Encaustic collage with calligraphy © Thea Evensen 2024. The air is clear and cool inside the church of San Felipe Neri as a small cluster of reverent women kneel at the altar rail chanting to the Virgin in hushed voices, their supplications echoing through the vaulted nave, the smell of disinfectant and old wood […]
Continue ReadingIn January 1975 my friend Linda drove me to the Mexican border where I took the train from Mexicali to Mexico City. It was my first trip out of the country alone and I was both nervous and excited. I booked a private compartment, inexpensive in those days, so I could relax and sleep in […]
Continue Reading We left town early, just before la madrugada. Up and down the deserted streets the soft glow of lamplight turned cobblestones into golden ingots in the dark. This radiance bathed everything in a spectral beauty and I could see ghosts hurrying along in the shadows of the Inquisition: women wrapped in rebozos, priests in […]
Continue Reading PRESENT CONTINUOUS (a Morning Walk through San Miguel de Allende) Two blocks uphill on Calle Jesús and a right turn on Umarán bring me to La Parroquia, the gardeners in the Jardín already at work shaping the trees into perfect rectangles, early risers reading on the benches or drinking coffee under the portales, someone selling […]
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“The town of everlasting festivity.” That, we were told, is what is says on the Municipal coat of arms of Tuxpan, a town in the south of Jalisco almost on the boundary with the neighboring state of Colima, and relatively close to the Mexican Pacific coast. Haga clic aquí si prefiere leer este artículo en […]
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José de Jesús is a dark-skinned young man who wears cowboy boots and a Texan hat. He arrives to Santa Ana de Guadalupe in a pickup truck flashing US license plates. He drove all the way down from Colorado to greet the saint: Haga clic aquí si prefiere leer este artículo en español “A friend […]
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Mexico is a country of extraordinary contradictions, a country in a state of always becoming; the heartbeat of a thousand beginnings: half built casas, crumbling stone fences, walls, piles of rocks coming from nowhere, leading nowhere, trailing off into nothing. A place where the sacred and the profane co-exist in this timeless. immutable landscape. It […]
Continue Reading “El pueblo de la fiesta eterna.” Eso nos habían dicho que dice el escudo municipal de Tuxpan, población del sur de Jalisco casi en los límites con el vecino estado de Colima, ya relativamente cerca de las costas que baña el Pacífico mexicano. Click here if you prefer to read this article in English Llegamos […]
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The transition from childhood to womanhood is a significant passage for adolescent girls in almost all cultures. In Mexico, it is marked with the celebration of the Quinceañera, or 15th Birthday. From a north-of-the-border viewpoint, it may be seen as a cross between Sweet Sixteen and a debutante’s coming out party. The celebration is a […]
Continue Reading José de Jesús es un joven moreno que viste botas vaqueras y sombrero tejano. Llega a Santa Ana de Guadalupe en una camioneta con placas de los Estados Unidos. Viene desde Colorado para saludar al santo. Click here if you prefer to read this article in English “Un amigo y yo nos fuimos de Jalos […]
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