Rotary, Taxco and Xochicalco

Another busy weekend here. Friday night, I met my host counselor, Robert Winter, a retired U.S. diplomat who has worked in eight Latin American countries. He invited me and the two other Rotary scholars to a get-together at his house. We met several Rotarians as well as Roteract members, who are generally college students or young professionals. Everyone was extremely welcoming and friendly.

Saturday, I took a school excursion about an hour-and-a-half away to Taxco, “the silver city.” Really, there’s not much silver mining done here anymore, but there are still at least a hundred jewelry shops all over the place. We visited a higher-end store just outside the downtown, where the owner gave us a quick description of silver production, passed out tequila samples and goaded us to spend, spend, spend. Smart business strategy – get the wealthy Americans loaded and then they’ll let go of their money faster. I saved mine, however, for later in the afternoon when we had free time to wander the downtown shops and Mercado. We also toured the Santa Prisca and San Sebastian Church, which was built in 1758 by Jose de la Borda, a French miner who’d struck his fortune in Taxco. It was one of the most detailed churches I’ve ever seen. Every panel inside, not just the front altar, was decorated with oil paintings, wood carvings and gold filigree. One of the panels also had a painting showing the Virgin Mary pregnant, the only one in all of Latin America according to one of our teachers. I’d definitely go back to Taxco. If not for more shopping, there were about three museums and some caves 20 minutes away that I didn’t have time to visit.

Today, it was back to Mexico City to see the special Frida Kahlo exhibit celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the day she was born. Aside from the murals surrounding the second floor hall, the whole Palacio Bellas Artes was dedicated to her work and life. They had drawings, watercolors, paintings, photographs, letters she’d written and historical background. They even had the cast she’d worn after the train accident that ripped through her spine. The paintings, though, were by far the most fascinating for me, AND I could understand most of the Spanish descriptions of them, which was nice. We stopped for lunch at the nearby Sanborn’s, which is a huge cafeteria/department store chain down here. Then, our last stop of the day was Xochimilco, about 20 minutes south of downtown. This “city of flowers” has about 50 miles of natural canals that boaters use like streets. Back in the time of the Aztecs, the whole city had waterways like this that came from a huge central lake. But people slowly filled in the lake as they built up the city and Xochimilco is all that’s left of the original canal system. For this reason, the town has become a weekend tourist attraction. The canals were literally clogged with long “trajinera” boats, mostly passengers, but also floating merchants and mariachis who would come up alongside the tourists offering their wares. We collectively bought a mariachi song, which was amusing. I was back home by 7:15 p.m.