Pan American Highway near Oaxaca © Tony Burton, 1981. The Pan American Highway is a dark asphalt ribbon. To the east and west, low brown hills rise in the distance. To the south, Oaxaca. To the north, Mexico City, many miles away. It’s quiet, deserted, nothing in sight but the jeep heading across open […]
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Airport Lounge (Villahermosa). Image (cropped): Vmzp85, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons The First Class lounge floats like Olympus on the second floor at Benito Juárez Airport, a discrete distance above the multitude herding like hungry cattle on the concourse below. Inside, soft leather couches surround TV monitors offering fútbol and the latest […]
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Mark Eager. 1993. Doorway in Mexican town. The half-open door at 35 Calle Terraplén casts afternoon light on a shadowy hall with polished tile and carved mahogany. Two maids in black with starched white aprons are haloed in the light, their arms full of ivory sheets and towels. They turn to look at me, […]
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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 […]
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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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