Northern Mexico and Tucson–December 2003
Northern Mexico and Tucson – December 2003
On Friday, December 12, 2003, we flew from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona, to begin a two-week tour of the Sonoran Desert.
The next morning we boarded the bus and met our driver, Mike Rose, who was a veteran Alaskan policeman, and our guide, Eduardo Rivero from Chihuahua. (During the trip, Mike periodically regaled us with stories of his police days … 20 years on the force. Eduardo provided knowledgeable commentary and facilitated our learning experience.) After a brief tour of Tucson, we drove to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the finest exhibits of American desert plants, animals, birds and fish in the world. This museum was very well planned and executed.
On 21 acres of beautifully landscaped hills, the museum has displays of over 300 animal species (including mountain lions and wolves and Haya’s favorite, Gila monsters) and 1200 plants in natural settings. As we walked the two miles of paths, lizards and other small animals scurried across before us.
After the museum, our bus carried us to the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains where we took a tram ride into a canyon that rose through vertical rock formations that looked as though they could fall at any time. We had not seen such rock formations since the river canyons of Guilin, China
I had taken the book, A Short History of Mexico by Selden Rodman with me to read as we traveled. I started reading on the first night after dinner.
Haya and I had been in Mexico before. We’ve been to Tijuana, Rosarita Beach, Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cozumel, and Chichen Itza, but I had not really studied much about the country except for the antiquities.
As I read this book, finishing on the last day as we flew home, I learned the tragic nature of this land. Anyone who has been to the Balkans, the Middle East, or Africa, understands that these lands have suffered war and invasion since the start of history. The bloody soil of Mexico may outdo them all. I’ve enclosed a brief history of Mexico at the end of this trip description, but it barely gives an idea of how the people of this land have suffered at the hands of each other and at the hands of Europeans.
Sunday morning our bus took us to San Xavier del Bac Mission, built in the 18th century. The Mission stands starkly alone in the Arizona desert. Its strange architecture is a mixture of Byzantine, Moorish and Mexican Indian styles and one of its two bell towers was never finished. The Mission was founded by Father Kino, a Jesuit priest who explored northern Mexico.
After the Mission, we started for the Mexican border, Nogales, where we could change dollars for pesos (about 11 pesos to the dollar) and the nine-hour trip to San Carlos on the shore of the Gulf of California (or, as its called in Mexico, the Sea of Cortez). Throughout our trip, Haya had a chance to exercise her skills at Spanish and act as an informal translator for other members of the tour. I occasionally acted as her humble assistant.
The San Carlos Plaza Hotel is a modern, seaside resort hotel about two miles from the town of San Carlos, located on what is almost a private cove. An artificial beach has been created, but much of the surrounding seaside is rocky.
Morning light allowed us to see nearby Tetakawi Mountain. The locals call it the “Goat’s Teats” because of the shape of the two slim peaks rising from the summit. We went to a pearl farm operated by the University of Monterrey, listened to a lecture on pearl cultivation, and the ladies shopped at the university store for jewelry. These pearls have an unusual, bluish color from the minerals present in the bay.
The pearls are grown from bits of mother-of-pearl implanted in the oysters by the staff. The “seeds” are made from mother-of-pearl harvested in the bay and sent to China to be cut and shaped by specialized machinery.
Haya and I have seen pearl farms in Japan and China, but this is the only one in the Western Hemisphere.
After lunch in Guymas we explored this old town on our own and then joined a two-hour Marguerita cruise around the Bahia de San Carlos. The boats were operated by “Gary’s Dive Shop.” Gary is an enterprising middle-aged American who owns the Dive Shop, a fleet of sports fishing boats, three tour boats like the one we were on, a couple of souvenir shops in the town, a meeting planning service, shuttle service and so forth. Gary’s big yellow billboards are all over town.
Gary’s crew on our boat were very liberal with the massively watered-down Marguerita’s. With so little tequila in them, a few of our fellow passengers had to convince themselves that they were “feeling the alcohol.”
The next morning started a “free day” and I took the opportunity to take a three-hour jeep ride along the coast and inland to the mountain range. From the crest of a nearby hill you can see the coast of Baja California about 90 miles across the bay.
Here, as soon as we left the resorts and were out of sight of the Club Paradiso (formerly Club Med), the desert ran down to the rocky shore of the sea. Along the deeply rutted dirt road on the other side of a small hill we came across the first of three fishing villages.
The road followed the erratic coastline and rose then plunged through the dry gully’s dug by rainy season runoff from the mountains.
On the ridges between the dry washes, the fishermen and their families had built shacks of every kind of scrap material. Shacks were made of driftwood, pieces of highway billboards, scrap lumber, crates and boxes, truck and bus bodies, old cars, old refrigerators.
One ambitious soul had a small store with a pitiful supply of canned goods.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no plumbing. Beat-up boats were pulled up onto the small scraps of beach between the huge rocks. Nets dried by hanging on the boats, rocks, or the sides of the shacks. Almost no vegetation could be seen other than a few cacti.
Half the shacks were deserted because the fisher families had abandoned them after a huge storm last fall in the hurricane season.
The folk who were left fished every day for the squid that provided their income. A four-wheel drive tank truck came down the dusty road once a day to buy the squid, which were shipped to Japan as delicacies.
Much of the Mexican population that we were to see was poor by any standard; however, these squid fishermen and their families were among the poorest.
Our Jeep ride took us away from the beach and toward the foothills and a hidden spring at the base of a cliff. The cliff was almost covered with the roots and branches of a huge old wild fig tree.
As we drove back toward the hotel, we passed some of the largest extant cactus species (the cardon cactus lives up to 200 years and reaches a height of up to 65 feet) and the ironwood tree, which can reach an age of 1500 years. The ironwood is so dense that it does not float. It is a favorite carving media for local artists.
On the trail back, we passed the ruins of a movie set that was used to make the picture “Catch 22.”
Wednesday morning we rode south through the desert to the state of Sinaloa and the town of El Fuerte (The Fort). Our accommodations were built on a 200-year-old rustic hotel with rooms of various ages surrounding a courtyard. The hotel was located next to the hilltop museum based on the fort for which the town was named.
The owners had decorated each room of the hotel with carvings, statues, and pictures from all over the world. The courtyard walls were hung with carved masks and topiary trees in large pots.
Margueritas and a concert by local musicians preceded dinner … a Mexican buffet.
As usual, our guide Eduardo Rivero made sure that Haya had vegetarian food.
After dinner, we wandered on our own into the town. In the enclosed square of the city hall, we found a teenagers’ performance of the nativity. The youngsters were in costume and the pageant included red costumed devils with horns and tails. After the show, the actors distributed candies to the children and other guests watching.
As with many of the public buildings in Mexico, the interior walls of the city municipal building were decorated with murals. The murals of Mexico are a treat. They usually describe the history of the country or the locality in vibrant action scenes and brilliant colors.
On Thursday morning we went to the Mayo Indian village of Teheuco to spend the better part of the day with our Mayo (not Mayan) hosts. The school here receives substantial support from the Grand Circle Foundation. (This was a Grand Circle tour. We had found that Grand Circle Foundation supports charities throughout the world. When you travel with them, they usually take you to a place that they support with contributions.)
The school was closed for the holidays, but we had taken a collection in the bus to buy winter clothing and shoes for some of the children. We gave this clothing to a family that had just arrived to pick up their children from the boarding school. The gifts had been intended for others who had already gone home, so these two kids were surprised and overjoyed with the winter jacket and the boots.
In the center of the village, we gathered under a wide-spreading tree at the townspeople’s meeting place. There we were entertained by a band of native stringed instruments and drums. The band played an interminable tune named “Cat without a tail.” The band then accompanied a grandfather and his grandson who danced wearing stuffed deer-head, horned headdresses. The deer-dancers invited our group of alte cockers to dance, but there were no takers.
Grand Circle always arranges meals with local people on their tour agendas. In Tehueco, Haya and I and four unattached ladies had lunch at the home of Conchita, one of the ladies of the village.
Conchita is in her mid-twenties … a 5-foot tall, chunky woman showing the results of too much starch in her diet. She was born in a village about twenty miles away and moved to Tehueco when she was married at the age of fourteen. She has a ready smile and flashing brown eyes, but the tiny lines beginning in her face bespeak the quality of life in the village. While her 12-year-old daughter brought out the family photo albums, Conchita served us Hibiscus tea. (Hibiscus tea tastes awful, but makes up for it by having no recognizable nutritional value.)
Next, she served us a vegetarian meal in her living/dining/family room. In her home there was only the one bedroom, the kitchen, and this general-purpose room. Two other dirt-floored rooms were unfinished and would be completed when needed. Conchita’s home had electricity and she had a television set and a washing machine.
Conchita’s children, a girl and boy, showed us pictures of the family and drawings that they had made.
As we sat down to the table, one of Conchita’s male in-laws came in. He spoke to me, since I was the only male guest present. He told me about going to the US illegally to find work, and how he was eventually caught and sent back. He told all this in a dry, factual manner as if it were ordinary, day-to-day life. Perhaps it is. Years ago my father’s sister sneaked illegally into the US and was thrown out when caught … but that’s another story.
Back in El Fuerte, we went to a covered Mercado … a large warehouse-like building with many small booths and vendors. In the Mercado everything from food through clothing, tools, and small furniture could be bought.
Before a Mexican buffet dinner, in the courtyard of our hotel, we had Margueritas and mariachi music and dancing. This time, the drinks were stronger.
After dinner, our guide had arranged for an unscheduled visit to a local cantina.
We walked through the village and encountered another teenagers’ activity … a nativity parade. Following a police car, a young Joseph led a burro on which Mary, holding a baby-doll Jesus, was seated. Mary waved and smiled to all the bystanders along the street. The burro was followed by costumed wise men, shepherds, and many devils. The devils ran onto the sidewalk and into and out of the watching crowd, calling, laughing and teasing.
We continued toward the cantina through the streets with sidewalks one-to-two feet above the street level (to deal with the sometimes torrential rains and no runoff sewage system). The cantina owner had made an exception for our tour group and allowed women into the bar.
Normally, the only women in a cantina are the owner’s wife and the waitresses. We pushed tables together to accommodate the group and ordered beer. The liter bottles of Tecate beer were served resting in ice in large, topless coffee cans.
Some of the local men played the jukebox. Two of them were seriously drunk and, to the accompaniment of the mariachi music they put on a performance for the gringos. One of them, wearing a fine, tan three-quarter length wool coat and matching western hat, did an impromptu strip tease, doffing the slightly torn coat and his hat to reveal a dirty laborers’ shirt and jeans. He imitated a woman, dancing “seductively” to the music and baring one breast in flashes of daring.
Early Friday morning we traveled to the train station to await the train. Each of us had a small bag containing two-days worth of travel stuff. Our main bags would go on our bus through the mountains and meet us in Chihuahua.
The El Chihuahua Pacifico Railroad passenger and freight train arrived only a half-hour late. We boarded in one car, disregarding our assigned seats. The train travels from El Fuerte to Chihuahua, but we would go only about half way, to Divisadero, the central point of the Copper Canyon.
This part of the line runs from Los Mochis (The Place of the Turtles) near Topolabampo at sea level, to Divisadero at about 9,000 feet elevation. During the trip we passed such sights as the Agua Caliente Bridge over the Fuerte River (1,637 feet long), Tunnel 86 (5,966 feet long), Chinipas Bridge over the Chinipas Rivers (335 feet high and over 1,000 feet long, La Pera Tunnel (3,047 feet long and horseshoe-shaped within the mountain), huge switchbacks ascending the mountainsides, small Indian towns built of log cabins, missions, lumber camps, more tunnels and bridges, and finally … Divisadero.
Perched on the edge of the canyon looking almost straight down to the Rio Urique 4,135 feet below, and only a hundred feet from the railroad station, is our hotel. Our train trip took almost seven hours allowing for easy adaptation to the altitude.
This rail link, finished in 1961, was the last piece of the shortest route from Kansas City to the Pacific Coast … a venture that was started 90 years before and cost 90 million dollars. (Look at a map some time. It’s hundreds of miles shorter to Topolobampo than to San Francisco.)
From the Texas border to the tiny town, and large deep-water port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa, there are 86 tunnels (including one that makes a complete circle inside a mountain) and 37 major bridges. Some of the bridges are prestressed steel and concrete, the first of their kind used in Mexico.
The project to build the rail line was difficult and resulted in companies being formed, franchises being bought, concessions granted, short lines built, and several companies going bankrupt. Finally, the Mexican Government took over the line and finished it. However, the expected trade to Topolabampo for shipping to the Orient from the central US never materialized. Topolobampo remains an unknown fishing village and the line carries mainly tourists like us.
We disembarked from the train at the Divisadero Station and carried our small bags through a hundred foot long passage between vendors’ souvenir handicraft stalls and women and children fixing burritos on steel drum stoves. Between the end of this passage and the hotel entrance, Tarahumara Indian women sat on blankets displaying for sale their carvings and baskets intricately woven of desert plants.
These women climb thousands of feet on trails and ladders from the villages along the river below to bring their wares daily to sell near the hotel. Many carried babies wrapped in their “rebozo” shawls as they climbed.
One wall of the lobby was glass and set literally on the rim of the canyon. We were lucky to be assigned a room just off the lobby in the original part of the hotel, so our “front porch” was the canyon’s edge.
(There were some minor problems with toilet flushing, which I didn’t understand since there was more than a 4,000-foot fall for the sewage; however, the staff fixed this condition quickly.)
Haya lit Sabbath candles in the fireplace in our room. Several of the other Jews on the tour joined us and were touched by the ceremony being conducted in this remote Indian village. They probably did not realize that Jews have been coming to Mexico since the Spanish discovered it. In the first migration they were fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, which in 1492, banned the Jews from living in Spain.
On Saturday morning we visited the home of a Tarahumara shaman or medicine man. He was dressed for us in “native costume,” and I suspect that he only does this for tourists.
Outdoors, in the clear mountain air, he had set up a table in the center of a square of log benches. The table contained examples of the herbs and other paraphernalia peculiar to his trade. Peggy Sue, one of our group members, asked for some marijuana. The shaman wrapped up a small amount in a paper for her, but our guide intervened.
The shaman had a good sense of humor and was obviously more sophisticated than he pretended. (Since it was a free afternoon for us, he offered to rent horses to any who were interested.) He demonstrated diagnoses by using eggs, rubbing the whole egg over selected parts of the (mostly women’s) body, then breaking the egg into a glass and “reading” the results.
Several of our group commented on the “accuracy” of the shaman’s observations, but I noticed that he was a good student of people’s gestures, movements, comments, stance and other leading information. Besides that, in a group composed mostly of older people, everyone has “a back problem” or a “shortness of breath.”
The shaman also informed us that the hibiscus tea that he served was good for weight loss. I am not surprised.
Our bus caught up with us in Divisadero, and the next morning we started through the central highlands of the Sonoran Desert, paralleling the Sierra Madre. On the way to Chihuahua we made two stops. One stop was for lunch in Guerrero at an apple farm owned by the same family that owned the Divisadero Hotel.
The second stop was at a Mennonite Farm. Shortly after the 1910 Revolution, a group of Mennonites from Canada emigrated to Mexico. They had been upset by the Canadian government’s insistence on their children attending school and on the demand for paying taxes. They bought huge tracts of land and brought their families and culture to this highland area. Although they have gradually adopted farming technology, cars, and electricity, their way of life is still permeated with their worship services, conservative dress, use of “Platt Deutsch” language, and denial of modern “entertainment.”
For me, this was an interesting stop because I grew up in central Pennsylvania, where a large colony of Mennonites make their home. In fact, I was able to exchange a few words of greeting in “Pennsylvania Dutch” with the woman supervising their sales room.
We continued northeast to the city of Chihuahua, the capitol of the state of Chihuahua. This is a modern, rich city in which “maquiladores” have been established. Maquiladores are foreign-owned factories for assembly of products. Many large US and Japanese companies have established these assembly plants for their products. They import parts from all over the world, assemble them using cheap labor in Mexico, and ship them to Mexican and other American markets.
Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Nogales, and many other towns beside Chihuahua are hosts to these plants. The plants are modern. Employees may earn only about a dollar an hour, but the companies train their employees and offer stable employment, health care plans, child day care (most of the workers are women), and other benefits. On Mexico’s new superhighways, the huge trucks roll day and night carrying components and finished products from ports to factories to outlets.
Chihuahua has the richest economy in Mexico because of the state’s mining, lumbering, agriculture, and tourism. About 44 percent of the city’s workers are employed in services and commerce. While slums still exist, they are gradually giving way to better middle-class housing.
While Mexican salaries appear to be far below those in the US, and we found that goods sold in Wal-Mart and other large department stores are priced the same as in the US, housing is strongly subsidized and controlled by the government, so it costs far less than in other countries.
The first uprising of the 1910 Revolution took place in Chihuahua under the command of Francisco “Pancho” Villa. His home is now a museum that we were able to visit. Villa had several “wives” but only the first inherited this home in Chihuahua.
Chihuahua has many parks and monuments, a strong commercial base, good downtown shopping, good schools and “autonomous universities,” and an active nightlife. (Autonomous universities are those supported by the government, but managed by a student-elected administration.) The parks and public buildings were decorated for the holidays and many people filled the walking street in the city center.
In our free time, Haya and I could not resist going to a large department store near our hotel. It was very “American.” However, we also found in nearby streets a Mercado (a covered market) and many small locally owned shops. These large buildings were packed from the floor almost to the fifteen-foot-high ceilings with goods on display … clothing, luggage, small appliances, tools, toys, jewelry.
As we walked through, I saw a small family ahead of us … a painfully thin young man and wife, and a little girl walking beside them with another child in the father’s arms. From their clothing they appeared to be Indian farmers visiting the city. They stopped every few yards and the children gazed with wide eyes at the displays of goods. They did not buy anything. The Christmas treat for the children appeared to be just looking at the toys and other wonders of the Mercado.
In the Mercado Haya wished to look at a blouse and asked the pretty 17-year-old mestizo girl attending the stall to take it down. Haya asked in Spanish, but the girl replied in English, which she had been studying in school. Her vocabulary was limited, and she asked us about certain words, but her pronunciation was almost flawless. This charming young Chihuahuan may have a bright future if she is not trapped into a premature marriage and children.
Before we left, we bought an extra canvas bag to carry all the baskets and rebozos that we had bought in the highlands. Haya also bought a serape and a beautiful poncho with vibrant colors. The Reforma Mercado in Chihuahua made us feel at home, since it so resembled the “suk” near our home in central Jerusalem.
In the evening, we were the “guests” of a Chihuahuan family for dinner. The husband, Jorge Flores, works as a car salesman, the wife cooks and conducts dinners for Grand Circle guests, and the 18-year-old son is studying in the university with ambitions to go to a US college in the future. The son spoke colloquial US English with little or no accent. He is tall, slim and handsome.
The dinner was a very pleasant chicken dinner that contrasted starkly with the lunch we had in the Tarahumara country village. Our hosts were gracious in the tradition of old Mexico.
From Chihuahua, we left the next morning for the nine-hour drive through the desert, past El Paso, Texas, Mesilla, New Mexico, and on into Las Cruces with a stop at Stahmann’s … the world’s largest family-owned pecan farm. A few hours of visiting the tourist shops in Old Mesilla, one of the hangouts of the infamous Billy the Kid, was enough to finish our taste for souvenir shopping.
Our overnight stay in Las Cruces did not allow us time to see the town, but we did spend an hour at the rather ordinary Farm and Ranch Heritage museum as we left town in the morning.
After an overnight stay in Tucson with a farewell dinner, we were on our way to the airport and another Horizon Airlines experience.
With few exceptions, our companions on the trip were good, convivial company and the trip was set at a pace that we all could handle.
Those of you who have followed my previous writings know that I enjoy food. Perhaps it is my palate, but I find that Mexican cuisine is nothing to write about. It is either too spicy or too bland.
I think that if I return to Mexico for another tour, it will be to the Yucatan peninsula where the ruins of the Olmec and Mayan civilizations will provide more interesting sights.
Nevertheless, as we crossed the dry wash that was once the mighty Rio Grande and we passed towns with names like El Paso, Santa Teresa, Las Cruces, Cochise and Tombstone, I could once again be that small boy sitting on the floor beside my parents’ Philco radio.
In the deepest corners of my mind I could thrill to the baritone voice of the announcer repeating, “… the thundering hoof beats of his great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!”
“Hiyoooo, Silver… Awaaay!!”
The exciting music of the William Tell Overture swells in the background and I dreamed of desert adventures.
A Brief History of Mexico
It is believed the first humans reached Central America about 15,000 years ago. The first identifiable culture, Clovis, existed around 10,000 BC. Some stone tools dating back to 9,000 BC have been found in Guatemala. Around this time, the Fourth Ice Age was drawing to a close and the climate was gradually warming up enabling humans to begin eating more plants and less meat. This change was underway around 8,000 BC.
From 8,000 BC to 2,000 BC the inhabitants of Central America gradually became more agrarian and they domesticated beans, corn, peppers, squash and other plants. During this time there was still no jungle, just savannah and grassland and some trees. Evidence indicates that a tropical jungle climate appeared in Central America only quite recently, after the Mayan civilization was well underway. Towards the end of this period, some recognizably Mayan villages appeared and pottery and ceramics appeared. Some villages had a temple.
The period from 1500 BC to 300 AD is called the "Pre-Classic" period of Mayan culture. During this period the Mayan language developed. The Mayans experienced population growth and larger towns were constructed.
Meanwhile, about 800 BC, the Olmec culture was developing in southern Mexico. The Olmec is viewed as the "mother culture" in Central America; They developed a system of writing, the long-count calendar and a complex religion. The Olmecs had a considerable influence on the fledgling Maya culture in Guatemala. The Maya adopted many of the Olmec skills and practices and developed them further. It seems that the mixture of the Olmec and Mayan cultures touched off an explosion of cultural development. Archaeologists are not sure of the cause but from 300 BC to 300 AD, the Teotihuacan culture enjoyed tremendous development in architecture, writing, and calendrics throughout Mayan lands and the population increased. The great cities of El Mirador, Kaminaljuyú, Río Azúl and Tikal all were founded during this time. Mayan cities often went to war against each other.
The Classic Period of Maya development is the 600 years from 300 AD to 900 AD. The Maya refined the long-count calendar and developed a more advanced written language. The Maya had a tendency to tear down buildings and temples and rebuild new ones over the rubble of the old. Some buildings are built on several layers of previous buildings. All of the great Mayan cities as they appear today were built during the Classic Period, over the remains of previous construction. Architecture and culture blossomed during the Classic Period. The Maya began to accurately record important events on carved stelae. Excellent examples of Mayan stelae and art can be seen at Quirigua, an easy day-trip from Rio Dulce.
Early in the Classic Period, around 400 AD, the Maya became heavily influenced by the civilization of Teotihuacan to the north. Teotihuacan was the most powerful culture in Central Mexico. Much about this relationship is unclear but it appears to have been beneficial to both civilizations because both prospered and developed at this time. Evidence also exists that there was interaction and trade between Central American cultures and European, African and Polynesian cultures -- well before the time of Columbus.
Around the year 650 AD the civilization of Teotihuacan collapsed. This collapse triggered an upset in the Mayan civilization. Apparently there was a struggle to fill the power-vacuum left by the collapse of Teotihuacan. Now free of its relationship to Teotihuacan, the Maya reached their highest levels of sophistication. Art, astronomy and religion reached new heights. The population grew and cities expanded in this era of greatest Mayan prosperity. Astronomy and arithmetics advanced and the Mayans were able to measure the orbits of celestial bodies with unprecedented accuracy. The Maya predicted the motions of Venus to a degree of precision only equaled in recent times. The Maya traded with cultures as far away as South America and the southern US. Mayan cities were much larger and more populous than any city in Europe. The Mayas greatest artistic works in pottery and jade were made during this pinnacle of Mayan development.
Looking at the grey ruins of Mayan architecture today, it is hard to imagine that they were originally painted in bright colors, red, white, yellow and green, inside and out. Certain internal chambers have been preserved and microscopic traces of paint on the stonework have enabled archaeologists to reconstruct what Tikal and other sites probably looked like.
However, this peak of Mayan development was to be short lived. By 750 AD problems arose and the collapse was underway. There are many theories about what happened. By this time, the climate was certainly changing from grassland and savannah into the tropical climate we now associate with Guatemala. Perhaps there were food shortages. In any event, the population dropped and the cities were gradually abandoned. By 830 AD construction and development had come to a halt. Some cities in Belize and Yucatan survived longer but in Guatemala the population abandoned the cities and redistributed itself into the farming villages of the highlands that we see today.
By 980 the Toltecs consolidated their hold on Northern Mexico, only to lose this area by 1200 AD to the Aztecs. By 1248, the Toltecs retreated to Yucatan and the Aztecs ruled from Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).
In 1502, Moctezuma II took the throne of the Aztec Empire and ruled most of Mexico. In 1519, the Spanish explorer, Cortez landed at Veracruz and defeated one tribe after another until he and his technologically superior troops entered Tenochtitlan and made Moctezuma their subject.
The fact that they had horses, swords, guns, cannon, and armor provided their technological superiority. The fact that they had white skins confirmed an Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl’s “godhood” and invincibility.
The native peoples held blood sacrifices in which hundreds … maybe thousands … were killed and they were continually at war; however, after the Spanish arrived, it was even worse.
1521 – Siege and destruction of Tenochtitlan the largest city in the world.
1522 – Alvorado leaves a trail of destruction on his way to Guatemala, defeating the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs, and the Tarascon Empire.
1540 – Montejos founds Merida and enslaves the Toltec-Mayas.
1540 – 1810 – Mexican Indians held as slaves on huge Spanish -owned ranchos. Spanish rulers take native treasures to Europe and divide the land and its riches into ranchos as big as states. Large numbers of the indigenous population die from slavery conditions and European diseases. Interbreeding creates a new force, the mestizos, who eventually revolt against Spanish rule.
1812 – Independence from Spain declared by Iturbide, who also declares himself Emperor, is crowned in 1822, and flees to European exile in 1823 (taking the treasury with him).
1834 – Santa Anna begins his dictatorship of Mexico after years of internecine wars.
1836 – The Alamo falls to Santa Anna’s troops.
1837 – Texas declares independence.
1846 – US declares war on Mexico. General Doniphan conquers New Mexico, Zachary Taylor takes Monterrey.
1847 – Kearny takes California, Wilfred Scott takes Veracruz and becomes military governor of Mexico.
1848 – With the Treaty of Hidalgo, Mexico cedes New Mexico, Arizona, and California to the US for payment of $15 million.
1857 – Jaurez “elected” president, but driven from office by rival armies one year later.
1861 – European armies invade Mexico.
1862 – General Zaragoza defeats the French at Puebla on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo).
1863- French take Mexico City and install Maximillian Hapsburg as Emperor.
1867 – Maximillian executed by revolutionaries.
1872 – Juarez dies and Diaz revolts against government.
1876 - Diaz rules a dictator.
1876 – 1910 - Indians and mestizos are literally slaves again under the large landowners and US corporations.
1910 – Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Pascual Orozco storm Cuidad Juarez and restart the revolution.
1911 – Diaz flees into exile. Madero is elected president.
1913 – Madero assassinated, Huerta becomes dictator.
1914 – Huerta defeated by Villa’s and Obregon’s armies. Villa and Zapata join forces to fight Carranza and Obregon.
1915 – Villa’s forces defeated by Obregon’s.
1920 – Carranza elected, ousted, and then assassinated.
1924 – Calles elected president (jefe maximo)..
1928 – Obregon assassinated.
1931 – Anti-clerical campaign kills Catholic priests.
1934 – Distribution of land to peasants begins under Presidente Cardenas rule.
1938 – Cardenas expropriates foreign oil company properties, risks war with US. Roosevelt and Cardenas agree to payments for oil companies.
1938 – today – relative peace except for occasional rebellions of Indian tribes in the South.
On Friday, December 12, 2003, we flew from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona, to begin a two-week tour of the Sonoran Desert.
The next morning we boarded the bus and met our driver, Mike Rose, who was a veteran Alaskan policeman, and our guide, Eduardo Rivero from Chihuahua. (During the trip, Mike periodically regaled us with stories of his police days … 20 years on the force. Eduardo provided knowledgeable commentary and facilitated our learning experience.) After a brief tour of Tucson, we drove to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the finest exhibits of American desert plants, animals, birds and fish in the world. This museum was very well planned and executed.
On 21 acres of beautifully landscaped hills, the museum has displays of over 300 animal species (including mountain lions and wolves and Haya’s favorite, Gila monsters) and 1200 plants in natural settings. As we walked the two miles of paths, lizards and other small animals scurried across before us.
After the museum, our bus carried us to the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains where we took a tram ride into a canyon that rose through vertical rock formations that looked as though they could fall at any time. We had not seen such rock formations since the river canyons of Guilin, China
I had taken the book, A Short History of Mexico by Selden Rodman with me to read as we traveled. I started reading on the first night after dinner.
Haya and I had been in Mexico before. We’ve been to Tijuana, Rosarita Beach, Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cozumel, and Chichen Itza, but I had not really studied much about the country except for the antiquities.
As I read this book, finishing on the last day as we flew home, I learned the tragic nature of this land. Anyone who has been to the Balkans, the Middle East, or Africa, understands that these lands have suffered war and invasion since the start of history. The bloody soil of Mexico may outdo them all. I’ve enclosed a brief history of Mexico at the end of this trip description, but it barely gives an idea of how the people of this land have suffered at the hands of each other and at the hands of Europeans.
Sunday morning our bus took us to San Xavier del Bac Mission, built in the 18th century. The Mission stands starkly alone in the Arizona desert. Its strange architecture is a mixture of Byzantine, Moorish and Mexican Indian styles and one of its two bell towers was never finished. The Mission was founded by Father Kino, a Jesuit priest who explored northern Mexico.
After the Mission, we started for the Mexican border, Nogales, where we could change dollars for pesos (about 11 pesos to the dollar) and the nine-hour trip to San Carlos on the shore of the Gulf of California (or, as its called in Mexico, the Sea of Cortez). Throughout our trip, Haya had a chance to exercise her skills at Spanish and act as an informal translator for other members of the tour. I occasionally acted as her humble assistant.
The San Carlos Plaza Hotel is a modern, seaside resort hotel about two miles from the town of San Carlos, located on what is almost a private cove. An artificial beach has been created, but much of the surrounding seaside is rocky.
Morning light allowed us to see nearby Tetakawi Mountain. The locals call it the “Goat’s Teats” because of the shape of the two slim peaks rising from the summit. We went to a pearl farm operated by the University of Monterrey, listened to a lecture on pearl cultivation, and the ladies shopped at the university store for jewelry. These pearls have an unusual, bluish color from the minerals present in the bay.
The pearls are grown from bits of mother-of-pearl implanted in the oysters by the staff. The “seeds” are made from mother-of-pearl harvested in the bay and sent to China to be cut and shaped by specialized machinery.
Haya and I have seen pearl farms in Japan and China, but this is the only one in the Western Hemisphere.
After lunch in Guymas we explored this old town on our own and then joined a two-hour Marguerita cruise around the Bahia de San Carlos. The boats were operated by “Gary’s Dive Shop.” Gary is an enterprising middle-aged American who owns the Dive Shop, a fleet of sports fishing boats, three tour boats like the one we were on, a couple of souvenir shops in the town, a meeting planning service, shuttle service and so forth. Gary’s big yellow billboards are all over town.
Gary’s crew on our boat were very liberal with the massively watered-down Marguerita’s. With so little tequila in them, a few of our fellow passengers had to convince themselves that they were “feeling the alcohol.”
The next morning started a “free day” and I took the opportunity to take a three-hour jeep ride along the coast and inland to the mountain range. From the crest of a nearby hill you can see the coast of Baja California about 90 miles across the bay.
Here, as soon as we left the resorts and were out of sight of the Club Paradiso (formerly Club Med), the desert ran down to the rocky shore of the sea. Along the deeply rutted dirt road on the other side of a small hill we came across the first of three fishing villages.
The road followed the erratic coastline and rose then plunged through the dry gully’s dug by rainy season runoff from the mountains.
On the ridges between the dry washes, the fishermen and their families had built shacks of every kind of scrap material. Shacks were made of driftwood, pieces of highway billboards, scrap lumber, crates and boxes, truck and bus bodies, old cars, old refrigerators.
One ambitious soul had a small store with a pitiful supply of canned goods.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no plumbing. Beat-up boats were pulled up onto the small scraps of beach between the huge rocks. Nets dried by hanging on the boats, rocks, or the sides of the shacks. Almost no vegetation could be seen other than a few cacti.
Half the shacks were deserted because the fisher families had abandoned them after a huge storm last fall in the hurricane season.
The folk who were left fished every day for the squid that provided their income. A four-wheel drive tank truck came down the dusty road once a day to buy the squid, which were shipped to Japan as delicacies.
Much of the Mexican population that we were to see was poor by any standard; however, these squid fishermen and their families were among the poorest.
Our Jeep ride took us away from the beach and toward the foothills and a hidden spring at the base of a cliff. The cliff was almost covered with the roots and branches of a huge old wild fig tree.
As we drove back toward the hotel, we passed some of the largest extant cactus species (the cardon cactus lives up to 200 years and reaches a height of up to 65 feet) and the ironwood tree, which can reach an age of 1500 years. The ironwood is so dense that it does not float. It is a favorite carving media for local artists.
On the trail back, we passed the ruins of a movie set that was used to make the picture “Catch 22.”
Wednesday morning we rode south through the desert to the state of Sinaloa and the town of El Fuerte (The Fort). Our accommodations were built on a 200-year-old rustic hotel with rooms of various ages surrounding a courtyard. The hotel was located next to the hilltop museum based on the fort for which the town was named.
The owners had decorated each room of the hotel with carvings, statues, and pictures from all over the world. The courtyard walls were hung with carved masks and topiary trees in large pots.
Margueritas and a concert by local musicians preceded dinner … a Mexican buffet.
As usual, our guide Eduardo Rivero made sure that Haya had vegetarian food.
After dinner, we wandered on our own into the town. In the enclosed square of the city hall, we found a teenagers’ performance of the nativity. The youngsters were in costume and the pageant included red costumed devils with horns and tails. After the show, the actors distributed candies to the children and other guests watching.
As with many of the public buildings in Mexico, the interior walls of the city municipal building were decorated with murals. The murals of Mexico are a treat. They usually describe the history of the country or the locality in vibrant action scenes and brilliant colors.
On Thursday morning we went to the Mayo Indian village of Teheuco to spend the better part of the day with our Mayo (not Mayan) hosts. The school here receives substantial support from the Grand Circle Foundation. (This was a Grand Circle tour. We had found that Grand Circle Foundation supports charities throughout the world. When you travel with them, they usually take you to a place that they support with contributions.)
The school was closed for the holidays, but we had taken a collection in the bus to buy winter clothing and shoes for some of the children. We gave this clothing to a family that had just arrived to pick up their children from the boarding school. The gifts had been intended for others who had already gone home, so these two kids were surprised and overjoyed with the winter jacket and the boots.
In the center of the village, we gathered under a wide-spreading tree at the townspeople’s meeting place. There we were entertained by a band of native stringed instruments and drums. The band played an interminable tune named “Cat without a tail.” The band then accompanied a grandfather and his grandson who danced wearing stuffed deer-head, horned headdresses. The deer-dancers invited our group of alte cockers to dance, but there were no takers.
Grand Circle always arranges meals with local people on their tour agendas. In Tehueco, Haya and I and four unattached ladies had lunch at the home of Conchita, one of the ladies of the village.
Conchita is in her mid-twenties … a 5-foot tall, chunky woman showing the results of too much starch in her diet. She was born in a village about twenty miles away and moved to Tehueco when she was married at the age of fourteen. She has a ready smile and flashing brown eyes, but the tiny lines beginning in her face bespeak the quality of life in the village. While her 12-year-old daughter brought out the family photo albums, Conchita served us Hibiscus tea. (Hibiscus tea tastes awful, but makes up for it by having no recognizable nutritional value.)
Next, she served us a vegetarian meal in her living/dining/family room. In her home there was only the one bedroom, the kitchen, and this general-purpose room. Two other dirt-floored rooms were unfinished and would be completed when needed. Conchita’s home had electricity and she had a television set and a washing machine.
Conchita’s children, a girl and boy, showed us pictures of the family and drawings that they had made.
As we sat down to the table, one of Conchita’s male in-laws came in. He spoke to me, since I was the only male guest present. He told me about going to the US illegally to find work, and how he was eventually caught and sent back. He told all this in a dry, factual manner as if it were ordinary, day-to-day life. Perhaps it is. Years ago my father’s sister sneaked illegally into the US and was thrown out when caught … but that’s another story.
Back in El Fuerte, we went to a covered Mercado … a large warehouse-like building with many small booths and vendors. In the Mercado everything from food through clothing, tools, and small furniture could be bought.
Before a Mexican buffet dinner, in the courtyard of our hotel, we had Margueritas and mariachi music and dancing. This time, the drinks were stronger.
After dinner, our guide had arranged for an unscheduled visit to a local cantina.
We walked through the village and encountered another teenagers’ activity … a nativity parade. Following a police car, a young Joseph led a burro on which Mary, holding a baby-doll Jesus, was seated. Mary waved and smiled to all the bystanders along the street. The burro was followed by costumed wise men, shepherds, and many devils. The devils ran onto the sidewalk and into and out of the watching crowd, calling, laughing and teasing.
We continued toward the cantina through the streets with sidewalks one-to-two feet above the street level (to deal with the sometimes torrential rains and no runoff sewage system). The cantina owner had made an exception for our tour group and allowed women into the bar.
Normally, the only women in a cantina are the owner’s wife and the waitresses. We pushed tables together to accommodate the group and ordered beer. The liter bottles of Tecate beer were served resting in ice in large, topless coffee cans.
Some of the local men played the jukebox. Two of them were seriously drunk and, to the accompaniment of the mariachi music they put on a performance for the gringos. One of them, wearing a fine, tan three-quarter length wool coat and matching western hat, did an impromptu strip tease, doffing the slightly torn coat and his hat to reveal a dirty laborers’ shirt and jeans. He imitated a woman, dancing “seductively” to the music and baring one breast in flashes of daring.
Early Friday morning we traveled to the train station to await the train. Each of us had a small bag containing two-days worth of travel stuff. Our main bags would go on our bus through the mountains and meet us in Chihuahua.
The El Chihuahua Pacifico Railroad passenger and freight train arrived only a half-hour late. We boarded in one car, disregarding our assigned seats. The train travels from El Fuerte to Chihuahua, but we would go only about half way, to Divisadero, the central point of the Copper Canyon.
This part of the line runs from Los Mochis (The Place of the Turtles) near Topolabampo at sea level, to Divisadero at about 9,000 feet elevation. During the trip we passed such sights as the Agua Caliente Bridge over the Fuerte River (1,637 feet long), Tunnel 86 (5,966 feet long), Chinipas Bridge over the Chinipas Rivers (335 feet high and over 1,000 feet long, La Pera Tunnel (3,047 feet long and horseshoe-shaped within the mountain), huge switchbacks ascending the mountainsides, small Indian towns built of log cabins, missions, lumber camps, more tunnels and bridges, and finally … Divisadero.
Perched on the edge of the canyon looking almost straight down to the Rio Urique 4,135 feet below, and only a hundred feet from the railroad station, is our hotel. Our train trip took almost seven hours allowing for easy adaptation to the altitude.
This rail link, finished in 1961, was the last piece of the shortest route from Kansas City to the Pacific Coast … a venture that was started 90 years before and cost 90 million dollars. (Look at a map some time. It’s hundreds of miles shorter to Topolobampo than to San Francisco.)
From the Texas border to the tiny town, and large deep-water port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa, there are 86 tunnels (including one that makes a complete circle inside a mountain) and 37 major bridges. Some of the bridges are prestressed steel and concrete, the first of their kind used in Mexico.
The project to build the rail line was difficult and resulted in companies being formed, franchises being bought, concessions granted, short lines built, and several companies going bankrupt. Finally, the Mexican Government took over the line and finished it. However, the expected trade to Topolabampo for shipping to the Orient from the central US never materialized. Topolobampo remains an unknown fishing village and the line carries mainly tourists like us.
We disembarked from the train at the Divisadero Station and carried our small bags through a hundred foot long passage between vendors’ souvenir handicraft stalls and women and children fixing burritos on steel drum stoves. Between the end of this passage and the hotel entrance, Tarahumara Indian women sat on blankets displaying for sale their carvings and baskets intricately woven of desert plants.
These women climb thousands of feet on trails and ladders from the villages along the river below to bring their wares daily to sell near the hotel. Many carried babies wrapped in their “rebozo” shawls as they climbed.
One wall of the lobby was glass and set literally on the rim of the canyon. We were lucky to be assigned a room just off the lobby in the original part of the hotel, so our “front porch” was the canyon’s edge.
(There were some minor problems with toilet flushing, which I didn’t understand since there was more than a 4,000-foot fall for the sewage; however, the staff fixed this condition quickly.)
Haya lit Sabbath candles in the fireplace in our room. Several of the other Jews on the tour joined us and were touched by the ceremony being conducted in this remote Indian village. They probably did not realize that Jews have been coming to Mexico since the Spanish discovered it. In the first migration they were fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, which in 1492, banned the Jews from living in Spain.
On Saturday morning we visited the home of a Tarahumara shaman or medicine man. He was dressed for us in “native costume,” and I suspect that he only does this for tourists.
Outdoors, in the clear mountain air, he had set up a table in the center of a square of log benches. The table contained examples of the herbs and other paraphernalia peculiar to his trade. Peggy Sue, one of our group members, asked for some marijuana. The shaman wrapped up a small amount in a paper for her, but our guide intervened.
The shaman had a good sense of humor and was obviously more sophisticated than he pretended. (Since it was a free afternoon for us, he offered to rent horses to any who were interested.) He demonstrated diagnoses by using eggs, rubbing the whole egg over selected parts of the (mostly women’s) body, then breaking the egg into a glass and “reading” the results.
Several of our group commented on the “accuracy” of the shaman’s observations, but I noticed that he was a good student of people’s gestures, movements, comments, stance and other leading information. Besides that, in a group composed mostly of older people, everyone has “a back problem” or a “shortness of breath.”
The shaman also informed us that the hibiscus tea that he served was good for weight loss. I am not surprised.
Our bus caught up with us in Divisadero, and the next morning we started through the central highlands of the Sonoran Desert, paralleling the Sierra Madre. On the way to Chihuahua we made two stops. One stop was for lunch in Guerrero at an apple farm owned by the same family that owned the Divisadero Hotel.
The second stop was at a Mennonite Farm. Shortly after the 1910 Revolution, a group of Mennonites from Canada emigrated to Mexico. They had been upset by the Canadian government’s insistence on their children attending school and on the demand for paying taxes. They bought huge tracts of land and brought their families and culture to this highland area. Although they have gradually adopted farming technology, cars, and electricity, their way of life is still permeated with their worship services, conservative dress, use of “Platt Deutsch” language, and denial of modern “entertainment.”
For me, this was an interesting stop because I grew up in central Pennsylvania, where a large colony of Mennonites make their home. In fact, I was able to exchange a few words of greeting in “Pennsylvania Dutch” with the woman supervising their sales room.
We continued northeast to the city of Chihuahua, the capitol of the state of Chihuahua. This is a modern, rich city in which “maquiladores” have been established. Maquiladores are foreign-owned factories for assembly of products. Many large US and Japanese companies have established these assembly plants for their products. They import parts from all over the world, assemble them using cheap labor in Mexico, and ship them to Mexican and other American markets.
Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Nogales, and many other towns beside Chihuahua are hosts to these plants. The plants are modern. Employees may earn only about a dollar an hour, but the companies train their employees and offer stable employment, health care plans, child day care (most of the workers are women), and other benefits. On Mexico’s new superhighways, the huge trucks roll day and night carrying components and finished products from ports to factories to outlets.
Chihuahua has the richest economy in Mexico because of the state’s mining, lumbering, agriculture, and tourism. About 44 percent of the city’s workers are employed in services and commerce. While slums still exist, they are gradually giving way to better middle-class housing.
While Mexican salaries appear to be far below those in the US, and we found that goods sold in Wal-Mart and other large department stores are priced the same as in the US, housing is strongly subsidized and controlled by the government, so it costs far less than in other countries.
The first uprising of the 1910 Revolution took place in Chihuahua under the command of Francisco “Pancho” Villa. His home is now a museum that we were able to visit. Villa had several “wives” but only the first inherited this home in Chihuahua.
Chihuahua has many parks and monuments, a strong commercial base, good downtown shopping, good schools and “autonomous universities,” and an active nightlife. (Autonomous universities are those supported by the government, but managed by a student-elected administration.) The parks and public buildings were decorated for the holidays and many people filled the walking street in the city center.
In our free time, Haya and I could not resist going to a large department store near our hotel. It was very “American.” However, we also found in nearby streets a Mercado (a covered market) and many small locally owned shops. These large buildings were packed from the floor almost to the fifteen-foot-high ceilings with goods on display … clothing, luggage, small appliances, tools, toys, jewelry.
As we walked through, I saw a small family ahead of us … a painfully thin young man and wife, and a little girl walking beside them with another child in the father’s arms. From their clothing they appeared to be Indian farmers visiting the city. They stopped every few yards and the children gazed with wide eyes at the displays of goods. They did not buy anything. The Christmas treat for the children appeared to be just looking at the toys and other wonders of the Mercado.
In the Mercado Haya wished to look at a blouse and asked the pretty 17-year-old mestizo girl attending the stall to take it down. Haya asked in Spanish, but the girl replied in English, which she had been studying in school. Her vocabulary was limited, and she asked us about certain words, but her pronunciation was almost flawless. This charming young Chihuahuan may have a bright future if she is not trapped into a premature marriage and children.
Before we left, we bought an extra canvas bag to carry all the baskets and rebozos that we had bought in the highlands. Haya also bought a serape and a beautiful poncho with vibrant colors. The Reforma Mercado in Chihuahua made us feel at home, since it so resembled the “suk” near our home in central Jerusalem.
In the evening, we were the “guests” of a Chihuahuan family for dinner. The husband, Jorge Flores, works as a car salesman, the wife cooks and conducts dinners for Grand Circle guests, and the 18-year-old son is studying in the university with ambitions to go to a US college in the future. The son spoke colloquial US English with little or no accent. He is tall, slim and handsome.
The dinner was a very pleasant chicken dinner that contrasted starkly with the lunch we had in the Tarahumara country village. Our hosts were gracious in the tradition of old Mexico.
From Chihuahua, we left the next morning for the nine-hour drive through the desert, past El Paso, Texas, Mesilla, New Mexico, and on into Las Cruces with a stop at Stahmann’s … the world’s largest family-owned pecan farm. A few hours of visiting the tourist shops in Old Mesilla, one of the hangouts of the infamous Billy the Kid, was enough to finish our taste for souvenir shopping.
Our overnight stay in Las Cruces did not allow us time to see the town, but we did spend an hour at the rather ordinary Farm and Ranch Heritage museum as we left town in the morning.
After an overnight stay in Tucson with a farewell dinner, we were on our way to the airport and another Horizon Airlines experience.
With few exceptions, our companions on the trip were good, convivial company and the trip was set at a pace that we all could handle.
Those of you who have followed my previous writings know that I enjoy food. Perhaps it is my palate, but I find that Mexican cuisine is nothing to write about. It is either too spicy or too bland.
I think that if I return to Mexico for another tour, it will be to the Yucatan peninsula where the ruins of the Olmec and Mayan civilizations will provide more interesting sights.
Nevertheless, as we crossed the dry wash that was once the mighty Rio Grande and we passed towns with names like El Paso, Santa Teresa, Las Cruces, Cochise and Tombstone, I could once again be that small boy sitting on the floor beside my parents’ Philco radio.
In the deepest corners of my mind I could thrill to the baritone voice of the announcer repeating, “… the thundering hoof beats of his great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!”
“Hiyoooo, Silver… Awaaay!!”
The exciting music of the William Tell Overture swells in the background and I dreamed of desert adventures.
A Brief History of Mexico
It is believed the first humans reached Central America about 15,000 years ago. The first identifiable culture, Clovis, existed around 10,000 BC. Some stone tools dating back to 9,000 BC have been found in Guatemala. Around this time, the Fourth Ice Age was drawing to a close and the climate was gradually warming up enabling humans to begin eating more plants and less meat. This change was underway around 8,000 BC.
From 8,000 BC to 2,000 BC the inhabitants of Central America gradually became more agrarian and they domesticated beans, corn, peppers, squash and other plants. During this time there was still no jungle, just savannah and grassland and some trees. Evidence indicates that a tropical jungle climate appeared in Central America only quite recently, after the Mayan civilization was well underway. Towards the end of this period, some recognizably Mayan villages appeared and pottery and ceramics appeared. Some villages had a temple.
The period from 1500 BC to 300 AD is called the "Pre-Classic" period of Mayan culture. During this period the Mayan language developed. The Mayans experienced population growth and larger towns were constructed.
Meanwhile, about 800 BC, the Olmec culture was developing in southern Mexico. The Olmec is viewed as the "mother culture" in Central America; They developed a system of writing, the long-count calendar and a complex religion. The Olmecs had a considerable influence on the fledgling Maya culture in Guatemala. The Maya adopted many of the Olmec skills and practices and developed them further. It seems that the mixture of the Olmec and Mayan cultures touched off an explosion of cultural development. Archaeologists are not sure of the cause but from 300 BC to 300 AD, the Teotihuacan culture enjoyed tremendous development in architecture, writing, and calendrics throughout Mayan lands and the population increased. The great cities of El Mirador, Kaminaljuyú, Río Azúl and Tikal all were founded during this time. Mayan cities often went to war against each other.
The Classic Period of Maya development is the 600 years from 300 AD to 900 AD. The Maya refined the long-count calendar and developed a more advanced written language. The Maya had a tendency to tear down buildings and temples and rebuild new ones over the rubble of the old. Some buildings are built on several layers of previous buildings. All of the great Mayan cities as they appear today were built during the Classic Period, over the remains of previous construction. Architecture and culture blossomed during the Classic Period. The Maya began to accurately record important events on carved stelae. Excellent examples of Mayan stelae and art can be seen at Quirigua, an easy day-trip from Rio Dulce.
Early in the Classic Period, around 400 AD, the Maya became heavily influenced by the civilization of Teotihuacan to the north. Teotihuacan was the most powerful culture in Central Mexico. Much about this relationship is unclear but it appears to have been beneficial to both civilizations because both prospered and developed at this time. Evidence also exists that there was interaction and trade between Central American cultures and European, African and Polynesian cultures -- well before the time of Columbus.
Around the year 650 AD the civilization of Teotihuacan collapsed. This collapse triggered an upset in the Mayan civilization. Apparently there was a struggle to fill the power-vacuum left by the collapse of Teotihuacan. Now free of its relationship to Teotihuacan, the Maya reached their highest levels of sophistication. Art, astronomy and religion reached new heights. The population grew and cities expanded in this era of greatest Mayan prosperity. Astronomy and arithmetics advanced and the Mayans were able to measure the orbits of celestial bodies with unprecedented accuracy. The Maya predicted the motions of Venus to a degree of precision only equaled in recent times. The Maya traded with cultures as far away as South America and the southern US. Mayan cities were much larger and more populous than any city in Europe. The Mayas greatest artistic works in pottery and jade were made during this pinnacle of Mayan development.
Looking at the grey ruins of Mayan architecture today, it is hard to imagine that they were originally painted in bright colors, red, white, yellow and green, inside and out. Certain internal chambers have been preserved and microscopic traces of paint on the stonework have enabled archaeologists to reconstruct what Tikal and other sites probably looked like.
However, this peak of Mayan development was to be short lived. By 750 AD problems arose and the collapse was underway. There are many theories about what happened. By this time, the climate was certainly changing from grassland and savannah into the tropical climate we now associate with Guatemala. Perhaps there were food shortages. In any event, the population dropped and the cities were gradually abandoned. By 830 AD construction and development had come to a halt. Some cities in Belize and Yucatan survived longer but in Guatemala the population abandoned the cities and redistributed itself into the farming villages of the highlands that we see today.
By 980 the Toltecs consolidated their hold on Northern Mexico, only to lose this area by 1200 AD to the Aztecs. By 1248, the Toltecs retreated to Yucatan and the Aztecs ruled from Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).
In 1502, Moctezuma II took the throne of the Aztec Empire and ruled most of Mexico. In 1519, the Spanish explorer, Cortez landed at Veracruz and defeated one tribe after another until he and his technologically superior troops entered Tenochtitlan and made Moctezuma their subject.
The fact that they had horses, swords, guns, cannon, and armor provided their technological superiority. The fact that they had white skins confirmed an Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl’s “godhood” and invincibility.
The native peoples held blood sacrifices in which hundreds … maybe thousands … were killed and they were continually at war; however, after the Spanish arrived, it was even worse.
1521 – Siege and destruction of Tenochtitlan the largest city in the world.
1522 – Alvorado leaves a trail of destruction on his way to Guatemala, defeating the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs, and the Tarascon Empire.
1540 – Montejos founds Merida and enslaves the Toltec-Mayas.
1540 – 1810 – Mexican Indians held as slaves on huge Spanish -owned ranchos. Spanish rulers take native treasures to Europe and divide the land and its riches into ranchos as big as states. Large numbers of the indigenous population die from slavery conditions and European diseases. Interbreeding creates a new force, the mestizos, who eventually revolt against Spanish rule.
1812 – Independence from Spain declared by Iturbide, who also declares himself Emperor, is crowned in 1822, and flees to European exile in 1823 (taking the treasury with him).
1834 – Santa Anna begins his dictatorship of Mexico after years of internecine wars.
1836 – The Alamo falls to Santa Anna’s troops.
1837 – Texas declares independence.
1846 – US declares war on Mexico. General Doniphan conquers New Mexico, Zachary Taylor takes Monterrey.
1847 – Kearny takes California, Wilfred Scott takes Veracruz and becomes military governor of Mexico.
1848 – With the Treaty of Hidalgo, Mexico cedes New Mexico, Arizona, and California to the US for payment of $15 million.
1857 – Jaurez “elected” president, but driven from office by rival armies one year later.
1861 – European armies invade Mexico.
1862 – General Zaragoza defeats the French at Puebla on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo).
1863- French take Mexico City and install Maximillian Hapsburg as Emperor.
1867 – Maximillian executed by revolutionaries.
1872 – Juarez dies and Diaz revolts against government.
1876 - Diaz rules a dictator.
1876 – 1910 - Indians and mestizos are literally slaves again under the large landowners and US corporations.
1910 – Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Pascual Orozco storm Cuidad Juarez and restart the revolution.
1911 – Diaz flees into exile. Madero is elected president.
1913 – Madero assassinated, Huerta becomes dictator.
1914 – Huerta defeated by Villa’s and Obregon’s armies. Villa and Zapata join forces to fight Carranza and Obregon.
1915 – Villa’s forces defeated by Obregon’s.
1920 – Carranza elected, ousted, and then assassinated.
1924 – Calles elected president (jefe maximo)..
1928 – Obregon assassinated.
1931 – Anti-clerical campaign kills Catholic priests.
1934 – Distribution of land to peasants begins under Presidente Cardenas rule.
1938 – Cardenas expropriates foreign oil company properties, risks war with US. Roosevelt and Cardenas agree to payments for oil companies.
1938 – today – relative peace except for occasional rebellions of Indian tribes in the South.
posted by Louis at 5:57 PM
