resolutions
For a change, this year I'm not going to fool around with a list of resolutions to alter my behavior, resolutions that have always been elasticized by my characteristic rationalization. There's always ...
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A cold winter for a young man from Mexico
New Year's Day, 1910 was colder than ever.
read moreThe lighter side of Mexican cooking
Suffering from post-holiday belly bulge? Thinking about trading in the guacamole and chips for cottage cheese and celery sticks? Before you do, consider the many healthy, diet-friendly ways of preparin...
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Where The Butterflies Are
Our two friends from AmSoc told Mary and me about going to see the Monarch butterflies. Every year the Monarchs migrate from Canada and the US to their winter home in central Mexico. As they migrate, s...
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Ask an old gringo: health care, bureaucracy, bike paths and Christmas gifts
Questions and answers about life in Mexico.
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A Mexico mountain feast
In 1985, there were four Americans living in Talpa. Guy and Bill invited a small group living in Puerto Vallarta to share a weekend with them. The flight usually was about eighteen minutes long, but when folks used to ask me about the flying time, my answer was, "Long enough to say ten Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys, if you pray fast."
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Nogales, here we come
It is more than Mexico's constant sun and the bewitching landscape that entrance us. It is the people.
October is revival month. We are at the tag end of six months in Canada the province of British C...
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Memories of Morelia: Tall buildings, Janitzio and a hamburger
I was nine years old the first time I visited Morelia, in 1973. I was living with my family in Xicotepec, a small town in the north of the State of Puebla. We spent our summer vacation that year with m...
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Zoning Laws And Peacocks
Question: Can you hear a peacock's screech over the roar of city buses?
Answer: Yes.
Question: What's a peacock doing in city traffic?
Answer: No zoning laws keep...
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Friends You Make On The Corner
"Ya gotta start working early," five-month old Pita would tell you if she could talk. "Take my brother, Chavita, he started working when he was only one month old." It's true. Two years ago Chavita - n...
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Roustabouts For Hire
It was like following three battleships. The shoppers rolled away like bow waves before the three
"cargadores" who churned toward them with two hundred pounds of produce on each of their hand ca...
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Gringos are changing Mexico
Southbound gringos of retirement age have the uncanny ability to immediately identify changes that should be made in Mexican lifestyle. Maybe you've heard the laundry list.
"Punctuality is in desperat...
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Expatriate writers in Mexico and the six-word memoir
Some expatriates muse knowingly that retirement is a state of bliss, while others declare emphatically that it's the State of Jalisco. So much to do and for once, so much time in which to do it. Many r...
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A personal experience with union negotiations in Mexico
Our manufacturing operation in Mexico was in trouble and we had to make a lot of changes quickly to rescue the business...
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The real Don Adams is still alive
The real Don Adams came to Mexico to die. It seemed like a good place for such a significant event. Convenient. He could drive down from Texas. Good weather if anybody wanted to walk in a funeral march...
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The Widow Tamez, accidental expatriate
Back in the old days of Pirate Island, an island only by definition, located along the Rio Grande near Ysleta and San Elizario in El Paso County, Mexico and the U.S. had a boundary by treaty mdash; the...
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Mexico backroads
The backroads of Mexico often offer adventure, perhaps a bit of excitement, sometimes a touch of the dramatic and, occasionally, a hint of danger.
We thought we'd found all four on a deteriorating 10-...
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Stars shine in sunny Mexico
Along with many other expatriates living in Mexico, we occasionally hear of a famous one who lives, or once lived, among us.
We know that Helen Hayes, Erich Fromm and Maurice Evans lived in Cuernavaca...
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Where in the World is Amy Gray Kirkcaldy? - Adjusting to life in Mexico
To live here, you have to learn to love it unconditionally. You have to stop trying to accept Mexico and let it accept you instead, or else you'll never appreciate its beauty.
Back in the summer of 20...
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Ask an old gringo: Easter, cobblestones and WalMart
Questions and answers about life in Mexico.
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Elvira Arellano: saint or sinner?
When Elvira Arellano illegally crossed the U.S. border in 1997, she had no idea that one day, she would become a beacon of light in the darkness of U.S. immigration politics, nor that Time magazine wou...
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Zumpango: the guardians of a forgotten cemetery
"Magic realism" describes a style of Latin American writing where dreams and reality meet on equal footing in worlds lying ephemerally in between, poised to subvert back to the norm the very instant a ...
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Lake Chapala fishing trip
Gary West with Salvador
A fishin' we will go, a fishin' we will go; hi, ho, the merry-o, a fishin' we will go.
Second son Gary came to the west end of Lake Chapala, to the suburbs of Jocotepec, in ...
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