Home again, home again

Not exactly dancing a jig! That last 1515 miles from Lubbock to Guayabitos seemed to stretch on and on and on. Especially driving about 50 miles an hour. Hooray for a two night layover in a good bed in San Antonio. Thanks, Mark and Susie! And it was great getting a last visit with Larry's family there. Adios, Jim and Rhoda! We're home and happy.


Little to complain about on the trip south. Larry drove the open unairconditioned black Jeep that we picked up out in California (the one he traded his OLD Harley for about a year and a half ago). I followed behind in Hummercita carrying two dogs and dragging an overloaded trailer behind. Inside the trailer was Larry's NEW Harley -- or the one he bought last summer. Object of this trip was to get all his toys in one place, Mexico. Mission accomplished!


No inspections, no military stops, and only two flats on the trailer. One was coming through Guadalajara, and I was able to pull into a Pemex station with a llantera attached. Not too many of those around! Twenty pesos to fix the flat and we were back on the road. The next flat happened somewhere just outside of Guayabitos. We didn't discover it until we turned into our town. I was passing Larry, thinking he was letting me go ahead of him. But actually the Jeep had quit running. Wet distributor cap. Larry was towed the last mile to our house. And as I write, the trailer sits empty, tilted and with a crumpled fender at the curb in front of our house. I don't know WHAT I hit! But we're home.....sigh.


It was a summer full of adventure -- making new friends and seeing old ones. I can't begin to thank everyone through this blog. And there were so many people we didn't see this trip. I guess we'll just have to go back! Sometime.... and I think we'll fly.


For a while we were separated. From June 30 to July 8, Larry took a 3,000 mile motorcycle trip through the Midwest with his old high school buddy, Ken Pierce. From July 10 - July 22, I was in California by myself, mainly travelling around in the mid-section. The rental car I picked up in San Jose and dropped off there a week later said I covered 876 miles. That was catching up with friends and family in Pacific Grove, Danville, Roseville/Sacramento, Truckee, Reno, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and San Francisco. A lot of them seemed to live WAY off the beaten path.


"Turn right at the pigs," was the final step in Dave's instructions on how to find him and his wife Laura outside of Petaluma. It was worth the trip. They fixed lunch -- Chicken Caesar salad, raspberry lemonade, a phenomenal chocolate cake -- and we ate it outside in their garden. The air was heavy with roses and sunshine.



"I'll come meet you," said Pam. Which she did, in St. Helena. After we raided a local grocery store, I followed her up Spring Mountain Road toward Santa Rosa and then somewhere she turned off onto a little asphalt lane. Ten (I counted on the way back down the next day) switchbacks later we came to where she and Gene hang out. Heavy smooth sheets, good smelling soap and absolute silence high in a live oak forest. I slept like a baby. But "remote" doesn't begin to describe it.



Well, it wasn't as remote as the commitment ceremony Larry attended for Theora and Colin. They live in a tent -- a geodesic dome -- which they've erected on land outside of Alpine, Texas. Theora is our niece, and she made all the arrangements for their celebration down at Chinati Hot Springs -- a 1930's style resort two or more hours drive south of Alpine, down near the Rio Grande River. Actually it was built in 1934, so the style is authentic. Larry attended along with our dog Cody and about 35 other guests before he headed out to California to meet me. The four inch layer of mud all over the Hummer spoke volumes as to what "remote" really means. I think he left it on until he got to Orange County as some sort of statement: Ours is not an urban assault vehicle. It really gets used off road!


Larry and I had a week together in Orange County, spent mainly with his surfing buddies, and our good friends. This is the "old time" beach crowd. Four couples one night celebrated our annual wedding anniversary dinner. It was at Cannon's above Dana Point Harbor. All of us together had 153 years of experience -- with the original partners! Thanks to the cachet of Infinity Surf Boards, we got special treatment. In turn, we sent our regards down to the bride and groom who were having their reception on the patio below us. In the dark the bride's teeth were as white as her gown.


Larry and I headed back to Texas the last day of July. On the way we managed to burn up the transmission in the Jeep we were dragging. Somehow it slipped into gear somewhere in Utah. That was between visiting Penelope and Tim in St. George and Danny and Nancy in Lake City, Colorado. Pioneers all of them. Penelope and Tim (who met on an Indian reservation) live about twenty miles outside St. George in the adobe house they built themselves on land purchased 23 years ago. Danny and Nancy remember the "old" days (post-mining, pre-tourist) when Lake City was a hippy hangout and everyone gathered in one big house to share food and warmth. I have never seen such starry, starry nights as in those two places. The moon was absent, or only a sliver, and the Milky Way was a broad white swath across the sky. Both these couples appreciate remote.


"Remote" seems to be a keynote of this blog. Our friend Todd had us meet him in Salida, rather than our driving sixteen or more miles out to the lodge he bought a few years ago. He moved there from hectic, fast-paced Orange County, and hasn't looked back. But he tells us he's looking to move into town. "Town" is big by Lake City standards. Lake City has 375 people. Salida has 5,000. But everyone keeps each other good company in the wintertime.



Our friends Chris and Ken had just sold their house in Santa Fe. It's up a dirt road and felt remote when we had dinner out on the deck in the evening. But the glow of the city lit up sky beyond the pines. There were stars, but the Milky Way was much paler. So they're moving....HERE! Well to San Pancho, just south of us. We had to agree with them. The Santa Fe of Larry's and my college days is long gone. Gentrification has taken over the central square. But our friend and neighbor down here, Roque Garcia, is still selling carnitas on the corner. We stopped for lunch, and he told us all about his new Guayabitos restaurant project. Yummm!


From Santa Fe to Lubbock was a day's drive. And it was in Lubbock we spent the last three weeks of our time north of the border. Larry had lots to occupy him getting all his toys in order and ready to travel. Ahem, a new transmission in the Jeep.

And I spent the time hangin' with Mom and going to see Dad. Speaking of remote, that seems to be Dad these days. He still has a sense of humor though. Or a sense of something. I showed him the photo Nancy took of Larry and me near Lake City -- the one you see at the top of this blog. I asked him if he knew who it was. "This," he said pointing to Larry, "is Harley Davidson. It says so right on his shirt. And, this one," he said pointing to me in the picture, "this one, I think, is writing her own script." He smiled at me.

Well, Daddy, I guess that pretty well describes it. If you wonder who I am these days, I guess I'm wondering, too. But I'll keep writing, and try to figure it out.

Love to you, Dad, and love to all. We're home!

A Fresh Furry Face

When Larry and I head out of town toward Mexico Friday morning, in the back seat of Hummercita, there will be a new attraction. Joining Cody the Keeshond is his new buddy (ta dah!) Zack -- a keeshond puppy Larry fell in love with (OK, me, too) at a rescue center here in Lubbock. (We are since informed that there is a TV show named Zack and Cody, but we honestly had not heard of it. We haven't watched a lot of the Disney Channel.) Anyway, our stellar top dog Cody doesn't have a jealous bone in his body. Zack was his instant buddy, and the two even sleep curled up together. It's about the only time Zack is still. Here are some shots taken on Mom's patio this evening.


Cody is still Mr. Mellow. Wait. He doesn't have his paws completely crossed in that Steve Martin/Jack Benny way. Could he be just a little tense? Hmmmm, I think it's just the camera.




So adelante we go. Elder statesdog and fresh young face.....
Come on, friends. All together now.....say "ahhhhhh."

On the road...

Larry and I are in South Orange County, mid-way on our summer odyssey. I'm installed at my favorite coffee place in San Juan Capistrano, taking advantage of their free wifi and excellent paninis. Paying bills, catching up on correspondence -- and I thought I'd do a long blog, but Larry has just shown up and is ready to boogie out of here. That's the way it goes up here in El Norte -- everyone is "ready to boogie." Fast fast fast..... Looking forward to slowing the pace down again, but for now enjoying seeing lots of friends and family.

I will tell you that my friend got out of jail before we left Mexico, and is now in a whole legal process that requires keeping tight lips and lids on further conversation. But people keep asking me, so this is to let you know she's home safe and healthy.

So for now, don't forget me....I won't forget you. But will have to wait for another coffee shop and another hotspot -- and another moment alone. :-)))

Wherever I am....

The jail in Compostela is very old, but it doesn’t smell like urine. That’s a huge plus. It’s clean and the people, both jailers and inmates, are very nice. Two more big plusses. Our friend, though, burst into tears when she saw the five of us, bearing books, groceries, bedding, and blessings. Mexican jails provide nada zero zilch to the people they keep inside. It is up to friends and family, or the good graces of local charities, to provide for every daily necessity. That is every necessity. The first thing this woman wanted was a toilet seat.

She’s received a lot more, as she’s well-loved in the community. Local lips curl in derision when speaking her ex-husband’s name, “the guy who put her there.” Through his issuing a demanda, making very serious charges, the police are obligated to get the dangerous supposed criminal off the streets and put her in jail until she can either post bail or prove there’s no reason for her to be there. Proof can take a long, long time. The potential for quick protection, but also unfair abuse is obvious. We’ve all been getting civics lessons: Magna Carta-derived English Common Law which Brits, Americans and Canadians hold dear (innocent until proven guilty), and the Napoleonic Code which basically says “prove it ain’t so.”

But I’m not writing to take one side or the other, just to record the facts. There are a lot of people who might be interested in just what one can expect in a Mexican jail. Those who know me from my former life know I’ve seen the insides of plenty of detention facilities. The last time I counted it was running about 65-70. Among those were an ever-growing number of state-of-the-art sensory-deprivation centers along the lines of Pelican Bay – where inmates are confined to “pods,” and are totally separated from the rest of humanity, rarely having the chance to interact with anyone inside or outside. Very sterile, but very, very scary. There were also turn of the last century institutions such as Marysville, Ohio, or Elmira, NY, where crenellated towers rise high above formidable red brick walls. There were dirt-floored, low-ceilinged centers for substance abusers in San Felipe, Mexico; a park-like federal women’s prison in southern Ontario, and a women’s federal prison filled with rose beds and children’s playgrounds outside of Guadalajara. I’ve been in juvenile detention centers from Oakland to Jacksonville, Iowa City to Austin, and one on the banks of the Mississippi River. I’ve learned to not wear an underwire bra or carry car keys in order to enter sprawling and sterile desert compounds up and down California’s central valley, gray-faced downtown highrises, lower-security honor farms, as well as the famous Los Angeles Twin Towers temporary home to celebrities who trangress. Let me tell you, there’s where I smelled urine.

The central yard at the jail in Compostela is paved with gray concrete and smells like Clorox. It is vigorously cleaned early each morning by the inmates themselves. It measures about 40’ x 40’. The walls are painted mint green for about the first ten feet, then change to apricot and fade upward another ten feet or so into that mossy, drippy melange you can always find near roof lines in the tropics. On one side is a row of four cells where the seven men inmates sleep. All have barred doors. There is a “W.C. Baños” which has a swinging panel with space above and below. There is one toilet there which works.

The two women, my friend and a much younger woman, are assigned to a storage room directly behind the jailer’s office. There are two concrete pads which serve as beds, and a tankless toilet bowl. A bucket of water sits beside it for flushing. It is the public restroom for the jail during the day. There are bicycles and bullet proof vests which take up a lot of the space, but it’s safe there, and my friend and her cellmate can pull their chairs up to the bars of the door and watch CSI Miami reruns every night over the jailer’s shoulder. There is a desk, a chair, a table and a filing cabinet in the little front office, and the television sits on the desk. It is angled so that it is also visible to any inmates standing at the barred window which looks out on the central yard.

Standing, that’s the key word. Lengthy TV watching can be very tiring. Better to sit under the corrugated metal roof which defines the all-purpose area used for eating, church services and general visiting. Here the house rules are hand-painted on the wall, black on white, for all to see. There is no excuse for either inmate or visitor to say, "Sorry, I didn't know." A space toward the rear of the covered patio serves as a kitchen: a small free-standing gas range, a shelf for cooking equipment, and a rust-encrusted refrigerator. The refrigerator functions a lot more efficiently after my friend defrosted it last week. There is a big concrete sink/trough with fresh water located between the entry door and the covered area. Pelón, a young man from Chiapas, stands in the rain washing pots, pans and serving dishes. It is he who has woven the volleyball net which stretches and shimmers across the central yard. It is made out of raspberry colored nylon raffia. He has also made a hamaca from the same material, though it is draped over a rod in the ceiling, up and out of the way of today’s visitors.

Hospitality is hard. There are four molded plastic chairs and a variety of Comex paint cubetas. One of the chairs has a broken seat which has been sewn together with nylon raffia cord, again the work of Pelón, the Chiapas craftsman. If a church service is offered by a local priest or clergyman, as there was yesterday when we were there, they must bring their own chairs. But they also take the chairs away when they leave.

Thursdays and Sundays are visiting days. Families come, bringing children and comida. Everyone shares. We were invited to join a buffet which featured pots of stewed macaroni, rice heavy with garlic and onions, shrimp cooked with chilis and onion, hearty beef birria, pulled chicken and lots of corn tortillas. There were stacks of styrofoam plates, paper napkins and plastic cutlery. Antonia, housekeeper for Hacienda La Peñita, travelled with us and brought nopalitos, strips of prickly-pear cactus leaves mixed with tomatoes, onions and chilis. It was the only green dish on the table.

Our friend needs her veggies. She’s sixty-five years old and diabetic. Her cellmate, an amply-proportioned young woman named Sylvia, has taken it on herself to watch over my friend’s diet and medication, as the nature of her illness is to droop sluggishly down and look drunk when she doesn’t eat right. On hearing detailed instructions as to what could be eaten and what couldn’t be eaten, the jail authorities threw up their hands. Not their responsibility. The jails don’t provide food, anyway. Sylvia asks us to go shopping before we leave town for broccoli, cauliflower and chayote. We didn’t find any of it. But we took in plenty of bananas, pears and papaya. Also a batch of chocolate chip cookies to reward our friend’s companions for the care they take with her.

And they do care for her very tenderly. Because she doesn’t have access to her cell during the day, one of the cells opening onto the central yard has been set aside for her, a futon placed on one of the three concrete benches inside where she can lie down and put her feet up. Her legs and ankles are swollen, and she’s not able to tie her shoes. But she makes the effort to walk around the yard for twenty minutes each day, and to join in a volleyball game later in the afternoon across the raspberry-colored raffia net. But for the most part this little cell, a blanket draped over the bars for a bit of privacy, is her little world. Here she does her morning situps, reads one or two books a day, and contemplates the artwork and writing on the walls. Yes, there’s a naked woman. Is there a jail cell wall anywhere without one? There’s a drawing of a man playing a guitar, a drawing of the Virgin of Guadalupe above the broken toilet. And a prayer scrawled across the less-than-white wall above my friend's head, a remembrance from someone who's been there before….

La luz de Dios me rodea,
El amor de Dios me envuelve,
El poder de Dios me protege….
doquiera estoy, Dios está conmigo.

I'm still here, and it's raining.

The rains have started and the streets are starting to green up -- cobblestones black with moisture and fresh green mossy little plants poking up in between. There are scarlet-colored scatter rugs of fallen ponciana blossoms here and there, and the ecological park is alive with the screes and scrawks of various winged creatures. Some not so winged, maybe. Nancy and Danny swear that the deep electronic digiridoo racket coming from the guayaba tree beside their gate is a tree frog, not a bird. I thought it was a very loud radio on an alternative rock station.

In June there’s hardly a gringo left in La Zona. Most have fled north to escape the heat. Ha. Ha. Fooled them. It’s been fresh and cool here. I even wore long pants and long sleeves when we went out last night to celebrate Agneta’s birthday. OK, it’s DAMP, but when we turn on the AC to dry things out, we freeze!

My walk has been getting longer and longer, since there’s no one to talk to. I do it early. Highway 200 pulses with the sound of traffic long before dawn. Fishermen from La Peñita gun their engines through the estero and hit the sandbar with a resounding thwack. It’s a team effort shoving each ponga up on a loose axle and pushing it over the last few meters of sand into the ocean beyond. The Thursday market continues, minus the colorful crafts that tourists like. “Tupperware Alley” is still full of vendors offering every conceivable everyday need. Life goes on even when no white people are watching.

In fact, life gets a little more colorful and bawdy. Construction workers making an early morning start on projects to be completed before the return migration are more likely to crank up the volume on la música, and more likely still to break into song themselves. Even Harry Beckner’s parrot – a gawdy multi-hued, multi-lingual macaw – entertains himself and anyone within earshot by imitating the sounds of construction noise. One bird alone sounds like an entire work crew, from the the chink, chink repetition of hammer and chisel to the high-pitched whirrrr of an electric drill.

And speaking of work – that’s what is keeping us here in Mexico for longer than we planned. Larry and Danny are knee deep in paperwork and meetings, forming a Mexican corporation. They’re putting in an RV condominium project -- a place for people with big RVs who aren’t inclined to shuttle them north and south anymore and would like someplace permanent to put them. Larry and Dan have a nice walled lot where they’ll build a pool and clubhouse, a casita for a year-round caretaker, and individual concrete pads with tiled roof patios and some other amenities. It’s walking distance to everything. Fourteen slots. Highly restricted. Very nice. And a LOT of interest.

But we’ll head north, maybe this coming week. Hopefully the triple digits in Texas will have subsided by the time we get there. Larry wants to pick up his motorcycle, I’ve got a talk in Los Angeles. We’ve got Mom and Dad to see in Lubbock, a niece’s wedding down in the Texas desert near Big Bend, friends and family all over the southwest to meet and greet and give hugs to.

Sorry not to have been blogging. I HAVE been writing otherwise. Rain tends to bring out that urge. It’s the best excuse to cozy down with the keyboard on the verandah, listen to the water flow through the palm leaves and out through the downspouts and pound away at the keys. Shades of Somerset Maugham. Well maybe.

I hope there's someone who gets that reference to Somerset Maugham. My little friend Lucy, English lit major that she was, is sure to. I miss her! She's off for a month in Mexico City with a temporary office job, wearing high heels and translating reams and reams of instruction manuals for a personal care/pharmaceutical company. Their major products are hair removal creams and condoms. Well, that sets the imagination running, doesn't it? Ah, dear Lucy. Come back to Guayabitos!

So I'm off to jail today in Compostela to visit a friend of a friend. Sixty-five year old woman. Gringo. Well, actually, African-American. It's a story.....I'll share it another day.

Is the party over yet? Please??!!

It is party time in La Penita! Fireworks! Every night about midnight, every morning at 4:30 a.m. on the dot (yes, that is A.M., as in 0 dark thirty), and all times in between. Tonight we were once again at Xaltemba just off the plaza, and the thundering booms and gunshot cracks made it hard to have a dinner conversation. Do our neighbors across the estero know how to party or what?

There's a reason for these fireworks and concerts. Oh yes. There are concerts. At the bull ring, the bull ring which has never seen a bullfight, but has seen lots of enthusiastic banda groups. Banda is a particularly dissonant type of music which relies mostly on drums and trumpets and great big electric amplifiers. The groups usually start around ten o'clock or so and really get rocking about midnight. As I write this in our bedroom about a half hour past midnight, ceiling fans spinning madly and air conditioner humming along, I can hear the music loud and clear. But as I was saying....

The reason for these celebrations is that little straw virgin back in the mountains. Nuestra Virgen del Rosario de Talpa. Turns out SHE is the official virgin of La Penita, and they celebrate her festival NOW, following the big holiday week that kicked off the month of May: Children's Day, Labor Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day. That was the first ten days of the month. Now we've had eight full days of Virgin festivities.

During this week there has been a huge banner across the front of the church off the central plaza welcoming her and her bishop to town. She's installed over the altar, and dear Guadalupe has been relegated to the sidelines. She's over there off to the left in the photo above, halfway hiding behind the large pink banner. The church in La Penita has to be one of the ugliest unfinished buildings in all of Mexico, but it is exuberantly adorned for these feast days, which are exuberantly celebrated. Twice this weekend we've found ourselves in the middle of all the exuberance. It was fun, but a little overwhelming.

Friday we went to dinner at Xaltemba with friends from the States. We got there just in time for a parade, up close and personal. Kids from the neighborhood dressed in these strange costumes that I'd like to know more about. They are much like the ones I saw in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, last March.

Later that night -- after obligatory fireworks -- there was a big dance on the plaza and a cockfight. (No, I didn't watch, so don't look for photos.) This amongst the vendors, tilt-a-whirl, ferris wheel and merry-go-round that have been installed there all week. And there's more of the same tonight -- which I THINK is the last hurrah. Hey it's Sunday. Someone's got to go to work sometime, right?

And someone -- namely me -- has got to go to bed. The music's stopped!!! I'm headed to the island tomorrow morning. First time to explore that big half a hairy coconut chunk of land about a mile or so off shore. Tell you all about it .....later.

Little Tiny Footprints

Hilda, our housekeeper, and her family should be back from Talpa today. As I wrote in my earlier post about our trip to Mascota, this past Tuesday, Hilda, her teenage son, her elderly mother, and husband Chano left early in the morning to drive to San Juan de Abajo, a small town north of Puerto Vallarta. From there, they were to join several thousand other pilgrims and follow the highway to a small town with big shrine dedicated to a tiny little virgin. All on foot. Three days of hiking. Footprints.

So what inspires such devotion? Hilda shared the history of the Virgin of Talpa one morning in our kitchen. She was scrubbing the stove and I was loading the dishwasher. Here's my interpretation of her account in Spanish. Obviously something might have been lost -- but more probably added -- in translation. Here goes:

Like many appearances of the Virgin, it started in a farmer's field. This particular farmer thought he'd found a child's toy, a diminutive straw figure, no more than a foot tall. He carried it home, and a few days later presented it to the daughter of a neighbor some distance away. But his first night without the small doll under his roof, he had a very vivid dream. The doll announced that she was the Virgin, Queen of Heaven, and that she belonged there, in his house. She was not to be removed. She further admonished him, that if he didn't wish her presence under his roof, he was to destroy the doll.

Waking, he of course thought “Whoa, weird dream.” But AHA! There she was, the very doll he had carried away to his neighbor's place. She had returned, leaving a trail of tiny footprints behind her right up to his front door. He stared into her face and wondered if what he had experienced the night before was indeed a dream -- or was it a bonafide vision? Hmmm, Let's see, he thought. Taking his cigarette, he placed the lit end on her cheek. And the doll began to cry. The trace of the tear is still evident on the right cheek of the image lodged above the altar in the shrine. Because, of course, a shrine was inevitable. What else is a peasant to do when the Virgin puts her foot down? Build a shrine! Build a shrine!

Forgive the tongue in my cheek. Perhaps it is the phalanx of "formidable protector" portraits -- all male of serious and heavy-browed countenance -- hanging on the walls of the church-sponsored museum just behind the shrine at Talpa that makes me raise my eyebrows with just a smidge of doubt. Here are the bishops, one after the other down the centuries, all charged with the care and keeping of the tiny little virgin. These guys have sold a lot of souvenirs and hosted a whole slew of pilgrims over the years. In fact, according to the Bruce Whipperman guidebook to Puerto Vallarta and environs, the bishop of the church at Mascota, jealous of the success of the church at Talpa, twice kidnapped the little straw virgin and installed her in his church. And twice she came running back to Talpa, leaving little tiny footprints behind her.

Have a look at the photo album I posted on Shutterfly. (To do this, move your cursor to the left column of this blog. Look under "Links to More Info about Life in Mexico -- and Me," and click on "Susan's Photo Albums." The collection of photos I took in Talpa is there, and you can bring them up as a slide show.)

What I found most fascinating in that museum were the pictures, hundreds of them, drawn with all degrees of competence. Each depicts an instance where people felt the Virgin was protecting them. They date back to the 1940's, and taken in themselves, present a rich cultural history of Mexico and the dangerous situations that the rural poor can get into. Lots of bus crashes, knife accidents, and slips of the machete, as well as a fair share of bad guys lying in wait to ambush unsuspecting farmers staggering home from cantinas. There are "Thanks to the Virgin" (TTTV's, I've called them) for saving people from disease, death, and temptations of all sorts. Signs indicated that the examples posted represent hundreds more in storage.

Now it's not that I disbelieve in divine aid. Not at all. I've had too much in my own life to doubt that when a longing heart asks for help, there’s an answer. And I believe that that help comes in the particular form each individual is ready to recognize and accept. Expect the Virgin. You get the Virgin.

My quibble – and therefore doubting eyebrows -- is about the original story where the Virgin appears to a peasant. And there are several versions and several virgins across Mexico. Who actually documented those stories? Why have they endured? How is it that it these stories continue to inspire and transform people? What is it that seems to make them grow in influence rather than wane?

After asking these questions, I realize that whether or not the stories are true or not, isn’t the real issue. A story, true or false, continues to be told because it is needed. The most factual, well-balanced story of something that actuallyreallytrulyhappened will eventually fade from collective memory -- if there’s no need to retell it.

But who is it that needs these virgin appearance stories?

First of all, it just seems very convenient that virgin appearances to native people in Mexico seem designed to establish organized and orthodox Christianity (read, Roman Church and Spanish Government) smack dab on top of indigenous religious practices. It was on the hill of Tepeyac near present day Mexico City that the Virgin now named Guadalupe appeared to the Indian peasant farmer Juan Diego. This is the Virgin of Guadalupe often referred to now as "Goddess of the Americas." Tepeyac was the hill where the pre-Columbian goddess of Mesoamerica was worshipped in a number of forms. Some of them.....

Tonantzín -- mother goddess and lunar deity
Tlaltecuhtli -- goddess torn in two by rival gods, half her body thrown skywards to create the stars, the other half left behind to create the earth.
Cihuacoatl -- fierce skull-faced old woman, keeper of snakes, who carries the shield and arrows of a warrior.

Pagan goddesses, displaced, but not forgotten.

How convenient that so soon after the conquest, Juan Diego's dark-skinned Guadalupe should arrive on the scene, advising (in the nahuatl language, no less) that Indians should convert to the religion of their pale-faced conquerors, and, Oh yes. Build a shrine. Make it a big one.

Likewise, the Virgin of Zapopán appeared at a critical juncture in the struggle between Spanish soldiers and the native population around Guadalajara. She convinced the soon-to-be-conquered to lay down their arms and accept Christianity. The shrine built to her -- one of the three "miracle shrines" of Mexico -- is the one where my dentist's assistant slacked off -- walking on her knees only from the church entry to the altar, rather than doing it clear across the city.

Why are these virgin appearance stories needed and retold? Who told them in the first place? Who is telling them now?

Seeking aid or answers from a power beyond ourselves is a practice as old as human life on the planet. We've been doing it since learning to walk upright. The ancient of ancients attributed that help to a feminine source, drawing parallels from the human pattern they saw every day. It was Mom who fed and clothed, comforted and caressed, righted wrongs and sent bad little children to the “time out” corner of the teepee. Dad was out slaying beasts, bringing home bacon, backslapping and bonding, giving high fives to the rest of the guys. Dad was tired when he got back.

And so it was, across the globe, that Great Cosmic Mother morphed into a pantheon of female images and icons, each with particular offices that mirrored the duties of earth mothers everywhere. And it was these images and icons that were eventually deemed "pagan" by societies evolving -- or perhaps devolving -- into the ethos of ownership and hierarchies. Hunter-gatherers started farming and fencing, taking possession of the earth instead of belonging to it. And down the centuries --

Ta dah! Enter tribalistic Jehovah worship. Enter the Church of Rome. Enter Taliban thinking in all its gory glory. God got macho. Exit Great Cosmic Mother, stage right.

Well maybe. Sort of. I’ve noticed something about the gentle people I meet around here, and perhaps it's true of people close to the earth as a rule. Except when they’re driving, they will do almost anything to avoid confrontation. I see what people put up with around here and think it’s a wonder Mexico ever had a revolution. Accommodation, compromise, say what makes the gueros happy. Smile. But under it all...... footprints.

It was several years ago I spent a week in Morelia and visited the historical museum there. Lots and lots of little clay fertility goddess images were on display. The guide said the Indians used to plant them along with their seed corn. This blatantly pagan practice was forbidden by the conquering Spanish, who proceeded to put the best Indian craftsmen to work fashioning images of the Virgin instead. These were installed in the churches going up all over Mexico. It was hard work, but Indians have strong backs. Soon the Queen of Heaven reigned over rural congregations across the country.

Images of the Virgin were sacrosanct, treated with great care, venerated at the altar, hauled out on feast days and paraded through the streets. But one feast day in Morelia the bearers failed. They stumbled, and the huge platform on their shoulders went tumbling. The image of the Virgin shattered in the street. And, like a giant piñata, things fell out of her. Clay things. Little goddess images doing ….. ahem …. fertility things. Now where did those come from? Who could have put them there?

Little tiny footprints. We know the story. And here I've retold it yet once more. But whose little footprints are those, really?