Tag Archives: History & Traditions

Las Nanacateras: The wild mushroom collectors

By Julie Etra

Mushroom collection and consumption in Mexico go back thousands of years, predating the Spanish conquest. The Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca, the mountain range between the coast and the valley of Oaxaca, is known for its wild mushrooms, edible, hallucinogenic, and poisonous (the latter two can be somewhat synonymous). It is estimated that there are 250,000 species of mushrooms in Mexico. Produce markets here in the Bahías de Huatulco might lead you to believe Mexico has only introduced button, crimini, and portobello mushrooms (all different life stages of the same species, Agaricus bisporus), and occasionally other cultivated varieties, such as oyster mushrooms. But the many wild mushrooms found growing in temperate forested highlands are becoming more and more popular when seasonally available, particularly in urban areas, including the gourmet markets in Mexico City.

Otomi
In the State of Hidalgo, northeast of the state of Mexico, when conditions for growth are optimal during the rainy season, skilled, exclusively women, mushroom collectors known as nanacateras are busy. August is known as mushrooms month or hongosto (hongos = fungi, gosto short for agosto). The Otomi nanacateras (the Otomi are an indigenous group, with their own language, Otomi) apply their exceptional skills distinguishing the edible from the non-edible and teach the methods of both collection and preparation.

Elsewhere
Other well known nanacateras are also from Hidalgo, including the pueblo of Acaxochitlán. These women offer workshops on identification, methods of collection, and preparation. San Lorenzo Tlacoyucan, a rural area southeast of Mexico City in a region known as the Milpa Alta, located on the steep slopes of an extinct volcano just east of the state of Morelia, is also known for its climate, ideal for wild mushrooms.

Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca
We have passed through San Jose del Pacifico on our way to Oaxaca on numerous occasions and have seen signs posted for identification and collection workshops. We don’t know if these workshops are taught by nanacateras or other skilled collectors, but, like other snowbirds, we are never here during the optimum period, the rainy season.

The Diverse Faces of Mexico City: Architectural Gems

By Carole Reedy

Perhaps Mexico City’s greatest gift to tourists is diversity, represented in its people, food, culture, and architecture. No matter how often one visits, each trip presents an unexpected joy, whether it is a new restaurant, art exhibit, or a chance to delve into the architectural face of the city.

Here are some buildings for exploration during your next visit. For those of us who live here, as well as for visitors, a stroll through the various colonias (neighborhoods) of the city can offer hours of discovery into new worlds through architecture. A sampling of popular buildings that you may have overlooked, as well as some hidden gems, follows.

Diegos Rivera’s Museo Anahuacalli
Museo 150, San Pablo de Tepetlapa Coyoacán

After 13 years of living in Mexico’s multifaceted capital and many previous years of visits, I finally took advantage one Sunday afternoon to explore this highly respected museum.

You may think, as I did, of Diego Rivera as Mexico’s finest artist and muralist, but this misconception proves the short-sightedness of our vision. He has proven to be a distinguished architect in addition to his artistic aesthetic. In 1945, Rivera visualized and began building this unique museum and art center to house his personal collection. He collaborated with the Mexican architect Juan O’ Gorman. Unfortunately, the project depleted Rivera’s finances, and was not finished until 1964. Rivera had died in 1957, but O’Gorman worked with other Mexican architects, including Heriberto Pegalson and Rivera’s daughter Ruth, to complete the main exhibition building and four secondary structures by 1964.

The name Anahuacalli is Nahuatl for “house surrounded by water.” The museum is made of lava rock produced from the eruption of Xitle in the southern part of Mexico City around 245-315 AD. It houses Diego Rivera’s collection and obsession: Pre-Columbian art and artifacts. There are over 2000 pieces of his collection (of almost 40,000) on permanent display in the museum. His first wife claimed that Diego was always exploring, always with his eyes on the ground in order to discover new finds.

On the second floor of the museum, 16 sketches of his famous murals are on display. In addition, the entire property is dedicated to artistic and cultural pursuits, such as a dance studio, a library, workshops, and lots of space for ecological enjoyment. The Museo Anahuacalli was expanded in 2021 with the addition of three new spaces – a central storage facility for museum holdings and two additional multipurpose buildings designed by modernist architecture firm Taller Mauricio Rocha.

The Museums of Chapultepec Park
Paseo de la Reforma

Chapultepec Park, a work of art itself, is not just a relaxing and enjoyable place to spend a day; it is filled with culture provided by the several museums that are scattered along Reforma Avenue.

Museo de Antropología: Perhaps the most popular cultural center in Mexico, the museum is divided into 22 salas, each with concentration on the different eras of culture, such as that of Oaxaca, the Aztecs, the Maya, Toltecs, etc. You need days to see the entire museum, so don’t make the mistake of trying to do it in one afternoon. I suggest doing one section at a time!

The large fountain in the entrance adds a relaxing background to the busy environment inside each area.

Museo del Arte Moderno: This is one of my favorite museums in the city. There are only four main rooms for exhibitions, but they provide ample space for viewing. A sculpture garden behind the museum provides a relaxing rest area. Some of the best exhibitions in the world have been housed here.

Museo Tamayo: Recent renovations and a variety of contemporary art make this a must on everyone’s list. Artist Rufino Tamayo, the museum’s founder (along with Diego Rivera, José Orozco, and David Siqueiros), brought the 20th-century muralist movement to the art world’s attention. Tamayo’s distinct pre-Hispanic style is evident in all his works.

The museum houses exhibitions of varying styles as well as Tamayo’s own works.

The famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama had an exhibition here several years ago that stunned the city. The museum kept its doors open 24 hours a day the last few weeks of the show due to the increasing demand for tickets. The only other occurrence of such an insatiable ticket demand was for a Pablo Picasso exhibition at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Castillo de Chapultepec: Chapultepec Castle overlooks the entire city, nestled atop the park in all its glory. The castle’s history starts in 1530 when Charles I of Spain began appropriating the properties from the Aztecs.

Over the past 500 years, various changes have taken place, but one of the most memorable is during the 19th century when the Emperor Maximillian and his wife Carlotta lived in the castle for his short reign (1863-1867) until Mexicans, tired of foreign interference, executed the monarch. You can view the many rooms Maximillian and Carlotta occupied and used for daily living. In the past, the castle also has been a military academy and a presidential home.

The Castle also hosts lovely gardens and the National Museum of History (the latter since 1941), offering visitors the opportunity to reflect on Mexico’s often violent, yet ever-changing, history.

You will want to have your camera ready, not just for the beauty of the castle but for the panoramic views of the entire city, as well as the statues of the Niños Heroes. And don’t miss the stained glass windows of the goddesses on the second floor of the garden area.

Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes
Centro Histórico, Avenidas Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas

I can’t pass up an opportunity to mention my favorite building in the city, and perhaps the world. No matter the number of times I have visited this architectural wonder, my heart literally skips a beat each time I stroll down Avenida Juárez from Paseo de la Reforma to see the Art Nouveau and Neoclassical exterior in its majestic glory at the end of the Alameda (centro historico’s famous park).

The building itself is made of Italian marble. Construction started in 1904 but was delayed due to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, as well as social and economic problems. It was completed in the 1930s.

The Art Deco interior houses murals by Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siqueiros. Yearly, many temporary art exhibits occupy the four stories. There is an architecture museum on the top floor.

Concerts and operas are staged in the lovely main theater, as well as in intimate side salas. As in the city as a whole, prices for the entertainment are reasonable and affordable, even in these days of inflation. All museums in the city offer free admission to everyone on Sundays.

Mitikah Mall
Rio Churubusco 601, Xoco

The complex, created by Pelli Clarke & Partners, a U.S. firm that works internationally, contains the tallest building in Mexico City, a brand-new skyscraper that tops off at 267 meters (about 875 feet). It was inaugurated in September of 2022. Residents of the building will enjoy the spa and pool, area for children and entertainment, as well as ample parking facilities.

The commercial complex, with its five levels of popular shops, is built “to create a sense of connection, linking diverse spaces where people can gather to socialize, be entertained, relax, and enjoy a variety of cuisine. Guided by Mexico’s lively color palette, and visual themes from indigenous architectural and textile traditions, we wove color and form with function to create pedestrian-friendly plazas and avenues, joining commercial-retail spaces to residential and office towers. Patterns and colors inspired by Aztec culture appear and reappear, flowing along concrete walkways and retail facades.”

The center itself has suffered a backlash from local residents. They have cited, beyond traffic-flow problems, the extreme usage of water for a building complex of such proportion.

If you are not too tired after a visit to the center and a bit of shopping, you easily can make your way to the charming Centro of neighboring Coyoacán.

Museo Soumaya
Telcel Plaza Carso
Polanco/Granada

One can’t discuss the architecture of the buildings in CDMX (Ciudad of Mexico: the city is no longer referred to as DF or Distrito Federal) without a mention of the spectacular Museo Soumaya in Plaza Carso. It was created and funded by by Carlos Slim Helú, astute businessman of Mexico City and owner of communications companies Telmex and Telcel. The purpose of the museum is to share the collection of the Carlos Slim Foundation. It is a homage to his late wife Soumaya Domit, who died in 1999. The doors to the museum opened in March 2011. (The original Museo Soumaya is located in Plaza Loreto, opened in 1994, has five permanent and two temporary galleries, and frequently collaborates with Museo Soumaya in Plaza Carso. The museum shares Plaza Loreto with a shopping center located in a restored historic site, some of which dates to the 16th century, and is worth a visit in itself.)

Mexican architect Fernando Romero, Slim’s son-in-law, designed Museo Soumaya in Plaza Carso. The building’s six stories are connected with a unique spiral staircase. The exterior, which is covered by 16,000 aluminum hexagons covering 17,000 square meters, is unique to the city.

Inside you will find art to suit your taste. From Dalí to Van Gogh and Monet to Rodin, the museum contains art from many centuries and countries, with an emphasis on Art from Europe and the Americas. The Chinese ivory collection, however, is one of the areas that stands out in my memory.

The museum is open 365 days of the year and is free to everyone, every day. We are thankful to Slim and his Foundation for this generous gift to the city and the world.

This has been just a smattering of the hundreds of architectural wonders of this most famous megalopolis. Enjoy the entire city over several visits; we have almost perfect weather conditions all year long!

In Search of Diana Kennedy’s Huachinango Veracruzana

By Deborah Van Hoewyk

In 1979, seven years after British-born Diana Kennedy published The Cuisines of Mexico, I went to Veracruz, both the city and the state. I thought the food was extraordinary.

The culinary website Serious Eats describes “Jarocho” (the colloquial term for being native to Veracruz) cuisine as “one of Mexico’s simplest,” but “one of its richest.” It was on the shore of Veracruz where Hernán Cortés first set foot, and Spanish cooking – already Mediterranean and Moroccan in its heritage – was quickly adopted and adapted to Jarocho ingredients and techniques, followed by West African influences. (Cortés brought the first six African slaves to Mexico; eventually, over 200,000 Africans came through the port of Veracruz, to be sold in the town of Antigua, about 28 km [±17 miles] west of the port).

The food of coastal Veracruz thus offers all kinds of fish and seafood, cooked in all kinds of ways, served with all kinds of sauces – and Huachinango Veracruzana – Red Snapper a la Veracruz – was the queen of all the dishes I tasted there.

On returning to the States, I went out and bought the Sunset Mexican Cookbook. My copy was from 1977, and was subtitled Simplifed Techniques, 155 Classic Recipes. The American palate of the 1970s was not yet familiar with Mexican cooking, but the Sunset Mexican cookbook sold over a million copies, through 20 printings, with at least five updates between 1969 and 1983.

And one of its recipes, from Diana Kennedy but adapted to American ingredients, was “Snapper Veracruz (Huachinango a la Veracruzana).”

Loved that recipe. Loved especially the green olives, orange juice, golden raisins, cinnamon, and capers. After six moves to three states, I lost my Sunset Mexican cookbook – not that I don’t have others, but none has that exact recipe. That, according to Diana Kennedy, is because the recipe is anything but exact!

The Woman Who Wrote My Remembered Recipe

Culinary anthropologist, cookbook author, chef by default, Diana Southwood was born a hundred years ago (March 3, 1923), in the town of Loughton, England, about 20 miles north of London. The daughter of a kindergarten teacher and a salesman, she lived to be 99, dying at her home in Heroica Zitácuaro, Michoacán, on July 24, 2022. In her twenties, she was a “Lumber Jill” with the Women’s Timber Corps, replacing the men who had gone to fight in WW II, and a housing manager in Scotland, working with mining families. When she was 30, she emigrated to Canada and worked in a film library and sold Wedgewood fine china. She loved to travel, and loved to explore new cuisines; from Canada she started visiting the Caribbean.

On a 1956 trip to the Caribbean, she stopped over in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on her way home. Staying in the same hotel was American journalist Paul P. Kennedy, the New York Times chief correspondent for Latin America. Kennedy was covering civil unrest in Haiti, where the people were using strikes and demonstrations to force their dictatorial president, Paul Magloire, out of office. She was 33, he was 51 – apparently the attraction was instantaneous; Diana described it as un flechazo, an arrow “shot straight to the heart.” She followed Paul and his “half-promise of matrimony” to his home base, Mexico City; they were married within the year.

The ever-versatile Diana Kennedy took up Spanish and worked as a typist at the British consulate in Mexico City. The Kennedys were popular in the English-speaking community in Mexico City, entertaining and being entertained on a frequent basis; when they ate dinner at the homes of friends, Kennedy as usual was taken with foods they were served. When she asked her hostess (this was the 1950s, people) about a dish, they usually replied that the maid or the cook knew about it.

When she asked the maid or the cook, they replied they made it the way they did it back home in their village. Off Kennedy would go to find out just how they did it back home in the village. This was the process that became Diana Kennedy’s hallmark in researching Mexican cuisine in all its regional variations: ask about the recipe, go to where it came from, ask questions, and learn how to make it with authenticity. All her recipes identified who made them and where they made them.

Her trekking about the rural villages also led her to the cookbooks of Josefina Velásquez de Léon (1899-1968), who had visited church groups in the countryside to document regional cooking. (One might call Velásquez de Léon the first celebrity chef – she cooked on radio in the 1940s and television in the 1950s, published cookbooks, opened a cooking school, and set up her own cookbook publishing house; her papers are in several archive collections, but one of them is the Special Collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio, alongside those of Diana Kennedy.)

One of the Kennedys’ guests in Mexico City was Craig Claiborne, who had joined the New York Times in 1957 as its food editor and off-and-on restaurant critic. When Diana offered to buy him a Mexican cookbook, he is supposed to have said “Not until you have written one!”

Diana Kennedy in New York

But the cookbooks came later, and Craig Claiborne would have a hand in that. Paul Kennedy fell victim to cancer, aggressive prostate cancer. In 1966, the couple drove North to New York City for his treatment. In Nothing Fancy, one of Kennedy’s most personal cookbooks (1984) and a 2019 documentary of the same title by filmmaker Elizabeth Carroll, Kennedy tells a story of that last trip. Eating takeout in some motel somewhere in Texas, “Paul laid his knife and fork down soon after he had started his meal. ‘I don’t know whether to thank you or not,’ he bellowed. ‘Most of my life I could eat anything anywhere, but now look what you have done to me. This damned rubbish!’ and pushed his plate back in disgust.”

Paul Kennedy died on February 2, 1967. Diana was left alone in their apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. Although all the apartment offered was a galley kitchen, Claiborne had featured Diana’s work on regional Mexican cuisine in the New York Times, and suggested that she could teach authentic Mexican cooking classes. Word got out that Diana’s classes were great, and when Frances McCullough, a poetry editor at Harper & Row, took a class, she told Kennedy that a cookbook was in order. Not that Diana Kennedy knew how to write, but McCullough shepherded her through the process and Kennedy’s first cookbook, The Cuisines of Mexico, came to life in 1972.

It was a struggle to get it published as a quality cookbook, however – Harper & Row thought it would never sell, said they had no money to print it with pictures, and sent a cover design that featured a sombrero sitting on a cactus. Kennedy was furious but McCullough said, “OK, Diana, let’s invite them to lunch. We’ll give them a great meal and lots of margaritas.” It worked. After the publishing executive finished, they started looking at Diana’s slides of the dishes they’d been served, and started saying, “Well, we have to have THAT one … and THAT one,” and so on. “I ended up with a great designer,” Diana recalled.

McCullough would edit the next five cookbooks Kennedy wrote, and remained a friend for life.

Diana Kennedy Moves to Michoacán

Diana went back to Mexico repeatedly to gather the recipes in Cuisines of Mexico, but continued working professionally in the various cooking schools popping up in the U.S., returning to Mexico to hunt up more authentic recipes and culinary techniques in the summer. It took until 1976 to leave New York permanently. According to Kennedy, she told herself, “My God, I’ve got to get out. What am I doing with all these smells, the doggie odors, the exhaust from the restaurants in my face? It’s all so artificial.”

The contrast of authentic and artificial would epitomize the rest of Diana Kennedy’s life. When she went back to Mexico in 1976, she stayed; in 1980, she bought three hectares (just under 7½ acres) about 130 km (about 80 miles) west of Mexico City in Michoacán. There she designed and built Quinta (country house) Diana, her Mexican home and culinary research center. Quinta Diana was supposed to be just a little food museum for Diana’s collection of cooking tools, but the idea that museums were of “dead things” was anathema to Kennedy. She hired an architect and ecological engineer and started a house that incorporated large boulders on the site, rambling up and down a steep hillside, amply graced with perforated walls to encourage fresh breezes through the house. Down the slope is her eco-garden full of local Mexican herbs and vegetables and home to a motley collection of livestock and bees. Quinta Diana is mostly off the grid; Kennedy eventually used it to establish the Diana Kennedy Center, a place for research, teaching, and sustainable living – with sustainable native foods at its heart.

For fifty years or so, Kennedy led a busy professional life from Quinta Diana. She wrote more cookbooks; before leaving New York, she produced her second, The Tortilla Book, in 1975. The rest included Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico (1978), Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food (1984), The Art of Mexican Cooking (1989), My Mexico (1998), From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients (2003), and Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy (2010).

She taught cooking classes and participated in events devoted to international cuisine. She won awards – from the James Beard Foundation, from Mexico (Order of the Aztec Eagle), from Britain (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

The Perils of Authenticity

Always a stickler for doing things in just the right way, all the time, Diana Kennedy has had her detractors. There are those who think that cuisine changes and adapts over time, that it was not a “fly preserved in amber.” Kennedy has even castigated the Mexican cooks who took her recipes and evolved them.

There were those who feel her insistence on using lard and lots of crema is unhealthy, and her notion that you should read all the explanations and notes before attempting a recipe – a recipe that might take five days to make all the salsas and bases – is antiquated. Kennedy, on the other hand, says “It’s difficult to educate a whole public … Americans were raised to expect that horrible combination plate – the quick cheap fix.”

Tejal Rao, a New York Times restaurant critic and food writer, believes that Diana Kennedy “changed the way millions of people perceived Mexican Food.” On the other hand, when Kennedy taught Martha Stewart to make Oaxacan tamales de frijol on television, “Wasn’t something lost?” Kennedy would say no, but Tejal Rao pointed out that perhaps a Zapotec cook should have been serving as the expert on her own tamales. Rao also faulted Kennedy for never backing down “from her ludicrous position of dismissing Tex-Mex, California Mexican food and all of the rich, regional cuisines that grew from the Mexican diaspora.”

Nonetheless, after spending more than half her lifetime in grass-roots scholarship across the kitchens of rural Mexico, bouncing around in a beat-up pickup truck with a revolver in the glove compartment, Diana Kennedy made an immeasurable contribution to our understanding of and appreciation for Mexican gastronomy. With her attention to regional differences in Mexican dishes, she laid much of the foundation for the United Nations’ designation of Mexican cuisine as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Will I still look for the “right” recipe for Huachinango Veracruzana? Even though Diana Kennedy told me that it’s more likely made with orange juice and raisins in the mountains of Veracruz, maybe in Jalapa? Of course I will.

A Twist of Time

By Carole Reedy

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.
— Dave Eggers, prolific writer and editor

Science fiction writers aren’t the only storytellers who work with the themes of time and space. Novelists, too, are beholden to time to create the masterpieces of literature we so deeply enjoy. In fact, writers of all genres magically engage readers through their philosophical treatment of the phenomenon of time. The authors here hail from one of three centuries and from five different cultures: French, British, American, German, and Polish. Their works, at the time they were written, were all revolutionary in style and structure, opening the door for future generations to understand and explore the context in which we live, evolve, feel, and observe.

We can never say enough about the mysterious ascendancy of time.

MARCEL PROUST
Topping the list of writers with a penchant for time and memory is the quirky, charming bon vivant Marcel Proust. Best known for recollecting his past after tasting a delectable madeleine, his seven-volume novel (more than a million words) still fascinates readers throughout the world and challenges and mystifies academics.

À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (1913-27), Proust’s masterpiece, translates to English literally as In Search of Lost Time. However, the popular and dominant translation of Scottish Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff titles it Remembrance of Things Past, a subtle but significant difference.

Proust’s memories are involuntary, sparked by a smell or taste. They do not come bidden by a conscious search. Moncrieff’s title is inspired by and taken from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past.”

Proust’s tome has mesmerized readers for more than a century. And even though it is set in early 20th-century France, the behaviors, emotions, and habits of the characters remain recognizable today. Proust’s mastery of language and nuance is unmatched. The prose is among the most beautiful ever written.

From an early age Proust suffered from asthma, which remained with him into adulthood. He spent the last three years of his life in bed, writing all night and sleeping all day. He died at age 51 in 1922 from pneumonia.

VIRGINIA WOOLF
The highly acclaimed British writer Virginia Woolf has been the focus of literary roundtables, college theses, and book club discussions for nearly a century. She was the forerunner of the stream-of-consciousness genre in which her characters observe their everyday surroundings in search of an understanding of life. The style is evident for creating an almost dreamy, trancelike state that welcomes the reader into new worlds.

Recently the Met Opera from New York presented a new production called The Hours. The drama is based on the 1998 novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham, which itself is based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) as well as Woolf’s life. Both books are among my favorites. The novel The Hours is a literary masterpiece in its juxtaposition of time and place.

Mrs. Dalloway is one of Woolf’s most enchanting works, and I believe it to be a perfect novel. The action is reduced to the course of one day in Mrs. Dalloway’s life, but it tells the story of a lifetime of experiences and emotions. The enigma of time.

Another of Woolf’s popular novels is To the Lighthouse (1927). Here the reader accompanies the Ramsey family to Scotland, a place they vacation regularly in the summer. But once again, with the twists of time, the story of a woman is told through the eyes of others as well as her own. The Scottish landscape functions as a significant character in this novel, which scrutinizes a woman’s life and relationships.

Sadly, as is the case with many persons of genius, Wolff suffered from bipolar disorder and depression. At age 59, she walked into the River Ouse in Northern England with a pocketful of rocks and drowned.

OTTESA MOSHFEGH
This 40-year-old American novelist has recently captured the attention of readers of all ages. Ruthless and bold in her craft, she painstakingly takes us on her characters’ searches for resolution and peace. The emotional development, upheaval, and final settlement of her main characters is only hesitantly revealed through the author’s singular unfolding.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation appeared on many best-seller lists in 2022. The sleep-induced self-cure of the protagonist develops slowly, making for a fascinating journey. Since I was completely satisfied with the novel, I then searched for this young innovative writer’s previous work.

Death in Her Hands (2020) caught my attention as it was tagged as a mystery, a genre among my personal favorites. Yet here is a completely different take. The action is disclosed to the reader exclusively from the point of view of the main character. All is auspiciously resolved in the end despite, perhaps, the reader’s doubt!

Fortunately, Moshfegh is young and undoubtedly is churning many ideas that will make their way into new novels for her demanding fans.

THOMAS MANN
Thomas Mann suggested to his readers that once they finished his novel The Magic Mountain (1924), they read it again. Those who have done so claim it is the most magnificent novel ever written, and many more agree.

Although he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, principally for Buddenbrooks (1901), a novel based on his own family, it is The Magic Mountain that brought Mann continued fame over the years. It continues to be named one of the best novels of all time.

Apart from the themes of life and death, Mann returns often to the subjective nature of time and our own perspective. In The Magic Mountain, the main character, Hans Castrop, comes to visit his cousin in a sanatorium, falls ill, and spends seven years there himself. The two engage in philosophical arguments about time: does “interest and novelty dispel or shorten the content of time, while monotony and emptiness hinder its passage”? The relationship of time and space is a continuing debate.

Mann lived a long interesting life, in both Germany (his home), Switzerland, and the US. Wartime conditions in Europe, especially in Germany, were the impetus for his relocations.

To know more about this highly regarded writer, I recommend a 2021 novel written by famed Irish author Colm Tóibin called The Magician, which is based on the life of Thomas Mann.

OLGA TOKARCZUK
Take the opportunity to watch interviews with this surprisingly bubbly personality. Despite the serious nature of her subjects and writing, Tokarczuk has a contagious sense of humor. The obvious mutually respectful relationship with her English translator, Jennifer Croft, manifests itself in the superb results of this successful team.

Tokarczuk, a clinical psychologist, is a serious writer, evident in the recognition of her work by the Nobel committee in 2018, when she was awarded that coveted prize for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”

Her book Flights (2007) is a favorite. She won and shared with her translator the Man Booker International Prize for it in 2018. Judges for the National Book Award, for which the novel was short-listed, offer this description: “Brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time.”

Tokarczuk’s epic novel, The Books of Jacob (2014) transports the reader over seven borders and five languages, starting in 1752 with the 18th century Polish-Jewish religious leader Jacob Frank, then evolving to the persecution of the Jews in the 20th century. It is her revelations of the past that prophesize and thus advance the pursuit of solutions to present-day problems.

At 61, this politically and socially aware author is active in rights of equality and respect for minorities.

Coincidentally, just before submitting this article I began reading Out Stealing Horses (2003) by Per Petterson. On page 6, I ran across this poignant note: “Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.”

Chinampas, Calzadas, and Aqueducts: The Ancient Engineering Marvels of Tenochtitlán

By Julie Etra

Tenochtitlán was the capital of the Triple Aztec Alliance empire (formed in 1428 and ruled by the Mexica, the empire joined together the three Nahua states of Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopan). There is not enough space in this column to write about all the marvels of the Tenotchtilán itself, a magnificent city built on the five inland lakes in the Valley of Mexico. The Aztec empire was at its peak when Tenochtitlán was substantially destroyed by the Spanish Conquest in 1521.

Two of the most intriguing aspects of this civilization were its systems of agriculture/food cultivation and water management (they are of course intertwined), especially how these systems were constructed. For those readers interested in more detail, Barbara Mundy’s exhaustively researched and superbly written book is referenced below.

The Valley of Mexico

The basin that comprised the Valley of Mexico had five lakes: Zumpango, Xaltocan, Texcoco, Xochimilco, and Chalco. They were endorheic, i.e., they had no outlet, were hydraulically connected, and formed one enormous lake when flooded. The lakes were shallow, with a depth of no more than 150 ft (45 m); water quality varied. The more isolated southern lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco were higher and protected by the high peninsula formed by Cerro de la Estrella on the east and a “lava plug” to the west; the lakes were fed by springs and rivers, and so held fresh water. Drainage from the higher lakes flowed north to Texcoco (the largest lake), Zumpango, and Xaltocan; the waters of these lakes were brackish (saltier).

Following the discovery of a freshwater spring in Lake Texcoco at what came to be called Chapultepec (“grasshopper hill” in Nahuatl – chapulin = grasshopper, tepec = place), the rocky island of Tenochtitlán was settled on June 20, 1325. The brackish waters supported salt-tolerant aquatic life and were harvested for a species of algae made into edible patties. Flooding during the rainy season not only joined the lakes, but the backwash could threaten the innovative Aztec agricultural system known as chinampas.

Chinampas

The chinampas were rectangular gardens located in the southern lakes. Swampy land was dredged, creating navigable channels between islands. These islands were constructed with logs, reeds, and sticks woven into frames and covered with the muck of soil, mud, roots, and other dredged plant detritus. Whether or not these farmed rectangular parcels floated, as do the modern Floating Gardens of Xochimilco, is still subject to scholarly debate, although the establishment of willows would anchor them. While more investigation might reveal the actual materials, I would guess that the “reeds” included species of cattails (Typha spp.), bullrush (Scirpus spp.), and reeds (Cyperus spp.), all of which grow in standing water or saturated soils and are supple enough to weave. Ahuejote (Salix bonplandiana), an erect willow resembling a poplar, grew on the drier shores, along with ahuehuete (Taxodium mucronatum), aka sabino and Montezuma bald cypress. Ahuejote is derived from the Nahuatl word ahuexotl (atl = water, huexotl = willow). The Spanish word for willow is sauce; think of Sausalito, California, near San Francisco, meaning little grove of willows.

Young, flexible branches of willows were used in constructing the chinampas, and live cuttings were planted for eventual shade and to stabilize the structures through their vigorous and extensive root systems. (The bark of this versatile plant produces salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, and was no doubt an herbal Mexica pain reliever). The dense and durable wood of the ahuehuete was most likely used as posts for the multi-functional causeways called calzadas (more about them in a minute).

According to the noted archaeologists Pedro Armillas and William T. Sanders, the swampland converted into chinampas was estimated to be about 12,000 hectares, enough to support a population of between 117,000 – 200,000 with an annual consumption of 160 kilograms of maiz (corn) per head. What else grew on these islets? Chia, beans, squash, tomatoes, avocados, amaranth, cacao (chocolate), chilies, cotton, and a variety of flowers including marigolds, which are native to Mexico. The Mexica fished and also consumed the endemic salamander, the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), named after the Aztec god of fire and lightning, Xolotl. The axolotl was important in the diet of pre-Hispanic residents of the city, along with ducks and other waterfowl that were trapped in nets.

Calzadas

Construction of the calzadas, the system of dikes and watery causeways, was begun in the 1420s, initially to separate the brackish from the fresh water. They most likely had openings to manage flows, similar to an agricultural sluice gate. The calzadas averaged five to seven meters wide and eight km (about 4.8 mi) in length. To form the dikes, wood posts, perhaps from the locally available black cypress or pine/oaks in the surrounding forests, were anchored in the shallow lakes and back filled with layers of rock, clay, and a mortar of mud and calcium carbonate (limestone). They required constant maintenance.

Netzahualcóyotl, the tlatoani (leader) of Texcoco – and a scholar, philosopher, warrior, architect, and poet to boot – vastly improved on this system of water management. Aside from his military victories, governmental prowess, and poetic skills, he was a superb engineer. According to Wikipedia, “He is said to have personally designed the albarrada de Nezahualcóyotl (dike of Nezahualcóyotl) to separate the fresh and brackish waters of Lake Texcoco, a system that was still in use over a century after his death.”

The construction of the calzadas took place at roughly the same time as the aggressive expansion of the Triple Alliance empire, which handily had 50,000-plus solders available from Nezahualcoyotl’s army. The calzadas also served as roadways, which ironically contributed to the conquest of the city as the Spaniards cut off supplies, particularly the aqueducts conveying water (see below for this third triumph of ancient engineering), from the mainland. The calzadas were the avenues of trade and contributed to the enormous wealth of the city, as the groups conquered by the Triple Alliance, which extended to Guatemala at its height, paid tribute to the capital.

The aqueducts

In 1466 Nezahualcóyotl began the construction of another important hydraulic work, the Chapultepec aqueduct system. It supplied fresh spring water to Tenochtitlán. Before the aqueduct system was built, water was supplied by canoe from the springs at Chapultepec (now a large park in the middle of modern Mexico City). Water was distributed through apantles (open pipes) to public fountains and noble houses.

A second aqueduct was built by Nezahualcóyotl’s successor, Ahuítzotl, around 1500. Although Ahuítzotl had supervised a huge project to rebuild Tenochtitlán, completing the Temple Mayor (the Great Pyramid), the aqueduct project didn’t go so well. At the springs of Coyoacán, Ahuítzotal had a dam and two holding tanks built at elevations necessary to create enough pressure to send water into new aqueducts that joined the existing system. As the story goes, about 40 days after the Coyoacán aqueduct opened, it began to rain. It continued to rain. It poured. The elevated design sent high-pressure floodwaters throughout the city, Ahuítzol took refuge in the Temple Mayor, hit his head on a brand new rock, and died shortly after.

I am now out of both time and space!

For more information:

https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/indice-tematico-mexico-antiguo/las-chinampas-de-mexico-metodos-constructivos

Mundy, Barbara E. The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico City (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015).

Spanish Lesson

By Carolina Garcia

Today we will explore Homographs- words that share the same written form but have different meanings and Homonyms- words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings.

Homographs
Sal: Salt and also the verb to get out (salir)
Sal de ahi – Get out of there

Calle: Street and also the conjugation of the word to silence (callar)
Callete – Shut up

Nada: Nothing and also the conjugation of the verb to swim.
No es nada – it’s nothing

Homonyms
Haya – the verb ‘haber’- to have
Halla – the verb ‘hallar’- to find
Aya – nanny or governess

Hola – hello
Ola – wave

Hierba – herb
Hierva – conjugated verb of hervir- to boil

Ciento – hundred
Siento – I feel

Bienes – property
Vienes – conjugated form of venir- to come

A locally made movie about Huatulco is hitting the silver screen of Cinépolis on February 2nd, 2023. Titled HUATULCO BIOSPHERE RESERVE: BASINS AND CORALS OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC

By Kary Vannice

This hour and nine-minute-long passion project filmed and produced by locals José María Arias Méndez and Jesús López Aguilar is an audiovisual journey through the wetlands of the Central Coast of Oaxaca. Their intention was to create this film as a testimony of the local biodiversity, human processes, and challenges of living in a Natural Sanctuary.

FILM SYNOPSIS:
Huatulco’s unique ecosystem is a sanctuary for the conservation of life, the evidence of this is alive in its natural biodiversity and cultural expressions: beaches, rivers, jungles, reefs, gastronomy, music, dances, festivities, quality of life, economic opportunities, healthy environment and sightseeing.

What are the origins of this natural paradise and what actions we must undertake to preserve our quality of life here? These are the questions that this trip through the Huatulco’s wetlands and social developments strives to answer. Massive tracts of jungle, mangrove forests, dunes, springs, rivers, reefs and transition ecosystems, make up a picturesque and aesthetic walk through the contrasting climates of 10 micro-watersheds that cross the municipalities of: Todos Santos, Cuajinicuil, Arroyo Xúchitl, Cacaluta, Chahué , Tangolunda, Coyula, Aguaje de Cocos, Arenal and Chachacual.

“Huatulco: Biosphere Reserve. Basins and Corals of the South Pacific” provides a window through which we, as humanity, can view and contemplate our role in this diverse ecosystem.

THEMES EXPLORED:

  1. BIODIVERSITY: An exploration of the characteristics and bio-environmental conditions in the region.
  2. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: Benefits that nature provides to humans and its impact on the lives of Huatulqueños.
  3. CYCLES OF NATURE: Macro and micro environmental dynamics of the basins of the Sierra Sur and the Coast of Oaxaca
  4. RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION: A call to become aware of our energy expenditure and resources consumption as local residents.
  5. HUATULQUEÑO COROLLARY: List of recommendations to prevent the most recurrent environmental damage taking place on the coast, in tourist and community spaces.

The film will be shown with English subtitles and all proceeds will be used to fund a grassroots effort to show the film throughout rural areas to raise awareness of human impacts on the local ecosystem and biodiversity.

Residents of Huatulco who wish to play a role in the preservation of our “jewel of paradise” here on the Costa Chica of Oaxaca, will want to support this local effort to educate people on the best ways to protect the unique and special biodiversity of our region. Keep a watchful eye on the local social media groups and pages as the premier of this film approaches so you don’t miss out!