Category: Mexico

Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Almost a church on every corner in the “City of Angels”

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Legends say angels were nice enough to fly down in 1531 to identify the exact spot to build a cathedral in Puebla (not the church in the featured photo). Even more amazing, some claim the angels returned later, adding their wing-power to help lift an enormous bell up into one of the towers.

These postcards from Puebla are taking a long time to deliver. Instead of an orderly presentation of stories behind the churches, several dating from the 1500s, they are appearing here in a cluster of facades, many colorfully tiled, that make wandering her streets so fascinating.

Makes one want a coloring book of the tiled designs and a 64-box of Crayolas.

View some of the tiled rooftops here, and innards will follow soon.

Reviving Dia de los Muertos

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When I first moved to San Antonio, the places to see flowers and foods placed on graves to encourage visits from their inhabitants were the old San Fernando Cemeteries. Most of the wrinkled pilgrims picnicking with their deceased loved ones on All Saints and All Souls Days, November 1 and 2, appeared poised to repose alongside them. The remnants of the Dia de los Muertos traditions enduring from when San Antonio had been part of Mexico were dying with them.

Bedoy’s Bakery, founded in 1961, credits Father Virgil Elizondo with encouraging the bakers to dust off traditional old recipes for dead bread, pan de muerto. I used to buy the breads around Halloween, but felt guilty when we selfishly ate them without offering to share them with the dead.

In the past decade or two, artists in San Antonio began adding contemporary twists to ancient Day of the Dead traditions, and now the city sponsors a full-blown fiesta for Dia de los Muertos in La Villita. Altars, processions and even a concert by Girl in a Coma were part of this year’s event, held a bit early because the city’s Day of the Dead calendar is getting more crowded.

While a far cry from the celebrations we witnessed outside of and in San Cristobal de las Casas last November, San Antonio’s spirited version represents traditions worth reviving and refreshing for new generations.

Although I cannot comprehend why the marketing department at Coca-Cola is not all over sponsorship opportunities for this event. In Mexico, Coca-Cola dominates the graveyard market in San Juan Chamula, Chiapas:

One would think a people who have rejected so many standards held by outsiders would not consider taking even one sip of a Coca-Cola. But expelling evil spirits from the body is key. Spitting helps, but burping is best. And what is better at inducing burping than a few shots of rapidly consumed Coke….

But, what marketing genius convinced the Chamulans a half-century ago to incorporate Coke into not only their Sunday church-going regimen, but everyday life? I mean, Chamulans need to continually maintain their guard against those invasive evil spirits, burping them out on a regular basis.

And whoever the lucky holder of the local bottling franchise is really struck a home run with this. The market is larger than just the living. On Dia de los Muertos, even the dead are served Cokes to quench their parched throats from so much time spent underground and to burp away any evil spirits hanging around the cemetery.

Just think how large Coca-Cola’s market share would soar if this practice spread to the dead everywhere.

Here are some posts from last year in Chiapas, Mexico:

 

Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Culinary riches emerged from convents

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Never thought “get thee to a nunnery” had an appetizing sound to it. But Puebla is different.

The Talavera-tiled kitchen of the former Santa Rosa Convent is reputed to be the birthplace of the richly flavored mole poblano, and the nuns of the former Convent of Santa Monica are credited with inventing the famous chiles en nogada in 1821 to celebrate Mexico’s newly gained independence from Spain. Reason enough to visit the former convents.

The early history of the building housing the Ex-Convento de Santa Monica is highly unusual. At the beginning of the 1600s, it served as a home for widows and wives whose husbands had abandoned them. Then its role switched as a place to isolate some of the city’s prostitutes; and then the usage seesawed back to a high school protective of young virgin girls in its charge. In the 1680s, it became a convent.

Santa Monica served as a convent for more than two centuries before the nuns had to go underground following the 1917 Constitution of Mexico. The façade of the convent was remodeled to appear as a house, but inside, behind a secret door, a group of nuns remained cloistered.

Supposedly, an antique dealer grew angry when the sisters refused to sell him paintings he desired. Inebriated in a bar, he began complaining about the nuns. A detective overheard him, and the closet convent was raided by police in 1934. The nuns were banished from the premises, and the government converted it to a museum for religious art.

Reviving the city’s reputation for nun-chefs, a new star recently arose in Mexico. Sister Florinda Ruiz Carapia became a fan favorite competing for a cash prize on Mexico’s version of Master Chef. Known as “Hermana Flor,” the humble nun who toils as a cook for seminarians in Puebla, reached the top five. Her popularity only increased because she was striving not for personal gain but to alleviate some of the debts accrued by her order of nuns, according to a story by Mark Stevenson in the San Antonio Express-News.

 

Perhaps if I tiled my kitchen, I’d miraculously be transformed into a good cook?