Mighty Monarchs!

Last week México celebrated the anniversary of the 1810 revolution. The date fell on Tuesday.  Most businesses took Monday instead – except for Government departments and schools that took Tuesday  - and just didn’t bother about turning up for work Monday!

We took Monday off and headed out into the Sierra Madre mountains in the hinterland of Mexico State. The Monarch Butterflies had begun arriving at the various sanctuaries in Mexico State and neighbouring Michoacán State. 

Our guide, Ricardo, points out the spots on the male Monarch

Our journey flanked the volcano, Xinantécatl that presides over Toluca. After a little more than an hour’s drive through lush pine forests we arrived at Piedra Herrada.

Local villagers run this eco-tourism centre, situated in a valley at about 2500 metres above sea level. Groups are limited and have to be guided. We already noticed a few monarchs flying around. We engaged a guide and set off.

As we climbed along a wide path winding through the forest we began to see more and more butterflies. They were mostly sitting in sunny clearing on damp earth or flowers. As the sun warms them, they fly down the mountain in search of water and nectar.

Our trek took sometime. We were stopping at every gathering of butterflies! Finally we arrived at where the Monarchs were “roosting” – on Cyprus trees at about 3200 metres (And, yes, the last few hundred metres were a bit of a slog!)

These Monarchs had flown from Canada and the United States – a journey of up to 5000km! They winter over in Mexico in twelve mountain sites. They don’t reproduce in Mexico. In spring (March here) they begin the journey back north. These butterflies wont be back. It will be a year and the fourth generation that returns – to a place they have never seen!

We visited early in the season – they had just opened the sanctuary. The butterflies were still arriving. The experience of seeing thousands of Monarchs in one place – and to hear their collective wing beats as they swarm is truly extraordinary. 

After the visit we headed off for lunch at Valle de Bravo – a small colonial town on the shores of a man-made lake. Soon after leaving the sanctuary, we began to encounter butterflies drifting across the highway. The passing lanes on the road were closed. The federal police were in attendance, all to make sure no one drove faster than 15km per hour and so avoid killing the Monarchs. This made me laugh. Mexican cops are not so good at doing this for humans!

That's a horse in the overtaking lane!

Valle de Bravo

There’s a new film coming out soon about these amazing creatures. You can watch the trailer at http://youtu.be/FvFEoYFZKqQ

My own humble film (done on a digital camera) is here: http://youtu.be/nnHWOk2lFL0

El Día de los Muertos

People are getting excited! The First and Second of November are getting closer. At a meeting the other day the leaders of the four youth groups that operate here in the University Parish completely lost me. We were planning for this weekend’s extra activity – our celebration of All Saints’ and All Souls’ days. We’re celebrating it early All Souls’ day is known here as “El Día de los Muertos” - the Day of the Dead.

It’s all a bit confusing. To start with All Saints’ Day seems to have disappeared! Then there are the various celebrations around El Día de los Muertos. It seems we’ll offer Mass for the souls of the faithful departed known to the people who come here. There’ll be a box on the altar with their names in it.

Afterwards there’ll be a festival of “Calaveras” – Skulls. These are skulls made of sugar or chocolate and richly decorated. They’re exchanged and eaten. I’ve bought mine in readiness to exchange. It’s sort of like chocolate Easter Eggs and Secret Santa rolled into one!

Sometimes mocking poems – also called Calaveras - are read out. They usually mock authorities and the rich and famous – reminding them their earthly wealth and power wont last beyond the grave.

A highly decorated sugar skull

Las Calaveras originally were used as offerings to the souls of the dead on All Souls’ Day. Each household set up an altar. On the altar were placed food and sweets, especially the favourite ones of the deceased. These remain untouched during the day while the souls have an opportunity to come and enjoy the foods and sweets they enjoyed while they were alive.

A chocolate Calavera

Later the living are able to enjoy what the dead leave behind. One of the seminarians told me in all seriousness that food left on the altar is not as tasty as the same food left somewhere else – the implication being that the souls do take something with them – the taste! He quickly realised I had a somewhat sceptical look on my face and pointed out that it may be because the food and sweets are at room temperature all day and that might account for a lack of taste!

An Alfeñique Chook

The custom of altars and offerings on November 2^nd is a mix of pre-Columbian indigenous traditions and Christian practice. The Aztecs (and other cultures) celebrated the ancestors by offering sacrifices – of fruit, maize, grains, animals – and humans. This practice was “baptised” by the missionaries and joined to the All Souls’ Day commemoration.

As part of our celebrations each of the youth groups is going to make “offerings” according to the tradition of different local indigenous tribes. I’m not entirely sure what these might be – and whether they’ll be offered during Mass or at some other time. Remember I got lost during the discussion with the youth leaders!

Alfeñique Deer

Skull and Bone sweets

I went to the Feria de Alfeñique in the centre of town today to buy my Calavera for the exchange. This is an annual event here in Toluca. There are about a hundred stalls set up selling all sorts of macabre sweets and handcrafts related to the Day of the Dead. I bought several Calaveras and chocolates in the form of bones. Alfeñique comes from Arabic and is a type of spun sugar used to make sweets. Most of the sweets in the stalls aren’t alfeñique – there were even some made from kumara! I’ll have to go back again!

Kai - in Mexico!

Food in México is a little different from NZ. Well, a whole lot different. Mexicans are very proud of their culinary traditions – as well they might be. Some of the things seem a little strange – like pork cracking. Except the whole dish is pork crackling (no meat) covered in green chile sauce... Probably not the healthiest meal…

Chilli is a constant – both cooked into the dishes and served as a salsa. The salsa, usually in a small dish on the table so you can add the amount you wish, is made of fresh chillies. There are a confusing number of varieties – with varying taste and hotness. This leads to the occasional mistake – one accompanied by tears and an immediate burning sensation – and a burning sensation a lot later too. The hottest chillies burn twice as the saying goes…

Pozole - maize (Elote), Jitomate (tomato), chilli, pork etc..

 Chilli makes even ‘blah’ food interesting. Yesterday we had soya – I guess a sort of tofu? What made it tasty was the red chilli sauce. And the day before it was ox tongue. Again made delicious by the green chilli sauce.  Neither was too spicy either.

We had an interesting experience while visiting an indigenous town. Every year a group from the University Parish does a mission in a village a couple of hours from Toluca. The Indians are Mazahuas. The men are known as traveling salesmen and range as far as the United States selling almost anything. The women stay at home and raise the kids. 

A great line-up! A shared meal Mazahua style.

After the mission group had done their catechising, we all shared a meal. The pots and plates of food were lined up outside the church, I blessed the meal and then visitors hoed in. The mission kids didn’t hold back either. It was traditional Mexican food with none of the processed stuff you get in the cities – with the exception of fizzy drinks!

Mexicans eat tortillas with everything. The Mazahuas are no different – except they raise their own maize, grind it and cook it themselves. The tortillas were fresh! And they had purple ones too – which tasted of wheat, rather than the maize they were made of.

The tortilla and chorizo on the hotplate.

Recently I was travelling near Puebla, to the south of Mexico City. We stopped on the side of the road for a quesadilla. These are tortillas filled with something – usually queso (cheese), but many other things too. I had queso and chorizo toluqueña (sausage from Toluca). 

Quesadilla (with a bite gone!)

The green stuff is the chorizo

Toluca is famous for its chorizo – not the least because some of them are green! There’s nothing so tasty as fresh artisanal bread stuffed with fried chorizo!

We also had mushroom soup. None of the cream of mushroom with tame lily white farmed mushrooms. This soup was a meal in itself! The mushrooms were wild, meaty mushrooms gathered locally. And no, no one had hallucinations or died!

Mushroom Soup

What we and the rest of the world know as tomato is called Jitomate here. Tomate (tomato) are green tomatoes that never turn red as they mature. They have a covering of green leaves almost stuck to the skin – and of course have a very different flavour. They seem to be used universally in green sauces, mixed with chillies. I haven’t seen them used uncooked.

Tomate (the green ones) y Jitomate (the red one)

 Mexico also has a great variety of fruit – both temperate and tropical. I tried one called Zapote. I was told to sprinkle it with orange juice – it was a dark brown colour inside, slimy textured and tasted of – orange juice! The larger variety is tastier, I’m told. I’ve since discovered it’s mildly narcotic... 

And this strange fruit is a pitaya dragon fruit.

There’s a lot more too – but I’m getting hungry. I’m off for a nice dish of Punta de Res  (Ox “foot” in green chilli sauce). A bit of meat, bone and sinew! Just kidding… There are some dishes I had which are unrepeatable!

I did notice these in the fruit bowl the other day...

 

Acapulco, Guerrero State, Mexico

It’s great to have Peter McAfee SM visiting on his way back to New Zealand. Pete’s been the formator and superior in the Marist formation house in Brazil for the last two years. Prior to that he was novice master here in Mexico, at the ex-hacienda La Jordana. 

The Marist Formation House here in Toluca has opened. There are five of us in the community - Fr Juan Carlos, the Mexican Marist who is in charge of formation, me as socius and three new seminarians who will study Philosophy at Toluca Diocesan Seminary. More on this in my next post.

I was able to take a couple of days off last week, so we went off to Acapulco. We caught a bus from the terminal at 1.00am. Fortunately it was a luxury service – extra comfy seats and no stops – so we arrived into a grey drizzly Acapulco at 7.30am having had a couple of hours sleep. Pete woke me up saying we’d just travelled down Ngauranga Gorge (the entrance into Wellington).

Acapulco has some similarities to Wellington – it’s a circular bay surrounded by hills. Unlike Wellington it has golden sand beaches framed by high-rise hotels and condominiums. It’s also warm – it was over 30 degrees Celsius. The bay is also heavily polluted.

Some of the food was a bit krap!

After breakfast – pancakes – in a café called “The Parish”, we caught a taxi to Pie de la Cuesta (The Foot of the Hill) over the hill from Acapulco. Pie de la Cuesta is an ocean beach. And obligingly the sun came out. We spent the next couple of days lazing on the beach. The rooms we stayed in were basic, but adequate – bed, toilet, fan. There was a pool, but the water looked just a bit dodgy, so we swam in the ocean. All this for NZ$28 a night – food and drinks extra! We ate on the beach – grilled whole fish, rice and tortillas and salsa.

It's not all tough on the mission - the wine isn't Mission either! You may recognize the chap in the background.

The first day we took refuge from the sun at a table under a palm leaf shelter. No other customers. Eventually an elderly gent shuffled out and offered us a drink. We ordered beers – Coronas (which I’ve never had served with lemon slices here!) 30 pesos each ($2.80) – a bit steep for Mexico. He explained we were also renting the shade! The second beer – some time later – cost 25 pesos. We must have paid for the shade. In the afternoon same shelter, same old gent – two Coronas: $40 pesos! I questioned it – it was for the shelter. I pointed out that we’d been there in the morning – the only customers all day. No price change. I said we were going to stay a couple of days and wouldn’t be back if he charged us that. No price change…

The next day we discovered the hotel we were staying in had its own shelter and chairs. So we sat there – right next to the old fella’s shelter.

On Thursday we headed back into Acapulco and stayed at the Hotel California. A strange place – again basic but adequate. It’s run by an American and seems to attract elderly American men. Some looked like ex-Army. I guess they live better there than in the States. It was certainly cheap enough - $11.30 the night for our rooms.

La Quebrada - the cliff the divers jump off. The lights at the top are the shrine to Guadalupe

Can you make out the divers?

In the evening we wandered up the hill to where the famous divers perform. It was quite a show. Five or six young men parade through the crowd, climb a 35 metre cliff in front of the viewing area. There they say a brief prayer at a shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and then one by one dive off. It’s quite dramatic – the setting of craggy cliffs overlooking the ocean, the sea crashing up very narrow inlet, the evident danger and the youth of the divers (between 12 and 25 years old). It’s very Mexican – grace and danger with a splash of machismo. 

Acapulco itself is a somewhat faded version of the glamorous place it was when it attracted the international jet set. Now-a-days international travellers go to Cancun or Cozumel. These days Acapulco mostly caters for the domestic market and poor Marists! It’s still a great place!

Mexico Goes to the Polls...

Mexico goes to the polls today. There are four candidates for election – the probable winner is the candidate for PRI, Henrique Peña Nieto. The PRI ruled Mexico for 71 years, by way of intimidation, vote buying, ballot stuffing, murder and general skulduggery. The acronmy stands for Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Institutional Revolutionary Party – which strikes me as somewhat an oxymoron. A revolutionary party that is institutional? Anyway the party seems to have reverted to type and most commentators think it will “win” the election. The party has thrown tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars at the election – shattering the election spending limits.

The PRI's stranglehold on power was broken in 2000 by Vicente Fox of the Partido de Acción Nacional. The PAN, led by Josefina Vasquez Mota, seems destined to run second. She is the most attractive of the candidates, but being a woman will count against her. Fox has endorsed her opponent, Peña Nieto, much to the annoyance of PAN! Fox probably did that because Josefina was trailing Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.

AMLO, as he is known, is the candidate of the Partido de Revolución Democratica or the Democratic Revolutionary Party – which also seems to be a bit of an oxymoron! His motto is “AMLOve”, though a less loveable chap would be hard to find. Fox has described him as Mexico’s Chavez (for the Cuban sympathizing Venezuelan President). The fear is that he’ll take Mexico down the same Cuban road as Venezuela.

AMLO was narrowly beaten at the last presidential election. In a fit of pique he called his followers out onto the streets and paralyzed the country for ten days. He does seem to have mellowed however…

The last contender has no chance – it’s generally agreed that he’s the puppet of the all-powerful president-for-life of the teachers union, Ester Gordillo. She’s an ancient, ruthless face-lifted caricature of herself. She controls the teachers union – possibly the biggest union in the country. So she is universally feared by politicians. Latterly she was spotted and photographed buying a Gucci bag in Mexico City. She also has a house in the USA. Hard to understand how she maintains that lifestyle on her union salary…

The most interesting development in the campaign is the rise of the internet generation. A month or so ago, Peña Nieto visited a Jesuit run university in Mexico City. There he was booed and had to take shelter in a toilet until he could be smuggled out of the university. It was, of course, all filmed…

Later his team claimed the students weren’t students at all, but rent-a-protesters. The students made a video of 131 of them showing their student ID cards and posted it on YouTube. It was a hit in Mexico and spawned a new movement called #YoSoy132 or I am number 132. The movement has spread like wildfire in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

#YoSoy132 have been holding rallies all around the country, describing it as the Mexican Spring in allusion to the Arab Spring. If they all vote it could throw a spanner in the plans of the PRI. We’ll know this evening. 

Whoever wins, I suspect the drama is not over. First of all the outcome has to be accepted by the country. There will be legal challenges – for example for overspending and vote buying. The University Parish was even given a couple of computers by the PRI run State government. We accepted the gift – I don’t vote and the secretary votes for PAN!

The Parish of San Bernardino was also given computers – and some debit cards with around $90.00 charged on them. I think all the parishes got them. I can’t see how it’ll influence the election, but they don’t give these things out between elections!

Tensions run deep and with the corruption and vote rigging that’s characterised the election it may take a while for the dust to settle. We could be in for some interesting days!

Retreat and so on

It’s been a month since I wrote something for this blog. That’s not for the lack of anything to say! Life seems to be getting busier…

I’m slowly getting on top of the organization of the University Parish. We’ve organized a schedule of maintenance and sorted out a few of the pressing problems. I understand now, how each of the different groups work and we’re working on a new schedule for their meetings. It was a little chaotic for a while. The last director of the Centro de Proyección Universitaria (the University Parish) had three or four other jobs as well!

The refurbishment of the top floor (where the Marist Seminary will be) is progressing apace. It should be finished ahead of schedule around the middle of July. It'll be a relief to move in there - I wont have to commute from San Bernardino parish. It's not a great distance, but is a nuisance if I forget something. I'll be helping in the formation house once the seminarians (and the formator) arrive in August.

The Front of the Casa Hacienda "La Jordana

 

Last weekend I went on a “retreat” with 60 young people – “chavos” in the local vernacular. 28 of them formed the team that ran the retreat – with a little input from me and 32 were newbies. It was quite impressive. The retreatants ranged in age from 14 (although the minimum age is 15!) to 18.

The retreat was held at La Jordana – an old hacienda building and a couple of hectares which were given to the Society of Mary by the family of one of the local Marists some time ago. It’s situated in the middle of an open valley at about 2500 metres above sea level. That’s the height of Mount Taranaki/Egmont. La Jordana was used as a seminary for some years and recently as a Novitiate. Fr Peter McAfee SM from Whanganui was the last novice master there. 

The rains have begun, so the valley was quite green – it had been parched the last time I visited there. The valley is wide and open with small settlements dotted around the rolling hills. I imagine the majority of the locals are the descendants of the campesinos who used to work for the patron who owned the hacienda.

Across the valley from La Jordana

It’s a nice spot for youth retreats – spacious, fairly basic and far from shops and bars!

The team ran the retreat – giving most of the talks, leading games and so on, prayers, cooking and cleaning and even having perpetual adoration during waking hours! Well, to be accurate, they were in the chapel in front of the Blessed Sacrament, but I suspect there was a bit of conversation between them rather than with the Lord! They are teens! Still I was impressed by their seriousness and commitment. Not that there weren’t loads of activities and laughter.

I must have only slept about 8 hours in total the whole weekend, but it was great fun and I think the chavos got a lot out of it.

Los Chavos (and an ancient chap at the back centre!)

More photos of the retreat on the next entry.

HSM Retreat

HSM Retreat, a set on Flickr.