I don’t know anything about opera, and accidentally once proved it to my date at a screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s film of La Traviata. Halfway through the movie, I whispered, “What a rip off. All they did was copy the plot of Garbo’s movie, Camille.” How did I know that the Verdi opera, based on Dumas’ 1848 novel, […]
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I’m sick and tired of hearing disagreements between the U.S.A. and Mexico. First, there’s the emigration thing with fences and coyotes and blustering politicians; second is the drug thing where the U.S. blames Mexico for their own addictive population; and now the U.S. is blaming the Maya for a prophesied 2012 doomsday scenario. Let’s take […]
Continue ReadingJohn Steinbeck penned his famous book, Tortilla Flat, in 1935, and apparently never considered Hollywood’s casting choices when it was made into a film in 1942. If he had, he would’ve fallen flat himself, either from laughing or from astonishment. Steinbeck’s classic is the sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant story of a group of Mexican amigos living in […]
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Even if you have never wondered what ties Mexico to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I’m going to tell you anyway. It begins with a poem. Longfellow’s epic 1847 poem, “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie,” is the story of an Acadian girl, Evangeline Bellefontaine (“Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers”), her betrothed, Gabriel […]
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In 1934 during the depths of the Great Depression, horse trainer Tom Smith was living out of a stall at Mexico’s Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana. Flat broke, Smith shared the stall with Noble Threewit, who trained horses for a friend of Charles Howard. Howard was seeking a trainer for his new horse, Seabiscuit, a […]
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Although the Baja coast has attracted thousands of visitors, among them some fine photographers, few have really journeyed to the interior This exquisite coffee table book is a collaboration between two friends, both of whom are award-winning artists: photographer Miguel Angel de la Cueva and essayist (and poet and musician) Bruce Berger. Several books […]
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Mexico City Christmas lights Published or Updated on: January 12, 2009 by Daniel Wheeler © 2009
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Founded in 1542, San Juan de los Lagos is set in the Los Altos region of Jalisco, an area distinguished by its devotion to the Roman Catholic faith. The Cathedral there is home to the diminutive image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Concepcion. Since 1623, numberless miracles have been attributed to the little Virgin, […]
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From romance to religion, to crimes of passion and crimes of the heart, masks have intrigued, beguiled, and fascinated us from pre-historic cave dwellers to the present. Although masks are found in virtually every culture in the world perhaps no culture has embraced the art of the mask as in Mexico. What lies behind the […]
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I recently had the pleasure of seeing a living legend, the Atayde Hermanos circus. Founded by Aurelio Atayde Guizar and his brothers in Zacatecas on August 26, 1888, it is the longest living circus in Mexico. Señor Atayde Guisar ran away from his home in Saltillo as a child to find work in a traveling […]
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