The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
The techniques, exasperations and informative joys of bargaining are familiar subjects to long-time foreign residents and visitors in Mexico. But the proliferation of supermarkets and the merchandising practice at many public and street markets of placing fixed prices on goods has confused some newcomers to Mexico, muddying concepts of inter-cultural exchange.
Lake Chapala, presently at about 40 percent of its recent historical capacity, was once more than the republic’s largest inland sea. At one time it was Lake Jalisco, a massive body of water that not only covered most of this state, but substantial parts of adjoining regions.
King corn rules the countryside now. The rains, stuttery or not, send farmers into the mountains surrounding Guadalajara armed with talaches (a heavy-bladed, pick-handled hoe of ancient design) and machetes to cultivate their upland milpas.
It has often been pointed out that the institutional reverence accorded Cuauhtemoc, the last Mexica (Aztec) emperor, is the result of Emperor Moctezuma II’s poor showing against the Spanish.
On a visit in 1978 to the old province of Tuspa, we had the privilege of staying with a Nahua family.
The most intriguing repositories of history we encountered during a recent visit to the ancient province of Tuspa (now the municipality of Tuxpan, some 90 miles south of Guadalajara) were people of Nahua ancestry. And among the most delightful of these were two elderly sisters thought by many townspeople, our Nahua hosts told us, to be brujas (witches).
(The writer and his wife were guests in the town of Tuxpan in 1978. This is part of a series written at that time.)
The old province of Tuspa, as that region of southern Jalisco was designated when Mexico was a colony of Nueva España, contains the ancient valleys and headwaters of the Tepalcatepec and Tuxpan river systems, located at the western end of the Sierra de Michoacan.