Virgins in Mexico

We have now had 28 days without rain. The lake level has started to go down, about 8 cm. (about 3 inches) so far. Nevertheless, it was a good year for the lake. Also, there was much less lirios (water lily) infestation this year. Another good sign as the lirios bloom is based on water pollution (often fertilizer runoff).

In Mexico, the cult of the Virgin is really important. Fairly early in the Spanish colonial era, an appearance of the Virgin was proclaimed at Guadelupe and the Virgin of Guadelupe has been an object of veneration ever since. It is believed that for many of the Indian population, she became a substitute for an Aztec goddess. In fact, Catholicism was conflated with a great deal of Indian religious ideas and motifs. Later, the Inquisition was brought with full fury to try to stamp out this intrusion of ‘paganism’. Despite the tortures and executions, it was only partly successful and Catholicism here still has lots of pre-Christian elements. Some statues depict Guadelupe with a very dark skin. She became a virtual patron saint of Mexico. Father Hildago’s army fighting for independence from Spain carried banners dedicated to Guadelupe in the war for independence 1810-21.

However, there are a multitude of other ‘Virgins’ highly venerated; most of these are little statuettes, dolls really. Many have corn stalks or husks for the body and many are very old. However, they are beautifully dressed. In fact the Virgin of Zapopan seems to have a lot of gold (her halo and her cloak, for example). Here in Ajijic, there is the Virgin of the Rosary. No one knows how old she is. There is a definite reference to her in 1733, but many believe she is much older. Franciscan missionaries arrived here on Lake Chapala about 1530, only a few years after the Spanish conquest. Shortly after, they built a shrine to the Virgin and later a church here in Ajijic to the Virgin. The little chapel on the north side of the plaza replaced that building in the early 18th C. This little chapel is the home of ‘Rosario’. However, for most of October, she is in the parish church and subject to daily masses. On the last day of the month late in the afternoon, there is a big parade to take her from the church back to her normal ‘home’ in the chapel; there is music and celebrating all evening.

The Virgin of Zapopan (Zapopan is one of the 5 cities in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area ) is the most celebrated in this area. Her normal home is in the Basilica of Zapopan. There are a number of miracles attributed to her, including stopping at least one plague in the Guadalajara area. Every year in September and October she is taken on a peregrination to a number of churches in the region, including to Chapala during its festival honoring Saint Frances, Chapala’s patron saint. Last week, her annual visitation was brought to an end. After spending several days in the cathedral in Guadalajara, there was a hugh procession along the approximately 5 mile route to the Basilica. People gather along the route the night before and an estimated 1.5 million observe the procession, with floats and thousands of dancers, etc. Many people offer prayers and requests as she passes believing (or hoping at least) that she answers such requests.

A few years ago when the level of Lake Chapala had fallen very low and many thought there was a danger that it would dry up completely, special prayers were offered to Zapopan requesting that she save the lake. Now that it has recovered, many credit her. (Of course, the agreement by all the states that are part of the watershed to limit the amount of water used in irrigation is much more relevant.) As a result, she was given a new title, Queen of the Lake. This week she is being brought from Zapopan to Chapala for a parade and special service of thanksgiving for such a bountiful year for rain. With all these Virgins, this seems to me to be polytheistic, rather than monotheist, but that is true of all the saints in Catholicism which arose from the amalgamation with pre-Christian polytheistic religions during the Dark Ages in Europe.

Although Guadalajara is very cosmopolitan and a declining percentage of thre population are Catholic, the influence of the Church is stronger here in Jalisco State than in many other parts of Mexico. However, the archbishop of Guad., who is the highest Catholic prelate in Mexico, currently has 2 lawsuits against him: one for alleging that the Mayor of Mexico City had bribed the judges who had ruled that refusing to allow gays to marry was unconstitutional. (Many areas are in the jurisdiction of the states, and Mexico City has many more liberal laws, allowing gay marriage and abortion, to name a couple.) The second lawsuit was launched because of some strong, inflamatory antigay remarks the archbishop made while denouncing the idea that gays should be allowed to adopt children. The Governor of Jalisco, a member of the PAN party which has close ties to the Catholic Church, also has a lawsuit against him for his antigay comments. Who knows where these lawsuits will go, but they do show that the conservative influence of the Church is being challenged strongly, unlike the US where religious conservatism seems to be growing in influence.

Last week we took the 3 girls to Tobolandia. As usual, they had a great time and we had a fairly easy time sitting in the shade and watching them. They give swimming lessons there late Saturday afternoons, 4:30 - 6 p.m. We are planning to take them there this Saturday. It will be less nerve-wracking to take them next door to Steve’s pool if they can swim as it is over their heads everywhere.

Kate and Jack arrived on Wednesday night. They were very relieved and pleased to be here to recuperate. Jack is trying to fight off a case of pneumonia and Kate fell and sprained here ankle the day before they left Halifax.The weather is perfect. They are planning to stay for close to a year.

Tree trimming

We have been having trouble with our internet service for some time--before we went to Nova Scotia. We would have to repeatedly request it to download something. Finally, I noticed that the little LED green light for the internet would go off and even the red light would come on. During that time, we could not get or send anything to the internet. It has been getting worse. Finally, I went to Telmex to report this. The man I talked to said very decidedly that that should not happen. The green light should stay on; it flickers when anything is being uploaded or downloaded, but it should stay on. He entered a report. The very next day, I was called and they located a fellow who could speak English. I described the problem and he said that it could be a problem in the line and noticed on the phone that there was some static. Anyway, they would send out a repairman to check the line and things here. It took 2 days, but the fellow showed up and checked things out. I was able to show him the problem eventually. He went back and reported that the line was all right. The next day I got another call asking if we still had the same problem; we did. I suggested that maybe it was the modem and he agreed that that was possible. He gave me an order number to get a new wireless , modem/router. I went down to the Telmex store in Ajijic and soon had a new modem. The new one has worked perfectly since and that was over a week ago. The modem was obviously the problem. We got it new when we arrived in May 2008 and usually they last longer than that; however, there are big fluctuations in voltages and spikes. I have always used a surge suppressor, but we did not get the voltage regulator for the house until less than a year ago.

We have been very pleased with the speed with which we can load things from the internet. Telmex is fairly expensive; we pay 1000 pesos per month (approx. $85). For that, we get local phone service, unlimited long distance in Mexico (which we use infrequently), some special deal on calls to the US (which we do not use because we have the VOIP phone) and the internet Since we moved here, they upgraded the service; it is now claimed to be 5 million bits per second, but when I test it, the best I get is 4.3 or 4.4 million bits (i.e., over 500 K bytes/second) which is not too bad. However, upload speed is rather pathetic and well under 100K bytes/second. However, I am impressed by the customer service. Once I had reported the problem, I got a call every day following up.

On Monday morning Sept. 20th, we had a knock on the door. A workman was there to ask if we wanted to trim one of our eucalyptus trees. It had some boughs that were dead and other branches that were looking kind of sickly. We have been thinking that we should do something. This seemed like something we should do. He didn’t have any English and my Spanish is limited; as a result, communication was not perfect. However, we knew that we had to get permissions and he knew all about it. He took me to the La Floresta office and the manager agreed to give the initial ok, even without doing the usual inspection. Then Jose, that is the man’s name, got the documents needed and took them all into the municipality office in Chapala which gives the final permission. Jose was running around for 3 or 4 hours. He got started on Tuesday. He had waved his hands making some cutting motions and we thought that he was intending to take down only the obviously dead limbs. As it turns out, we had not really understood what he intended to do. What he ended up doing was cutting off all the limbs about 15 to 20 feet above the ground as you can see in the photos. It is now dwarfed by the other 2 in the front lawn. Finally, when we began to remonstrate with him, he managed to convey the idea that this way, new branches would sprout out, not up, in a kind of mushroom fashion. Barbara says that she has seen this done at other places and it seems to work. Rosendo, the gardener, gave his opinion that it was the end of the tree. Thus, it is a grand experiment; Jose said it would take 2 years to really branch out. I wouldn’t be surprised. The eucalyptus trees get about 35 metres high (over 100 feet). It must take a lot of energy to get water and nutrients that high. As a tree gets older and weaker, it may be easier to feed lower branches than very high ones. However, it does show the need to get better at Spanish so that we know what people are saying to us. Barbara is now studying Spanish everyday using the lessons on CDs that we brought with us when we came down. She practices Spanish with Rosendo and he seems happy to help her. At the same time, I am teaching Edwardo to speak English. We all seem happy with the process.

It seems that our rainy season is coming to a close. There has been a decided change in the last few days. There have been absolutely no clouds and the humidity has been plunging. The rain has been very heavy this year. The average rainfall by this time is usually just above 770 mm (just over 30 inches) with another 75 mm. (3 inches)--mostly in October--by the end of the year. This year, we have already had 1070 mm (42.2 inches). Lake Chapala is still rising and is now just 10 mm. (4 inches) below the peak in 2008. The heavy rain has meant that the reservoirs upstream are much higher than a year ago and that means that farmers are likely to get bigger water quotas for irrigation during the coming dry season.