Tag Archives: Deborah Van Hoewyk

Huatulco

Remembering Deborah Van Hoewyk

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By Randy Jackson

“It was an accident, my obsession with oh-so-blue jacaranda… I’d come to Oaxaca for a university conference, and thought, ‘I got his far, why not stay and go to the beach? I see this place called Huatulco…’”

So began Deborah’s serendipitous arrival into a diverse community of snowbirds and expats in this warm, jewelled collection of bays on the Pacific Coast. Only Deborah was more than a member of this community; she was a catalyst in its formation. With her energy, curiosity, and instinct for helping people and animals alike, she drew others together and turned chance acquaintances into lasting friendships.

A Life of Learning and Connection
Deborah was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Cumberland, Maine. Her academic pursuits were extensive: she earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University and a master’s from Queens College, City University of New York. She later pursued doctoral studies in Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. In 1986, she married John. Concurrent with their academic careers, they embraced a different kind of life on a 40-acre farm near Ann Arbour, Michigan, where they raised sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry.

Like many of her friends in Huatulco, Deborah and John’s transition into retirement marked the beginning of a new chapter, a rich life spent with winters in Huatulco, surrounded by friends and a social calendar full of activities.

The Rhythm of Life in Huatulco
In 2007, Deborah and John bought their home in Santa Cruz. Their evenings soon found their own unique rhythm, with the sounds of the “pineapple dance” drifting over their garden wall from the Binniguenda Hotel. Life in their Mexican home had its own rhythm, too, coloured by the often humorous unpredictability of renovations, shifting household staff, and the antics of coatimundis and leaf-cutter ants. Each year, the season was punctuated by the must-have invitation, the end-of-volleyball-season party at the Van Hoewyks.

Deborah’s contributions to the Huatulco community were both wide-ranging and deeply felt. Her passion for animal welfare was evident through her work with several organizations: the Snipsisters, which focused on pet and street animal sterilization; Palmas Unidas, which organized rescue and clinic work; and Forever Homes, where she and John fostered animals awaiting adoption. Beyond her love of animals, she also supported the Bacaanda Foundation, working to create stronger educational opportunities in rural Oaxaca.

Throughout their years in Huatulco, Deborah’s energy and curiosity animated every part of her life. She continued her study of Spanish and, with John, explored the region’s hidden corners – remote bays, coffee farms, eco hideaways, and off-the-beaten-path communities. She became a valued part of The Huatulco Eye magazine as both a writer and copy editor and was an active participant in countless local initiatives. Each winter, she and John made the long, adventurous drive from their northern home on the Atlantic coast to their southern home on the Pacific, often hauling supplies for volunteer projects but always leaving space for their beloved cats.

A Legacy of Friendship
In 2023, Deborah and John sold their house in Santa Cruz, shifting gears to new adventures in later retirement. She maintained her passion for books and book clubs while also writing grant proposals for non-profit organizations, engaging in community gardening, undertaking home renovations, and exploring through international travel. Her energy and curiosity endured throughout a full and rich life. Deborah passed away on August 28, 2025, in Portland, Maine.
These words are offered in remembrance of Deborah — as a proud friend, one among many, and as a colleague at The Eye. All of us, writers, readers, and friends alike, remain grateful for the many ways she enriched our community, and especially thankful for the gift of her friendship and her presence in our lives.

Huatulco

How Mexican Is Mexican Cuisine? Very, But …

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

When, in 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés met Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, he also met a frothy drink reputed to be an aphrodisiac – xocolatl, or chocolate. Unknown elsewhere in the world, traces of cacao preparation and use go back to nearly 4000 BCE in Ecuador. At first, cacao produced a bitter drink used in various rituals. By the time Moctezuma was drinking xocolatl, it was flavored with spices and thought to have medicinal and spiritual properties. The Spanish, as they did with most “new” things they encountered in Mexico, took it back to Europe, where it met sugar – anyone for a Godiva?

The Columbian Exchange

Before the arrival of Old World explorers – in particular the Spanish conquistadores – the ancient (Aztec, Mayan, and Olmec) indigenous cuisines were basically vegetarian. The famous milpa system intercropped corn, beans, and squash; the beans climbed the corn stalks, and the squash leaves sheltered the roots of all three. The milpa system used crop rotation and fallowing (letting land lie unplanted), which promoted sustainable production and biodiversity, ensuring that the system was successful for the long term.

Pre-Columbian agriculture also produced chili peppers, tomatoes, avocados, and cacao; condiments included salt, honey, and edible flowers and insects. The history of tortillas goes back to nearly 10,000 BCE, when ancient corn was domesticated from a grain called teosinte. The grains, which over time became more like the corn kernels we know today, were soaked in an alkaline solution to break them down enough to create the dough (masa) for the tortillas (the process is called “nixtamalization”).

The indigenous diet was not totally vegetarian, though – the vegetable base was supplemented with domesticated turkeys and ducks, possibly dogs, and wild-caught game (deer, rabbits, wild birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and seafood).

Cooking techniques included open fires, pit fires where ingredients were wrapped in leaves to steam in their own juices, and the creation of “spice powders” by grinding dried ingredients into powders for flavoring. Stewed vegetable dishes and moles were cooked in cazuelas, shallow round earthenware cook pots positioned over a fire.

When Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492 – he landed in the Bahamas, renaming the island of Guanahani as San Salvador, then moved on to what are now called Cuba and Hispaniola (divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) – he started the “Columbian Exchange.” The term refers to the widespread exchange between the Americas and Europe, and once slavery became part of it, West Africa as well, of just about everything: people and their cultures, plants and animals, technology and ideas, and disease. The Exchange would shape agriculture, ecology, and society on both sides of the Atlantic, if not around the world; it also killed an estimated 45 to 100 million indigenous people through exposure to diseases not found in the Americas (smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague, typhoid fever, diphtheria, the flu, measles).

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico’s Foodways

For Mexico, conquered by the Spanish in 1521, the changes to foodways were profound. The Conquest brought new ingredients – saliently, larger meat animals (cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats) and more poultry in addition to the native turkeys. The Spanish also brought wheat and rice (the latter arrived with Africans brought as slaves to work in the New World). Olive oil and wine, essential to Spanish cuisine, came over in large earthenware jars; new fruits (stone fruits like peaches, figs, and melons), and nuts and beans (chickpeas, or garbanzos, field peas, almonds).

The fact that Spain had lived under Arabic rule for several centuries – North African Arabs held sway in southern Spain (Al Andalus) from 711 to 1492 CE – also shaped the foods and cooking techniques that made their way west. The flavors of new herbs and spices – garlic, cumin, coriander, and cinnamon especially are all redolent of north African and Middle Eastern cuisine.

Perhaps the most popular, and widely available today, Arab dish is tacos al pastor (shepherd’s tacos), or Tacos Árabes, a variation of Middle Eastern shawarma. You can see it from afar, as restaurant staff slice marinated pork or mixed meats (originally they were made with lamb or goat) off a vertical roast on a spit, filling up flour tortillas, and topping the meat with onions and sauce. Arroz con leche (rice pudding) is also considered a Middle Eastern treat that arrived in Mexico via Spain.

Spanish cooking also brought new cooking methods, frying – made possible by the Spanish contributions of olive oil and lard (manteca) – and baking. With the Spanish introduction of wheat, baking the wide range of pan dulces (sweet breads – great for breakfast) got started. The Spanish brought their baking techniques with them and began incorporating Mexican ingredients along with their wheat.

French Influence:

In the wake of the War of Independence, when Mexico threw off Spanish rule, the French tried to replace the Spanish. The “French Intervention,” followed by the Second Mexican Empire, was short – 1862-67 – but it served to expand Mexico’s baking repertoire. Bolillos are considered the Mexican “French Bread.”

French crêpes were incorporated in Mexican dishes, the crêpes stuffed with fillings like huitlacoche (corn smut) or poblano peppers, the whole thing covered with sauce – the cream sauces are a French contribution.

The French also contributed water-bath cooking techniques (e.g., the bain-marie), which refined Mexican custards and flans.

Lebanese Influence

While many credit tacos al pastor to the Lebanese, they did not start immigrating in any great numbers until the 1880s, after one or another version of tacos el pastor had appeared. The Lebanese first arrived in the Yucatán peninsula as the Ottoman Empire reached its oppressive height. More Lebanese arrived during the Israel-Lebanon War of 1948, when Mexico made haste to admit them. The Lebanese also brought a dish called “kibbeh,” small fritters of ground beef, bulgur wheat, onion, and spices. Taquitos de parra (little tacos of grape leaves) are stuffed with ground meat, rice, garlic, and maybe some cinnamon; many Mexicans make them bigger than taquitos, and use cabbage leaves in place of grape leaves. If you buy jocoque, a thick yogurt used for sauces or dips, that’s a Lebanese creation as well.

Mexican Influences on Mexican Cuisine

Other culinary traditions have influenced Mexican cuisine; African, Caribbean, Chinese, Portuguese and Philipino dishes can all be found in Mexico, but the greatest influence on Mexican cuisine is the different regional variations in the flavors, ingredients, cultural practices, and special dishes across the country. (See Brooke O’Connor’s article, “Seven Regions of Mexican Flavors,” in the August 2023 issue of The Eye.)

Northern Mexico offers grilled meats – we’ve passed many a barbacoa establishment coming south through Monterrey and Querétaro; the closer you are to the border and “Tex-Mex” land, the more frequently you’ll eat flour tortillas. And here in Oaxaca, have you had chapulines drowning in cheese? Salt and crunch can’t beat it!

Huatulco

Papaloapan: The River and Region of Butterflies

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

In 1518, Juan de Grijalva (c. 1480-1527, killed by natives in Honduras) left Cuba with four ships and 200 men to explore the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although his uncle, conquistador Diego Velásquez, was angry that Grijalva built no settlements (actually, Grijalva’s instructions were not to do so), the mapping and reports from Grijalva’s expedition laid the groundwork for Hernán Cortés to settle the coast and move inland to conquer Mexico.

Along the coast of what is now Veracruz, Grijalva encountered a meandering, slow-moving river, naming it Río de Alvarado (River of Whiteness), now known as Río Papaloapan (Papaloapan comes from the Nahuatl papálotl, “the river of butterflies”). The Papaloapan Region of Oaxaca runs across Oaxaca’s northeastern border with Veracruz; the river crosses the foothills of the Sierra Norte and descends to the coastal plain, through Veracruz, and out to the Gulf of Mexico.

The headwaters of the Papaloapan arise in the Salado River near Tehuacán, in Puebla, and then join with the Tomillín River in Oaxaca. It takes the name Papaloapan near San Juan Bautista Valle Nacional, about 170 km (±106 miles) northeast of Oaxaca City. The Papaloapan River Basin, second only in size to the Rio Grande basin, covers over 15,000 square miles and portions of the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, and a bit of Puebla.

The First Settlers

As the river slowed and broadened, it formed fertile levees that were attractive to settlement; the Olmecs, among the earliest (1200-400 BCE) Mexican groups to leave traces of their civilization, lived throughout the basin in Veracruz and somewhat into Oaxaca. There is ample evidence of trade between the Olmecs of this area and the Aztecs, in this case the Zapotecs, of Monte Alban.

In fact, the Aztecs gave the Olmecs their name, which means “the rubber people,” named for the gum rubber the Olmecs traded throughout southeastern Mexico. Rubber trees grew in abundance in the Papaloapan basin, and the Olmecs figured out how to convert the latex sap of the tree into a substance that could be cured, shaped, and hardened. What the Olmecs called themselves is not known – their literacy included only a small collection of glyphs, considered the earliest form of writing in the New World; most Olmec communication, however, was oral, and lost forever when their civilization collapsed.

The Olmecs began to disappear around 400 BCE; the cause is unknown, but archeologists have generally credited environmental change with damaging the resources needed for survival. It is thought that the river and its tributaries began to silt up so badly the water supply was cut off. Another theory is that increased volcanic activity in this time (Popocatépetel erupted almost constantly from 800-215 BCE) coated the earth with ashy mudflows, making it unsuitable for cultivation.

On to Modernity

Because of annual flooding, and the masses of mosquitoes it brought, the Papaloapan Region was not a popular place to settle. The Spanish conquistadors mostly passed through the area en route to better pickings – saliently, gold – in Tenochitlán (Mexico City). Eventually, the colonialists took over Tuxtepec, renaming it of course, as San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec, in 1811. After the War of Independence (1810-21), it became the head town of its own municipality in 1825; it is now the second largest city in Oaxaca, after the capital Oaxaca de Juárez, with a population just under 500,000.

Until the mid-20th century, the region languished. Flooding had become more severe, largely because of upland deforestation; in 1944, a terrible flood wiped out over a hundred people living in small villages or out on ranches. Shortly thereafter, Miguel Alemán, the first “civilian” Mexican president after the post-revolutionary chain of generals, and a native of the area, established Mexico’s first river basin commission. The Comisión del Papaloapan, formed in 1947, was in charge of everything from water (building dams, generating hydroelectricity, clearing swamps, etc.) to other infrastructure (building roads and towns) to social services. Signal achievements were two large dams, the Miguel Alemán dam (1954) and the Cerro de Oro (Hill of Gold) dam (early 1980s), which sharply reduced the threat of flooding, increased hydroelectric generation, and provided water via reservoirs.

This set the stage for economic development of the Papaloapan region; Victor Bravo Ahuja, governor of Oaxaca from 1968 to 1970, emphasized “modernization” of the region (he came from Tuxtepec). Bravo promoted new practices in agriculture and laid the groundwork for commercial and industrial development.

Visiting Papaloapan

This is not Mexico City, full of high culture and amazing food, nor is it the state of Oaxaca, replete with natural wonders. We have been to San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec, as it was rumored to have a wonderful Christmas celebration. It probably was great, but it happened the day before we got there, and it must have used up all the electricity, because we were on the 6th floor of a hotel with no power, no elevator. We climbed down and wandered about in the colonial part of the city, very nice, not very special.

The turismo bureau of Tuxtepec recommends the river, of course, but mostly its tributaries. The industrialization of the region has been so effective that the Papaloapan itself is heavily polluted – you are advised not to expose any part of your body to the water. If you are in Tuxtepec, you can walk across the Papaloapan on a suspension bridge that goes off the Muro Boulevard, or you can take a boat from the Paso Real Pier, in the heart of downtown.

The region does, however, boast special experiences. The rivers that run into the Valle Nacional River before it reaches the Papaloapan are crystal clear. There are spas on rivers that flow through lush tropical forests (the Zuzul, Los Cocos, Piedra Quemada, and Los Sauces rivers). Ecotourism is primary in the area, with hiking through the mountains, horseback riding through the jungles, exploring caves, and kayaking streams and lagoons are all available.

While there are indigenous groups in the Region (Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Chinantecs, Mazatecs), their presence is not prominent – with one exception. In San Mateo Yetla, just south of Valle Nacional, on Route 175 heading southwest towards Oaxaca, the Chinantec women specialize in embroidery. Led by Doña Carmen Vásquez Pérez, the embroiderers are working to preserve traditional needlework techniques and patterns. San Mateo Yetla is in a beautiful mountain setting; there is an ecotourism office in the town center that can advise you about jungle hiking, hikes to waterfalls, etc.

The Pineapple Dance – A Turismo Creation

Given the impact of the Papaloapan river and its connection with Veracruz, the region has always tended to see itself as a Jarocho (Veracruz) culture. In an interesting commentary on traditions and tourism, up until 1958, Papaloapan dancers always went to the Guelaguetza (the statewide dance festival held in July) with the Fandango Jarocho as their dance. Given the mountains that separate the Papaloapan region (in both Oaxaca and Veracruz), the audiences didn’t know the dance, and didn’t pay much attention to it. At that point, Oaxaca governor Alfonso Pérez Gasga decided there should be a more generally Oaxacan theme to Papaloapan’s dance. The pineapple was chosen as broadly representative of the region, and everyone knows pineapples! The Pineapple Dance costumes were based on the Chinantec huipiles; last came the music and the dance. Needless to say, it took older people a while to adapt to the Pineapple Dance.

At the End of the Papaloapan

Given the cultural connections across the Cuenca (Basin) de Papaloapan, if you go anywhere in Papaloapan Region, you should also make it towards the mouth of the river in Veracruz, to a town called Tlacotalpan. (There is no passenger boat travel between Tuxtepec and Tlacotalpan – if you’re not driving, you need to take the bus.)

Set up on what used to be an island in 1550, Tlacotalpan was declared a World Heritage site in 1988, mainly for its architecture and colonial layout along the river. It was established to serve as a colonial river port. For a visitor today, it’s not the architecture so much as the brilliant colors in which it is painted.

Local residents are voluble about their town – we had an impromptu guide who explained which houses he himself had painted, why the colors were what they were, and of course, where his cousin’s restaurant on the river was! Should you be lucky enough to be in Tlacotalpan on February 6, you can see the Virgen de Candelaria arrive by boat to be trekked through the streets to the cathedral.

 

Huatulco

Celestún: Then and Now

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

If you haven’t been to Celestún, you should go – and if you want an object lesson in how tourism can change a small fishing village, go twice, a couple of decades apart. (Not that Bahías de Huatulco doesn’t represent how tourism changes a place!)

Celestún is the head town of the municipio (basically, a county) of Celestún, in Yucatán state; it’s about 105 km (65 miles) west of Merida on the Gulf of Mexico. The Mexican Tourism Secretariat identified Celestún as a place to develop “low environmental impact” tourism, focused on the flamingo nesting sites in local lagoons.

Celestún Then – 2001

When the idea of wintering in Mexico first took hold, a friend’s father who spent his winters in San Miguel suggested that we could get a cheap charter flight to Cancún and explore the Yucatán.

We were neophytes at traveling in Mexico, our Spanish pre-beginner. Our previous, and only, trip had been in 1979, to Veracruz – where burros were staked out in the grassy sand dunes that stretched south to Boca del Rio, and to Jalapa, to visit my ex-pat friend teaching English at the University of Veracruz – pigs roamed the streets. Twenty years later, the sand dunes, the burros, and the pigs, not to mention the boat-up restaurant with drunken singers at lunchtime, were no more.

Going to Cancún, Getting Out of Cancún

The cheap charter was doable, so off we went. At the time, it was possible to book just the flight and not an attached vacation at some glass-towered hotel on the beach. Not interested in Cancún itself, we left the airport in our rental car and headed for Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatán.

On the road into the centro, hubby John kept saying, “When is this street going to get better?” We clearly didn’t know then that most urban Mexican streets are crowded, dusty, noisy, frenetic. Right in the middle of it all, I said “We’re here!!!” Hopping out of the car and over to a blank but beautiful hardwood door, I entered the quiet lobby of the Dolores Alba hotel. The Dolores Alba displayed its colonial heritage in a lovely arched and beamed dining room replete with chirping bird cages. No street noise. Parking was through a bigger hardwood door next door, but of course John had to circle through chaotic one-way streets to get there.

Then as now, Mérida, and Progreso, north down the road to the beach, had much to offer: colorful Mexican markets, colonial architecture, outlandish beach architecture – some other story. We were bent on Celestún to see the flamingoes – in late winter, it is the largest nesting site in the world, with 25,000 to 35,000 flamingoes. Back then, what little information there was appeared in the Lonely Planet guide, Yucatán. And Celestún was definitely a Lonely Planet experience.

A Visit to Celestún

Driving from Mérida straight west on route 281, we crossed the bridge over a long, skinny lagoon, Riá Celestún, to “downtown” Celestún, located on the beach. A year earlier, in 2000, Mexico had declared the area a “biosphere reserve”; in 2004, UNESCO would make it an international biosphere reserve and the Ramsar Convention, an international wetlands preservation organization, would recognize it as being of international importance. None of this ecological significance was yet evident to visitors.

On the advice of our LP guide, we found a a hotel a block off the beach. Lunch was available on the beach – all you had to do was follow the giant black SUVs from Mérida churning their way through the “streets,” paths bulldozed through the sand. We also checked out how to visit the flamingoes, which entailed going down to the beach in the morning; when a given boat had enough passengers to make it worth their while, the voyage would begin.

By dinner time, the SUVs – and the restaurants – were gone. We drove hither and yon looking for food, ending up in a general store, where we found tinned sardinas, saladitas, and cervesa. Back at the hotel, we discovered that the only source of light to set up the sardine/saltine repast was a naked lightbulb about 8 feet up the wall. It did have a hanging string to turn it on and off.

The next morning, we went early to the zócalo, thinking surely there would be a restaurant. Not so much. Someone in the central market did offer coffee, which turned out to be Nescafé de olla – thinking Nescafe would be quick, I soon learned that, no, the de olla part is brewing it in a pot with a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon, and takes way more time than pouring boiling water over coffee granules. The time, however, allowed us to espy a turquoise door over in the far corner of the zócalo.

To which we proceeded after having our coffee, which was just enough time for the turquoise door to open and reveal a restaurant with a breakfast menu. “Oh, look,” I said, “Poffertjes!” Hubby is Dutch, and poffertjes are Dutch, wonderful little puffy buckwheat pancakes. My poffertje announcement caught the attention of the restaurant owners, a young couple from Delft in the Netherlands. They had come to Celestún a year before, promptly decided this was for them, went home for six months, sold everything they owned, and came back to open the restaurant with the turquoise door.

The Main Attraction: Flamingoes!

Full of poffertjes, we went back to the beach. No one was there yet, so we sat on a driftwood log. Eventually five other people showed up, that was enough, so we helped push the boat down to the waves and got on. I don’t recall that we had to wear life jackets. Not even sure that I recall life jackets at all!

From the beach, the boat captain found a tunnel cut through the mangroves to reach the lagoon. As we headed to where the flamingoes were supposed to be, he pointed out a crocodile perched on what appeared to be a log floating in front of the mangroves. Everyone rose up, sharply tilting the boat towards the water, to take pictures of the crocodillo. We continued on, until a faint coral line appeared along the far side of the lagoon – closer and closer until the line turned into thousands of flamingoes, heads down in the water, feasting on brine shrimp, tiny creatures that give the flamingoes their coral-pink colored feathers. It was an unforgettable sight.

After many, many (no doubt identical) flamingo photos, we set off on our return. The crocodillo was still there, turning lazily in the wind. Somehow the “log” looked more like a very large tire. When we coasted through tunnels hacked through the mangroves to reach our last stop, a petrified forest, I had enough Spanish to ask whether the crocodillo was muerto, and yes indeed it was dead as a doornail. Sort of a home-grown tourist attraction, although I didn’t have enough Spanish to ask how they stuffed it.

On our way back to Cancún (via Chichen Itza), we first went along what’s now called North Beach to inspect a beach house my sister had seen for rent. It was right on the beach, and we filed it away for future reference.

Celestún Later – 2020

We never did rent the two-bedroom beachfront villa, but we did go back to Mérida (the Dolores Alba now has a large swimming pool where the dining room was, and is called “Doralba” – but still lovely and quiet), and again on to Celestún. Mérida is now a stop on the Tren Maya, the pet tourism-cum-poverty-alleviation project of Mexico’s previous president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Despite local objections to the Mayan Train’s negative ecological impacts, it has had a major impact on increasing tourism to the Yucatán peninsula – Mérida was the subject of a recent (Feb. 24, 2024) New York Times “36 Hours in …” travel article.

The time we spent in Mérida in 2020 was more akin to the “36 hours” idea than what we did in 2001. Art museums, historic houses, beautiful parks (with ice cream!), and paseo-ing on a boulevard to choose among the upscale restaurants.

After several days of this, we and my sister got in our rental car and went down that same road (Route 281) to Celestún, crossed that same bridge and located our hotel at the beach. This time we had reserved our two rooms in a hotel with a patio, where we were often the only people having wine and cheese (no sardines, no saltines) in the evening. We could walk along the main street and pick a restaurant, or walk on the beach and pick a palapa serving what we call “beach food.”

The Main Attraction: Ecotourism

This time, rather than take the boat tour to the big flocks of flamingoes, we went eco-touristing. The international recognition of the Riá Celestún biosphere and its wetlands (there’s an adjoining reserve of wetlands at the south end of the biosphere that extends into Campeche state, Los Petenes).

We searched out the Guardianes de los Manglares Dzinintún – the Guardians of the mangroves that ring the Dzinintún lagoon. It was a little hit and miss, but we found them. There were a couple of guys hanging out in hammocks; by now, our Spanish was good enough to say we wanted to go on the tour, and ask whether there would be flamingoes. Yes, that was good, come back tomorrow morning, and we would find flamingoes.

The next morning, after a little confusion about who we were and what we wanted, we hiked a bit to get to a “canoe,” more of a flat-bottomed boat than a canoe (they now offer kayaks for self-propelled adventures). The captain poled the boat through the mangroves, which was a great experience, and we did find small groups of flamingoes in the open areas.

We then went out into the lagoon. The boat captain was having some difficulty poling across the lagoon to get to the dock (return trip was a hike through the mangroves). The captain was struggling to pole the boat towards the dock, so John jumped out to pull, and ended up waist-deep in pale gray mud. The captain was probably appalled, but didn’t say a word! With that, my sister and I had no trouble getting out of the boat onto the dock.

On our hike back, mostly on a home-made boardwalk, every time we reached some clean water, the captain had John take off his pants and wash out the mud – it took three days of rinsing them with the hotel hose to finally get them clean.

Developing Ecotourism in Celestún

According to recent (late 2024, 2025) reviews on Tripadvisor, the Guardianes have come a long way. You reserve in advance with a WhatsApp call, and a tuk-tuk type mototaxi picks you up at your hotel. There are bilingual guides (ask in advance), plus the boat captain. The guide points out birds and wildlife, talks about the work of the reserve, and explains how the Guardianes work with other ecotourism organizations around the world. The tour sounds the same – the presentation has been “modernized.”
(www.guardianesdelosmanglaresdedzinintun.com/)

There is also an ecotourism company called Sheartails Expeditions (the Mexican sheartail (Doricha eliza) is a hummingbird native to Mexico) that started in 2002, after we were there; it was badly damaged by Hurricane Milton in October 2024, but is again offering some tours for birdwatchers; one specialty is a firefly float through the mangroves. (www.facebook.com/sheartailexpeditions)

Local Salt Production

We also took a tour, although you can apparently drive there yourself, of the colored, mostly pink, salt pans (charcas). The Maya settled the area around Celestún around 1800 BCE; they produced salt via evaporation and traded it throughout their empire and with other pre-Hispanic civilizations.

Our guide explained the Celestún salt industry; in the early 1900s, the town of Real de Salinas (Royal Salt Mines) was the production site for “dye wood” (Haematoxylum campechianum, or logwood) – a hardwood that can produce red, purple, and blue dye, and for salt. The town of Real de Salinas is now in ruins, although people ride bikes out to see the “ghost hacienda.”

The salt industry that remains in Celestún is small, no longer a major source of income or employment for many of the nearly 7,000 people who live there. There is a women’s cooperative society that produces and sells salts from the reserve (Sociedad cooperative salinas de la reserva); the coop wholesales and resales flor de sal, coarse salt, table salt, and sea salt, which you can buy locally. There is a more commercial product sold by a Cancun company called Gusto Buen Vivir (The Taste of Good Living) – Celestún Flor de Sal Gourmet, “Harvested, Collected, Dried, and Packaged by Hand.” You can buy it on Amazon for $30 USD for 26.5 ounces.

Ecotourism, Tourism, and Celestún

In January 2025, the governor of Yucatán issued a UNESCO-sponsored publication, Yucatán: Mosaicos de Experiencias. UNESCO’s goal is to strengthen the capacity of rural indigenous communities to design and manage their own “community-based tourism” (CBT) experiences; the tourism department of Yucatán state has a capacity-building program to help develop local CBT businesses as an alternative to the mass resort-style
model (really, is the beach in Cancún much different from the beach in Phuket?). CBT gives communities the chance to benefit from tourism experiences they design themselves; the outcome is equitable development that brings market benefits to marginalized local peoples. Both the Guardianes de los Manglares Dzinintún and Sheartails Expeditions are listed among the 14 CBT “social enterprises” in the Yucatán Mosaic catalogue.

And how well is CBT holding up in Celestún? When we first went to Celestún, there were nearly 6,000 people there, although the population rose to 10,000 in octopus fishing season, which begins August 1 (Mexico is one of the world’s largest exporters of octopus, and 98% of that octopus comes from the Yucatán). From 2000 to 2010, the population increased by less than 300 (± 5%), but from 2010 to 2020, it increased by almost 23%, to 8,389.

That population increase comes from migration in search of employment, a typical result of promoting a new tourism destination. Associate Professor of Anthropology Matilde Córdoba Azcárate has studied four tourism sites in the Yucatán, Celestún among them. Córdoba Azcárate looks carefully at how tourism exploits the places, people, and natural resources of any given location “in order to satisfy short-term consumer demands.” Like us, Córdoba Azcárate twice spent time in Celestún, first in the mid-1990s and then in 2002. In the 1990s, she found it was off the beaten path of tourism, but once Mexico defined the biosphere in 2000, and UNESCO recognized that, development started to accelerate. By 2002, the author found “all the trappings of modern tourism” – which limited access to the very natural resources Celestún was trying to merchandise, intensified social conflict, and increased crime and violence.

While development has increased the population, prosperity is not equally shared (please tip your hotel maid), there are not enough jobs to go around, there’s exceedingly limited health care. According to Córdoba Azcárate, increasing tourism has benefited only a few people, and failed to deliver the “promised sustainable and inclusive economic growth.” In our experience in 2020, 18 years after Córdoba Azcárate’s second visit, the situation may have improved – here’s hoping that the Yucatán’s CBT capacity building program for community-based tourism stays alive and well!

Córdoba Azcárate’s book is Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020).

 

Huatulco

Taxco de Alarcón: The Pueblo Mágico of Mexican Silver

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

Maybe you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Mexico’s GDP, or even what industries have made it the world’s 15th largest economy (13th largest GDP), and Latin America’s 2nd largest economy (Brazil is the largest). Maybe you do think about the products that visitors appreciate – and buy. When I lived in Huatulco, I bought traditional craft items for me, my family, and my house. And every year, I bought a pair of silver earrings.

Silver has written the economic signature of Mexico since well before the resource-extraction-obsessed conquistadors, priests, and administrators from Spain set foot on dry land; while the Spaniards might have preferred gold, it was silver that supported their colonial ambitions (Mexico is still the world’s largest producer of silver, and the industry employed 350,000 people in 2020). While there are silver mines throughout the northern half of Mexico, the one place most famous for both producing silver and turning it into exquisite jewelry, not to mention plates, cups, figurines, picture frames, etc., is Taxco de Alàrcon.

The Aztecs, the Spanish, and Taxco as a Silver-Mining Town

Located 170 km (106 miles) south of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero, Taxco was most probably named Tlachco in Nahuatl, meaning “place of the ballgame.” The city’s seal shows a ballcourt complete with players, equipment, and skulls (Aztec ballgames were not without consequences). According to legend, hunters pursuing a huge deer chased it up Atachi Hill, also called Huizteco Mountain, located where Taxco now stands. When the hunters killed the deer, they built a fire ring of stones and roasted a haunch. They noticed that the stones of the fire ring sparkled and melted – the next morning, silver had formed a circle where the fire ring had been. After that primitive smelting, they hunted silver in Tlachco.

A more pedestrian account of the start of Taxco’s identity as a silver-mining and -working center comes from the history of the Aztec empire. In general, we refer to all Nahua-speaking indigenous peoples as Aztecs; Tlachco was in territory inhabited by Chontals, Tlapanecos, Mixtecs/Mazatecas, and maybe a couple more; by 1414, the Aztec Mexica from Mexico City had started incorporating this area into their empire. Under Moctezuma I (1440-69), the Aztec Empire expanded significantly; Moctezuma I placed Tlachco under a military governor and demanded tribute in the form of gold and silver, thus giving rise to the pre-Hispanic mining industry.

After Moctezuma II was defeated by the Spanish in 1521, the conquistadors Juan de Cabra and Juan de Salcedo were sent out from the capital in 1524 to find sources of precious and useful minerals (among other things, they were looking for tin for making cannons). They arrived in Tlachco, although at that point, it didn’t look too promising as a source of untold riches. It was already a built-up population center, but the Spanish thought it looked like “the poorest and most despised of places, as were its people, and there was nothing there but some hills and henequen plants of little worth,” as described in a later letter (1552) to Charles V, King of Spain, by an official named Pedro de Meneses. In particular, it lacked a market. (That was actually a plus, as markets, with their indigenously determined values and individual control of sales, annoyed the Spanish, who wanted to control everything of any value.) Meneses continued on to say that “it came about that silver and gold mines were discovered there” (the two Juans apparently continued looking under the henequen plants).

The Spanish started impressing the native populations, already accustomed to working for tribute, to do the mining; this included “renting” workers from friendly encomenderos (Spanish to whom the Crown awarded the right to receive tribute from a geographic area, see Julie Etra’s article in the March 2025 issue of The Eye). By 1539, however, regulations prevented Spanish mine owners from exploiting the indigenous people as mine workers – they would have to be paid for their work.

The mine owners promptly started importing black slaves as the cheapest workers; by 1579, two thirds of the Taxco mine workers were slaves. The black slaves rebelled, and by 1600, they had completely fled the mining region. By that point, however, the Spanish had established large-scale, machine-assisted mining; by 1600, gold and silver bullion comprised 80% of Mexico’s exports.

There has been a lot of historical research on the mine workers in colonial Mexico – suffice it to say it was horrible work, people were gravely injured, died in cave-ins, and were poisoned by minerals from the earth and minerals, mostly mercury, used in refining the precious metals.

The Mines and the City of Taxco

Skipping ahead to the 18th century, a newly-arrived French-Spanish teenager – he was 16 or 17 in 1716 – was going walkabout in the hills of Taxco when he saw a vein of silver running across the surface rocks. José de la Borda, born in France in 1599, would grow rich in Taxco. What he did with his mining income made Taxco what you see today. Committed to the Catholic church and its principles of charity, he built much of what the city needed – roads, schools, houses. Other rich miners followed his example, building the McMansions of the day throughout the small city.

Don Borda’s greatest contribution to Taxco is the Templo de Santa Prisca. When he was nearly 50 years old, with somewhat more than three decades of increasing his fortune derived from mining, he asked the religious establishment of Taxco for permission to build a new church; he specified that he would be in charge of building it, and that no one else could interfere with the design and construction of the church. The authorities gave their permission, and the church was built between 1751 and 1759. (The first priest of the church was Don Borda’s son.)

Saint Prisca, a Roman noblewoman martyred for her support of the early Christian church, is the patron saint of prisoners. The church of Santa Prisca is thought to protect Taxco from lightning and storms common in this mountainous area. The building itself is considered one of the finest examples of the “churrigueresque” style in New Spain (churrigueresque is also called “ultra Baroque” – the style is highly ornamented, with decorative detail working its way up the building starting from the main façade).

José de la Borda also built homes in Mexico City and Cuernavaca; his Cuernavaca home was surrounded by gardens designed and installed by his son – the gardens are now a public park. Don Borda also generously gave to social charities and was lauded by the church for his charity, humility, and liberal views – nonetheless, he is also known for his harsh exploitation of native labor in his silver mines.

The War of Independence – the End of Colonial Silver

José de la Borda died in 1788 in his home in Cuernavaca. In 1810, Mexico declared its independence from Spain; the war would last until 1821. During the war, the Spanish mining barons destroyed their mines to prevent the revolutionaries from taking them. The war, and post-war political complications, left little time and few resources to try to revive the silver industry.

In the latter part of the 19th century, as Mexico stabilized its political and administrative structures and foreign capital freed up after the Civil War in the United States, there was a resurgence in silver production. Military engineer Manuel Robles Pezuela (1817-62), who graduated from the College of Mining in Guanajuato, was instrumental in writing the Mining Ordinance of 1854; the ordinance played a critical part in modernizing Mexican mining by updating mining laws, simplifying regulations, and creating tax incentives for mining development.

Foreign investment brought new technologies – steam-powered pumps and advanced metallurgical methods – to Mexican mining. Not the least of these imported innovations was soccer, brought to Mexico by British miners who accompanied British money and technology.

The Mexican Revolution – A Rerun with Artistry

The 20th century started with another war of similar length. The Mexican Revolution (1910-21) also slowed down mining – along with most other economic activity. Again, mines were destroyed, and foreign investment withdrew from the country.

The new Constitution (1917) nationalized the country’s subsoil resources, which changed the regulatory landscape for mining. The government nationalized mining to bring in more income and to ensure that mining revenues benefited both the people and the economy of Mexico.

In 1942, during the Second World War, Mexico passed a new Mining Law that was designed to promote investment from home and abroad by simplifying the concession process. New post-war transportation infrastructure (roads and railways) linked mining regions more closely with trade routes and thus the national economy. New mining technologies revitalized old mines and opened new ones. The mining industry continued with legal and technological changes that made it a vital part of the Mexican economy; progress has also been made on ameliorating the environmental and social impacts of mining. Under President Claudia Sheinbaum, this attention to the negative impacts of mining is expected to continue.

William Spratling

But the most interesting thing that happened to silver mining in Mexico was an American artist and architect. William Spratling (1900-67) had often visited Mexico, moving there in 1929. He quickly became involved in the artistic circles of Mexico and was influential in getting Diego Rivera’s work into the galleries of New York City. This led to his involvement in the first major exhibition of Mexican art in the U.S., held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When Dwight Morrow (1873-1931), perhaps America’s most successful ambassador to Mexico and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s dad, met Spratling, he suggested that Taxco was a center for silver but had no silver artistry.

Spratling hired a goldsmith from Iguala, a center for goldsmithing not far from Taxco, and decamped to Taxco. He set up his first studio, Taller de las Delicias (Workshop of the Delights) and began creating jewelry with the pre-Hispanic motifs he had studied as part of his architecture program at Tulane University in New Orleans. He also trained local artisans in silversmithing. In less than ten years, he had several hundred silversmiths to carry out his designs. They proved very popular, and were available north of the border at Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and even the Montgomery Ward catalogue.

Spratling also attracted other artisans, who carried out his designs for tin and copper ware, textiles, and furniture. Once trained by Spratling, a good number of the silversmiths and other artisans went on to set up their own shops, encouraged by Spratling. Spratling’s work became so popular he built a ranch and new studio in Iguala, hoping for some privacy to protect his designs from being pirated by visiting artisans.

Taxco became known as a center for fine crafts, attracting other artists – Diego Rivera, Juan O’Gorman, Frida Kahlo, and celebrities – U.S. President John F. Kennedy, novelist Patricia Highsmith, actresses Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe. Indeed, Spratling made some chairs for Marilyn Monroe that were never delivered because of her death – they are still in his ranch house in Iguala.

In the early summer of 1985, there was a show at the Muriel Karasik Gallery in Manhattan that goes a long way to portray what Spratling did for Taxco’s silver industry. “Mexican Silver Jewelry: The American School 1930-1960” included the work of ten jewelry designers. Spratling’s work drew from the designs uncovered at Monte Alban, excavated in 1932. Margo Carr Banburges, a San Francisco painter, married silversmith Antonio Castillo and moved to Mexico. Castillo, who with his four brothers was trained in Spratling’s studio, encouraged Margo’s work in modern Mexican jewelry design. Antonio Pineda and Hector Aquilar were also trained by Spratling; Pineda quickly opened his own studio; when he was included in a major 1944 exhibition in San Francisco, Gump’s department store – noted for its jewelry department – began carrying his work. Hector Aguilar also opened his own workshop, Taller de Borda, after studying with Spratling; like Spratling, Aguilar trained other Taxco silversmiths.

When William Spratling died, an old friend, Alberto Ulrich, bought the ranch and studio with the intent to keep Spratling’s work alive. You can visit that ranch, now run by Ulrich’s daughters, to see where and how he worked, not to mention the chairs he made for Marilyn Monroe, and even take a silversmithing class yourself (https://violanteulrichcom.wordpress.com/rancho-spratling/). There are, of course, many other things to do in Taxco – just Google!

Spratling and Ulrich used to race their cars down the winding local roads between Taxco and Acapulco. Spratling died on August 7, 1967, in a car crash on the road into Taxco. He was 66.

Huatulco

Social Class in Mexico: From Skin Color to Show Me the Money!

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

When you watch Mexican television, do you look at the ads? Who do you see? Pale people. When you walk outside in Huatulco, or Santa María, or Oaxaca City, who do you see? Brown people, all the glorious shades of brown people.

Skin Color and Social Class in Mexico

It turns out that skin color is – and always has been – one of the major components of social class in Mexico. The most requested type of actor for commercial advertising is “international Latino” – dark hair and eyes are okay, but skin must be light. According to social anthropologist Juris Tipa, a professor/researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Iztapalapa, the whole notion of “international Latino” is “reinforcing the imagery of a ‘Europeanised Latin Americanity’ at the expense of the average Mexican.”

Official statistical research in Mexico is carried out by INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography). Traditionally, adhering to the general notion that Mexico is a nation based on mestizaje – racial/ethnic mixing – INEGI’s surveys have not included questions on race or skin color. (A question on African ancestry started appearing in 2015; see the Chaikens’ article on slavery on page 8, as well as Julie Etra’s article on page 26.)

Given that the Conquest left Mexico with not only slavery but a caste system based entirely on racial and ethnic classifications, the ideology of mestizaje would seem to be a political fiction. Even though the War of Independence replaced the caste system with a hierarchy based on wealth and education, the preference for that pale-skinned European look persisted (President Porfirio Díaz, whose dictatorial ways led up to the Mexican Revolution, was a noted Europhile). Academic research has now begun to look into the relationship of skin color and “life outcomes,” i.e., social class.

In 2010, Andrés Villareal, then at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, was the first investigator to look at how skin color affects an individual’s “life chances.” He found that the darker your skin, the less education you had. The darker your skin, the lower your occupational category. The darker your skin, the more likely you were to live in poverty, although this relationship was not perfect – if you had light brown skin, you could make it into a more affluent category. Remember, the richest man in Mexico, Carlos Slim, has light brown skin!

Researchers from the Department of Sociology at Princeton University followed up on Villareal’s research in 2012; their work added the finding that “class origin” – that is, the social status of your family – could moderate the effect of skin color. Interestingly, they found that high-income individuals are perceived to be white, regardless of the color of their skin. Overall, they found that skin color and class origin work together to reproduce social inequality in Mexico – and the class origin component works to set your fate even before you enter the labor market.

In 2018, using an 11-shade “palette” of skin colors, researchers at the Center for Economic Studies at the Colegio de México in Mexico City, found “profound social stratification by skin color.” The lightest-skinned people have a year and a half more schooling and more than double the hourly earnings than those with the darkest skin color. Lighter skin brings more “social mobility,” i.e., light-skinned people can move up the socio-economic ladder, while the darkest people actually dropped in socioeconomic status.

Does Skin Color = Social Class in Mexico?

Does this truly mean the caste system is alive and well? Not completely. Even though skin color can influence your access to advantages such as education, those advantages can moderate the effects of skin color. There’s education (especially whether or not you speak English), along with professional skills and background. In a 2023 study in the Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies, Thomas Stringer, a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey, argues that the intersection of skin color, English proficiency, and intergenerational wealth determines your social class in Mexico.

The Mexican Association of Marketing Research and Public Opinion Agencies, otherwise known as AMAI, has developed a seven-level system of socioeconomic status (SES); the system is based on four characteristics: (1) education (how much professional or post-graduate study), (2) living situation (vivienda – how many bedrooms and how many cars), (3) Internet connectivity, and (4) technology (how many computers). AMAI places no emphasis on skin color – like all good marketing authorities, their system seems to be based on consumption.

So … Show Me the Money!

It is interesting that Mexico does not have a standard definition of socio-economic status, and that perceptions of who is “middle” class are so fluid (see the article by Kary Vannice on page 6). Underlying all the SES measures noted above? Money. You want a nice house? You have to have the money to buy it or build it. Higher education? You have to pay tuition. Intergenerational wealth? Your family had to get it somewhere.

Money in Mexico, however, is not available to all – the World Inequality Report of 2022 ranks Mexico 12th in the world for the disparity between those at the economic top (1% of the population held almost 50% of the country’s wealth) and bottom (50% of the population held only a bit more than 9% of the wealth).

Under the 2018-24 presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), however, income inequality actually decreased. AMLO shepherded successive 20% increases in the minimum wage, which sweetened union contracts as a bonus. He tightened outsourcing laws, retaining more manufacturing in Mexico – a policy that moved more than three million people into formal employment. Overall, the “multidimensional poverty rate” (income plus “social rights” – access to food, medical care, sanitation, etc.) dropped by over 5% in AMLO’s first four years, with 8.9 million people lifted out of poverty.

When millions of people escape poverty, the country benefits enormously. But escaping poverty does not necessarily change your social class, nor does it provide access to the advantages of upward mobility.

Huatulco

¡Ojos! Watch Out!!! Avoiding the Venomous Snakes of Oaxaca

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

One of Huatulco’s major attractions is its natural setting. From the famous “nine-bays-and-thirty-six-beaches,” to waterfalls and wildlife, to mountain trips and horse-back riding, being active outdoors is just at your doorstep. And going farther afield in Oaxaca, you find the lagoons and mangroves of the coast, the frozen white waterfall of Hierve el Agua (literally, “boil the water”), and the hiking trail between the eight villages of the Pueblos Mancomunados (hard to translate, sort of a “community of towns”), to name just a few outdoor adventures.

In all of these environs, you will find snakes. Some are venomous, and some are harmless. Left alone, all of them will leave you alone. But should you not be looking, and step on one, it may well attack you. Here are the venomous ones, what they look like, and where you should be watching out for them.

The Vipers

Rattlesnakes. There are two kinds of vipers in Mexico, and most belong to the genus Crotalinae, the rattlesnakes. In the articles in this issue on snake venom, you will learn that Oaxaca has its share of rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are “pit” vipers – they have pits near their eyes that contain heat-sensing organs. The sensors let the snake “see” warm-blooded prey. Most hunt at night, so the heat-sensing is key to being able to strike at their prey in the dark.

There’s the pygmy rattlesnake (Croatalus ravus, with three subspecies) – it’s 18-30 inches long and is found in the mountains. It is the usual mottled brown you associate with rattlesnakes.

There’s the black-tailed rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus oaxacus) – it grows to over 4 feet long, and is found in the desert, mesquite grasslands, and pine-oak forests (in the Sierras between 7,000 and 10,000 feet). It comes in varied colors – brown, yellowish, olive-greeny – but the scales on its tail are black.

The small-headed rattlesnake (Crotalus intermedius) – is small all over, growing to about 24 inches long. It is found in the pine-oak forests on the mountains, and looks like your idea of a rattlesnake.

The famous fer de lance. Another pit viper, even more to be avoided than the rattlesnakes, is the fer de lance (“spearhead,” Bothrops asper). Various species of Bothrops have been called fer de lance, so herpetologists prefer the term terciopelo (velvet) for Bothrops asper (see Julie Etra’s article elsewhere in this issue). The terciopelo looks pretty much like a rattlesnake, although its head is somewhat bigger and flatter, dark on top and light on the bottom. The female terciopelo grows much larger than the male; males can be 4-6 feet long, but females can exceed 8 feet.

You are not likely to see any terciopelos in Huatulco, as they do not like the dry winters. Unlike rattlesnakes, they prefer a moist environment; if you visit the tropical rainforests or cloud forests of the Yucatán or Chiapas, you could indeed find them; young ones like to climb trees.

Given that vipers hunt at night, using their heat sensors, you might want to reconsider any nature adventures scheduled for after dark.

The Elapids

The Elapidae family of snakes are the stuff of nightmares – they have permanently erect fangs (rattlesnakes and terciopelos have hinged fangs) and when ticked off, are exceedingly testy, not to mention exceedingly venomous. Some rise up and spread out the skin of their neck like a hood – think Indiana Jones and cobras.

The Oaxacan coral snake (Micrurus ephippifer and Micrurus ephippifer zapotectus) is found in tropical deciduous forests, as in the Huatulco National Park, or farther up in the pine-oak forests of the mountainsides. These snakes can be quite small, and almost never exceed 3 feet. They like to burrow under leaf litter, logs, forest debris – you won’t see them before you step on them. They are also fond of wetlands, so watch your step on marshy ground.

Sea Snakes

The subfamily Hydrophiinae contains the sea snakes. Note that there are very rarely Hydrophiinae in the Atlantic (a few have been sighted in the Caribbean, but it is thought that humans released them or perhaps they made it through the Panama Canal).

Sea snakes do, however, occur in the Pacific waters of Huatulco, and they are poisonous. They do not attack humans, preferring to strike fish, paralyzing them with their venom so they can chew them up at leisure.

The only one you are likely to see in Huatulco waters is the yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus). This snake is extremely venomous. While its coloring can vary, it is usually black on top and yellow or light brown on the belly, and the colors are clearly separate. Its tail is flattened from top to bottom, has a marked pattern (usually spots), and helps the snake swim. Males are less than 30 inches long, while females can be up to 35 inches long. The water needs to be above 61˚F (16˚C) for long-term survival.

On the other hand, I myself have seen what appeared to be an aquatic coral snake (Micrurus surinamensis) while out watching dolphins. Definitely red, white/yellow, and black. If that’s what it was, it was considerably off course, since its usual habitat is the Pacific waters off northern South America. Of course, it could have been a Oaxacan coral snake wandering off from the wetlands of the Parque Nacional …

Huatulco

You – Yes, You! The Impact of Tourism on Mexico’s Water Shortage

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

We’ve probably all heard about the water crisis in Mexico City (see Julie Etra’s article elsewhere in this issue), but Mexico City’s problems are just the worst example of a country-wide shortage of water.

· Historically, 30 of Mexico’s 32 states have suffered from water scarcity; currently, drought conditions affect all of Mexico except Oaxaca and parts of Veracruz and Puebla. January to May of this year was the driest spring ever recorded.
· Having water is not the same as getting water – in places with plumbing, up to 40% of the water is lost through leaks in poorly maintained piping. Huatulco homeowners often experience water cutoffs (rumor has it that the water is diverted to the fancier hotels).
· Reservoirs have receded, leaving mudflats littered with trash, surrounding brownish ponds where once there were sparkling lakes; some have been closed. Perhaps worst off are the three reservoirs that comprise the Cutzamala system, which supplies Mexico City. Authorities started reducing the water distribution in October 2023; in June, they shut it down for 6 hours to make repairs. Fortunately, the rainy season has restored the Cutzamala system to 67% of capacity, from a low of 28% in June (the system is completely closed when the level drops to 20%).

Tourism and Water

Despite the water crisis, Mexico is a wildly popular tourism destination. In 2022, tourism employed 2.8 million people, over 7% of the Mexican workforce, who served over 38 million visitors. In 2023, Mexico as a tourist destination was 4th in the world, 2nd in North America; over 42 million tourists visited Mexico. In 2022, tourism spending constituted 8.5% of Mexico’s GDP; in 2024, estimates say it will make up 14.2% of GDP – tourism brought in $2.3 billion in June of 2024 alone.

All those tourists, including non-resident snowbirds, presumably come from places that are not experiencing a water crisis. And they bring their water consumption habits with them, along with a pretty accurate perception that drinking tap water is not a good idea in much of Mexico (see the Chaikens’ article elsewhere in this issue). A 2012 article on “Tourism and Water Use” in the journal Tourism Management indicates that each tourist visiting Mexico used 300 liters – just shy of 80 gallons – of water per day; in Randy Jackson’s article elsewhere in this issue, tourism consumed 15% of Huatulco’s water supply.

Current data on just how many tourists are using that water are hard to come by, outdated, and generally only count people who arrive by plane; we do know that nearly 500,000 people arrived at the Huatulco airport in 2018, and that arrivals this year are almost back to pre-pandemic levels. As tourism increases, so does tourist water usage. Rest assured, however, it’s not just that those folks are splish-splashing, taking a bath. Direct consumption of water is far from the only impact tourism has on Mexico’s water supply.

The Price of “Big Tourism”

There are those who argue that Mexico’s government privileges the interests of tourists and the tourist industry over those of local people, especially through large-scale tourism projects that bring more tourists. Referred to in 2023 as “anchor products” by then Secretary of Tourism Miguel Torruco Marqués, they include new and remodeled airports, the highway from Oaxaca to the coast, the largest aquarium in Latin America (in Mazatlán), the Callejón de Liverpool honoring the Beatles (also in Mazatlán), museums, arenas, and a Chinatown in Baja. More tourists, more swimming pools, more 5.3-gallon garrafones de agua.

The biggest “anchor product” of them all is the Tren Maya (Mayan train), pet project of Mexico’s last president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Intended to promote – Torruco Marqués said “detonate” – tourism in the Yucatán, the train will transport visitors from Mayan ruin to Mayan ruin throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, with side stops for other attractions. The track runs for 1,554 km (about 966 miles); the seven sections run from Palenque in Chiapas up to Mérida in Yucatán, over to Cancún and down to Chetumal in Quintana Roo, and back over to Escárcega in Campeche. In addition to tourist passengers, the train will carry freight; notably, the primary freight client is Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos), which will be hauling fuel.

Various efforts to make the Mayan Train sustainable have taken place. The train itself provides low-impact public transportation, reducing traffic emissions. Portions are electrified or hybrid ultra-low-sulfur diesel and electric, there’s an extensive tree-planting program to replace the clear-cutting for the track, there are safe passages for wildlife, and large portions of track have been elevated to avoid disrupting the landscape beneath the tracks.

The Mayan Train and the Great Maya Aquifer

Missing, however, seems to be any concern for the Great Maya Aquifer (Gran Acuifero Maya, or GAM) one of the world’s largest aquifers, extending through the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas. It provides drinking water for 5 million people – if you’ve ever gone swimming in a Yucatán cenote, a water-filled sinkhole, you’ve been in the GAM.

The Yucatán peninsula was once a huge underwater coral reef, but has risen out of the sea to form a plain composed of porous coralline and limestone, and the latter is water soluble. When rain, which is slightly acid, falls on the peninsula, it percolates through to the underground cave system, wearing away the limestone. When the limestone is weakened by serving as a water filter, it collapses into the underground system, creating the open-air cenotes.

The GAM is a network of underground caves and rivers. The Great Maya Aquifer Project, part of the National Institute of Archeology and History (INAH), is mapping the aquifer and investigating “cave archeology and paleontology” – basically, what fell, or what the Maya threw, in the water, along with artifacts and wall paintings done before the caves filled up.

The Mayan train speeds over the aquifer, sometimes on crumbling limestone only three feet thick. Track builders drove 15,000 long pilings down through the limestone and into the aquifer to support the train; the impact of construction on the aquifer has yet to be measured. The process coats once pristine caves with a shards of concrete and broken stalactites. According to Guillermo D. Christy, a civil engineer with the group Cenotes Urbanos, a voluntary collective focused on preserving the cenotes of the Yucatan, “Pouring concrete into a cavern, directly into the aquifer, without any concern or care – That’s total ecocide.”

Tourism’s Indirect Effects

Less direct are the impacts of increased tourism brought by the Mayan Train. As the Yucatán population has increased (Playa del Carmen had 46,000 people in 2000, and 304,000 in 2020 – a 661% increase), the cenotes have been filling with the trash and human waste generated by too-rapid urbanization. Nearly 50% of individual wells have registered contamination. The cenotes and the wells connect to the aquifer.

Contaminating the water supply destroys more than clean drinking water. One of Tulum’s more popular tourist attractions is a cenote park called Dos Ojos (“Two Eyes”). Dos Ojos is a community-managed attraction in the nearby ejido of Jacinto Pat (ejidos are community-owned lands). Recent explorations have revealed that Dos Ojos is connected with the aquifer. The path of the train was routed around the two main cenotes, but passes directly over several others.

Some Jacinto Pat residents are not happy. An article in Time magazine (by Soraya Kishwari, January 2023) focused on the Maya Train’s impact on indigenous lifeways. One villager spoke anonymously about not wanting the Mayan Train: “It will destroy the jungle, our home, and contaminate the cenotes, our life source.” Gabriel Mazón, a resident who refused to move to make way for the train, says, “As a people, we have allowed ourselves to be bought … there is no support from indigenous people [for the Maya Train]. If our ancestors could see what is being done in their name, they would die of sadness, knowing how they have been profaned, prostituted, and their culture and traditions used.” Mazón continued, “We are little more than a brand or marketing slogan for the government. The people have already been paid off. There will be no more benefits. All we have left to wait for now is the invasion.”

Changing a culture by changing its environment is a very complicated issue. As culture and local heritage are redefined to meet tourist expectations – as they are made into commodities that are more “salable” to outsiders – culture and heritage change to reflect the value placed on them by those outsiders. You can live without water for three days; living without your history is a long, slow death.

Huatulco

The Legacies of Emiliano Zapata: Apparently, the Personal was NOT Political

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

Even if you don’t know much about Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), you’ve probably heard of the Zapatista movement he inspired (see Julie Etra’s article elsewhere in this issue). Dedicated to the proposition that land should be returned to the people, Zapata, as commander of the Liberation Army of the South, is one of the best-known heroes of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). When Francisco Madero successfully ousted the dictator Porfirio Díaz and made himself president in 1911, however, he failed to implement any of the land reforms Zapata and like-minded revolutionaries expected.

Zapata went home to Ayala in Morelos (south of Mexico City) and wrote his “Plan de Ayala,” castigating Madero and ensuring that the peasants of Morelos would benefit from land reform. The Plan de Ayala was instrumental to creating Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, which establishes indigenous land rights in communal holdings (ejidos and comunidades agrarias); it is considered a fundamental text for the Zapatista movement.

The Mexican Revolution was marked by chaos: coups, assassinations, hostilities between northern and southern factions in what was basically a-civil-war-within-a-civil-war. Zapata was a thorn in the side of Mexico’s various presidents – none of whom implemented any meaningful land reform, despite the 1917 Constitution. The Constitution had been promoted by Venustiano Carranza, governor of the state of Coahuila; in the wake of the Constitution, Carranza became president of Mexico.

Once in office, he was determined to get rid of Zapata, who took his ragged peasant soldiers into battle whenever his demands were ignored. On April 10, 1919, Carranza’s military organized an elaborate ruse to get Zapata to a supposedly secret meeting at Hacienda Chinameca (about 18 km, or 11 miles, south of Ayala). He arrived on horseback and saluted the military lineup; they promptly murdered him in his saddle.

Zapata’s Political Legacy

Politically, Zapata left behind a peasant movement that lives on today, mostly in Chiapas. The lengthy dominant-party role of the PRI party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional – see Randy Jackson’s article elsewhere in this issue) left many people, especially younger people, feeling there was no political avenue open to them except Zapata-style resistance. As the Revolution faded (it took quite some time for the fighting to stop), the Zapatistas began a long and complicated history of representing the indigenous peoples of southern Mexico, often clashing with northern anti-government groups.

Three events crystallized the Zapatista identity and firmly located it in the Lacondon jungle area of Chiapas as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatista Army of Liberation, or EZLN).

· In 1992, Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution (which had been repealed in 1991) was amended, basically eliminating any official recognition of the need for land reform and halting any efforts at protecting communal lands of indigenous or campesino groups.
· On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, leading the EZLN to declare war on the Mexico government. The EZLN occupied four towns in Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de las Casas; after 11 days of bloody fighting, during which 300 people died, the Mexican government started negotiations with the EZLN. It took two years, but in 1996, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed the San Andres Accords, granting autonomy, recognition, and rights to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In other words, the Accords ostensibly restored some portions of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution.
· Also in 1996, the EZLN convened an Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, becoming the de facto leader of leftist activists around the world.

As time has passed, the Zapatistas have had less impact on political issues; the EZLN still exists, and still fights for indigenous rights, but their activities are mostly confined to Chiapas. They are opposed to mega-infrastructure projects in the region and maintain ties with European activists. Drug cartels have used violence against local Zapatista governments, causing the EZLN to reorganize in more local collectives aligned with broader Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments” (ACGAZ).

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Men???

Zapata, an icon of machismo, had twenty or so kids with either 9 or 14 women (he only married one of them); he may also have been bisexual, a possibility that has recently been reexamined because of a painting.

A Controversial Painting. On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, protesters stormed the usually staid and monumental Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s historic center. Many of the protesters were indigenous farmers – those for whom Zapata had fought. Their target was one particular painting in the exhibition Emiliano. Zapata Después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata after Zapata), held to mark the centennial of Zapata’s death.

Three events crystallized the Zapatista identity and firmly located it in the Lacondon jungle area of Chiapas as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatista Army of Liberation, or EZLN).

· In 1992, Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution (which had been repealed in 1991) was amended, basically eliminating any official recognition of the need for land reform and halting any efforts at protecting communal lands of indigenous or campesino groups.
· On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, leading the EZLN to declare war on the Mexico government. The EZLN occupied four towns in Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de las Casas; after 11 days of bloody fighting, during which 300 people died, the Mexican government started negotiations with the EZLN. It took two years, but in 1996, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed the San Andres Accords, granting autonomy, recognition, and rights to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In other words, the Accords ostensibly restored some portions of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution.
· Also in 1996, the EZLN convened an Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, becoming the de facto leader of leftist activists around the world.

As time has passed, the Zapatistas have had less impact on political issues; the EZLN still exists, and still fights for indigenous rights, but their activities are mostly confined to Chiapas. They are opposed to mega-infrastructure projects in the region and maintain ties with European activists. Drug cartels have used violence against local Zapatista governments, causing the EZLN to reorganize in more local collectives aligned with broader Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments” (ACGAZ).

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Men???

Zapata, an icon of machismo, had twenty or so kids with either 9 or 14 women (he only married one of them); he may also have been bisexual, a possibility that has recently been reexamined because of a painting.

A Controversial Painting. On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, protesters stormed the usually staid and monumental Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s historic center. Many of the protesters were indigenous farmers – those for whom Zapata had fought. Their target was one particular painting in the exhibition Emiliano. Zapata Después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata after Zapata), held to mark the centennial of Zapata’s death.

Three events crystallized the Zapatista identity and firmly located it in the Lacondon jungle area of Chiapas as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatista Army of Liberation, or EZLN).

· In 1992, Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution (which had been repealed in 1991) was amended, basically eliminating any official recognition of the need for land reform and halting any efforts at protecting communal lands of indigenous or campesino groups.
· On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, leading the EZLN to declare war on the Mexico government. The EZLN occupied four towns in Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de las Casas; after 11 days of bloody fighting, during which 300 people died, the Mexican government started negotiations with the EZLN. It took two years, but in 1996, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed the San Andres Accords, granting autonomy, recognition, and rights to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In other words, the Accords ostensibly restored some portions of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution.
· Also in 1996, the EZLN convened an Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, becoming the de facto leader of leftist activists around the world.

As time has passed, the Zapatistas have had less impact on political issues; the EZLN still exists, and still fights for indigenous rights, but their activities are mostly confined to Chiapas. They are opposed to mega-infrastructure projects in the region and maintain ties with European activists. Drug cartels have used violence against local Zapatista governments, causing the EZLN to reorganize in more local collectives aligned with broader Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments” (ACGAZ).

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Men???

Zapata, an icon of machismo, had twenty or so kids with either 9 or 14 women (he only married one of them); he may also have been bisexual, a possibility that has recently been reexamined because of a painting.

A Controversial Painting. On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, protesters stormed the usually staid and monumental Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s historic center. Many of the protesters were indigenous farmers – those for whom Zapata had fought. Their target was one particular painting in the exhibition Emiliano. Zapata Después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata after Zapata), held to mark the centennial of Zapata’s death.

Three events crystallized the Zapatista identity and firmly located it in the Lacondon jungle area of Chiapas as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatista Army of Liberation, or EZLN).

· In 1992, Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution (which had been repealed in 1991) was amended, basically eliminating any official recognition of the need for land reform and halting any efforts at protecting communal lands of indigenous or campesino groups.
· On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, leading the EZLN to declare war on the Mexico government. The EZLN occupied four towns in Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de las Casas; after 11 days of bloody fighting, during which 300 people died, the Mexican government started negotiations with the EZLN. It took two years, but in 1996, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed the San Andres Accords, granting autonomy, recognition, and rights to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In other words, the Accords ostensibly restored some portions of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution.
· Also in 1996, the EZLN convened an Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, becoming the de facto leader of leftist activists around the world.

As time has passed, the Zapatistas have had less impact on political issues; the EZLN still exists, and still fights for indigenous rights, but their activities are mostly confined to Chiapas. They are opposed to mega-infrastructure projects in the region and maintain ties with European activists. Drug cartels have used violence against local Zapatista governments, causing the EZLN to reorganize in more local collectives aligned with broader Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments” (ACGAZ).

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Men???

Zapata, an icon of machismo, had twenty or so kids with either 9 or 14 women (he only married one of them); he may also have been bisexual, a possibility that has recently been reexamined because of a painting.

A Controversial Painting. On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, protesters stormed the usually staid and monumental Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s historic center. Many of the protesters were indigenous farmers – those for whom Zapata had fought. Their target was one particular painting in the exhibition Emiliano. Zapata Después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata after Zapata), held to mark the centennial of Zapata’s death.

It wasn’t this one …

 

 

 

 

 

Nor was it this one, odd as it may be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was this one. Note that the stilettoes seem to be revolvers, Zapata’s sombrero is pink with painted flowers, and the horse is – um – aroused. The title is La Revolución.

Antonio Medrano spoke for the protesters: “This isn’t freedom of expression, it is debauchery! It’s degrading. They can’t exhibit our history that way … they can’t permit this kind of mockery.” Perhaps the strongest protests came from Zapata’s descendants, who said they would sue to have the painting removed. Jorge Zapata Gonzalez, Zapata’s grandson, asserted that “We are not going to allow this,” said Jorge Zapata Gonzalez. “For us as relatives, this denigrates the figure of our general – depicting him as gay.”

The artist, Fabián Cháirez, says he was surprised by the cries to take it down, hide it away, or burn it. Cháirez, gay himself, shows a number of similar paintings on his website – La Revolución was painted in 2014. At the time of the exhibition, the artist told the BBC he conceived of the painting as a counterpoint to the predominant image of masculinity as a white fortachón (strongman – Zapata was called el caudillo del sur, another way to say “strongman”); he said he thought issues of sexuality “had already been overcome or [were] under control: inclusion, respect for diversity or difference. Issues such as machismo, misogyny, homophobia.” Those who disagree with the protesters see the painting as an exercise in artistic freedom, or as an effort to quell the negative Mexican attitude towards anything effeminate.

 

Huatulco

Social Class, Politics, Economics, and Religion: A Brief History of Aztec Sex

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

The Aztecs are one group of Mexico’s ancient indigenous peoples; although it is a diverse group, the different peoples are connected through use of some version of Nahuatl language. They called themselves the Mexica, arrived in what is now Mexico City in the 1300s, and were conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521. In their short two centuries of rule, however, they established an empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and had over 400 to 500 small states and 5 to 6 million people.

How Do We Know What We Know About the Aztecs?

Until recently, our knowledge of the Aztecs – not to mention the Maya, the Olmecs, the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs (there are more) – was based on “codices,” manuscript histories written by indigenous people at the request of the conquistadors. Friars who had learned the local native language then translated the manuscripts into Spanish, and they were shipped back to the European monarchs as reports on their colonies. The codices are useful resources, but they’re more than a bit iffy about “what came before.”

Recently historians and anthropologists have begun investigating earlier writings by ancient Mexicans. In a recent (2019) book, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, Camilla Townsend from Rutgers University, notes that “the Native Americans were more intrigued by the Roman alphabet than the Spaniards ever knew. Unbeknownst to the newcomers, the Aztecs took it home and used it to write detailed histories in their own language.”

Until now, no one paid much attention to these sources, but there has been a major effort to integrate pre- and post-conquest documents to reach a better understanding of ancient Latin American civilizations. Townsend’s book – which makes the point that the Conquest was not “introductory or climactic,” but “pivotal” in the long story of Mexico – gives us a history, in their own words, of a people who lived complex, nuanced lives in a cultural context the Spanish barely attempted to understand.

In searching for a more accurate understanding of the Aztecs – were they bloodthirsty savages? Focused only on warfare? Superstitious and easily duped into surrender? – Townsend, among other historians, introduces new perspectives to understanding “these complex and often mischaracterized people.”

Gender and Sex, Polygamy and Politics

The big picture for Aztec sex is that it occurred primarily in marriage, although the upper classes practiced “polygyny,” the kind of polygamy where a man can have multiple wives; there was no such privilege for women. There was one “true” wife, presumably the first, and the others were sometimes called “weavers.” In Aztec culture, women were the weavers, textiles were very valuable, so having many weavers increased the man’s wealth – Moctezuma had hundreds of wives. Men could also keep concubines – women to whom they were not married.

Aztec historian Caroline Dodds Pennock of the University of Sheffield in the UK looked at “Gender and Aztec Life Cycles,” a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs (2017). She says our notion of Aztec life driven by “brutal warriors, glorious kings, and bloody priests” is a bit off: in reality, “women in Aztec culture were powerful and effective figures, possessing tangible rights and responsibility, and clearly recognized as indispensable to society’s collective success.” That is not to say that gender wasn’t prescribed in Aztec society – the model was “complementarity,” that is, men and women had different roles that complemented each other.

As she looks at pre-Conquest Aztec life via the role of women and gender, Townsend finds upper-class women played a political role in bringing altepetls (city states) into the empire through marriage; they exercised considerable influence during the Conquest on whether any given altepetl would side with or fight against the Spanish.

Both Dodds Pennock and Townsend used documents that focused on upper-class women. In The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture (2011), history professor Pete Sigal of Duke University argues that the “sexual lives and imaginations” of the ordinary Aztecs included pleasure, seduction, and components of the rituals of fertility and warfare. Moreover, they resisted Spanish efforts to inculcate repressive Catholic attitudes towards sex for well over a century after the conquest.

The Specifics of Aztec Sexuality

When references to specific sexual practices come up, you might think the Aztecs were just waiting for the Catholic church to arrive and say, “Nope, that’s a no-no, not that!” There was a group of deities who ruled over sexuality, and they were much given to punishing those whose sexual behavior was outside the approved realm. A couple of these gods were associated with disease – think of STDs as a punishment for sex outside marriage.

Pre-marital sex. Punishable by death. Adult men and women not allowed to interact with each other outside of marriage. Both men and women were supposed to be virginal at marriage, but women were also required to pass a virginity test (i.e., presence of the hymen). For upper-class young men, though, this prohibition didn’t really apply – they often had small collections of concubines.

Adultery. Upper-class men, of course, couldn’t commit adultery because they were allowed multiple wives and concubines. Once adultery was claimed, a lower-class man might be beaten or have his head shaved, but a woman was sentenced to death, usually by stoning.

Homosexuality. Mentioned infrequently in contemporary documents, and was punishable by death. The gay man who took the active (penetrating) role was murdered by being impaled while his partner died when his intestines were extracted through his anus – a much harsher penalty, actually, since the “receiving” partner was perceived as being less “macho.” Lesbians were killed with a garrote.

There is a double-gendered god, Xochipilli as a male and Xochiquetzal as a female, who governs flowers, love, art, and fertility; Xochipilli is the patron/protector of homosexuality and male prostitutes. There have always been festivals to Xochipilli/Xochiquetzal, suggesting that the Aztecs might have had a “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get caught or we’ll kill you” policy.

Sodomy (oral or anal sex). Even among heterosexual partners, punishable by hanging.

Masturbation. Forbidden – punished by rubbing hot pepper powder on the genitals.

Prostitution. Prostitution was alive and well in Aztec society. “Respectable” Aztec women wore their hair up; prostitutes let it loose. They were the only women allowed to wear perfume, jewelry, and makeup. Sometimes prostitutes and priestesses were one and the same; they rewarded young men who survived battle with their favors. Another ritualistic role was to pleasure those men who were on their way to being sacrificed.

When the Spaniards Arrived …

The conquistadors brought their sex-as-sin Catholic beliefs with them. Within two years, they had converted two men to the priesthood and within ten years, they had begun converting the upper classes to Christianity. They hoped Christianity at the top would “trickle down” to rest of society.

Christianity, of course, requires that a man have only one wife; the Spanish began to require monogamy, which created social chaos. The additional wives, not to mention the concubines, suddenly had no legal or social status. Basically, the Spanish enslaved them, many on the encomiendas they created to reward their conquering soldiers; the Spaniard who held the encomienda had the right to tribute, produced through labor, of all inhabitants in a particular area. The Spanish replaced women who had been paid to weave with men, destroying the men’s identity as warriors. The alliances that marriages had fostered, the wealth that had accumulated within allied city-states, resolved disputes between altepetls – all suddenly thrown into disarray. Starting with its stance on sex, Catholic law destroyed a culture.

Moreover, at the urging of Queen Isabella of Spain, the conquistadors intermarried with the native peoples (she called them “free vassals of the Spanish Crown”) at a great rate. This “marathon sexual activity” on the part of the Spanish began to destroy indigeneity. By January 1, 1821, when Mexico won its independence from Spain, only half the population of Mexico was indigenous; 20% was mestizo. In the 2015 census conducted by INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography), only 23% of Mexicans said they were indigenous or of indigenous descent.