Damn, They do Leathaa!
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
In recent years I’ve had the joy of joining the ranks of people that walk into a room and forget entirely why they went in there in the first place. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve even forgotten what I was thinking about, while deeply in thought, simply because a noise distracted me for a split second. There is no greater betrayal than your own mind giving you a truly insightful and illuminating thought to mull over and then yanking it away because you heard a weird sound in the next room. There are of course events, phrases, and moments that will stick forever in my mind.
In the fall of 2000 I was but a young pup, and had only been in Chicago for a year. My friend Claudia, in need of a fresh start, came out from New Jersey. We shared an apartment with my older brother and the greatest dog of all time, Puck.
Being from Jersey, Claudia did not have a lot of Chicago winter appropriate clothing. Her only coat was a cream colored suede lined with fur. It was a cute punk rock coat, but it certainly wasn’t going to be enough come January and February. It was only October and she was having to pull the coat tight around her to keep the cold wind out.
Well, the three of us took the dog for a walk one day. As we passed the dry cleaner, Claudia stopped dead in her tracks and faced it. I can still picture her nineteen year old self, Huge black sunglasses taking up half her face, pixie haircut, left hand holding her coat tight over her chest and neck, right hand lolling off to the side with a cigarette dangling from her fingertips, a genuine look of shock on her face. Then in the most New Jersey accent I’ve ever heard from her, “Daaamn, they do leathaa.”
And there it was born. It took me and Jason a solid minute to stop laughing. Puck didn’t understand what was going on, but was sure he was being left out of a game that he wanted to play. Claudia stood there, embarrassed but unwilling to let her pride to be toppled by two idiot men that thought her occasional accent faux pas were the funniest thing in the world. From then on out, at random times throughout my life, the word leather would trigger that voice and phrase in my head. Sometimes out loud too. Try it, it’s fun.
One of the benefits of age though, at least mine, is the appreciation of craft and craftsmanship of all kinds. Let’s take leather crafting for instance, it’s an under appreciated art form. The idea that we can take the hide of an animal and turn it into beautiful and utilitarian forms to me is really incredible. With the advent of plastics and other synthetic materials, leather has taken a back seat in a lot of areas where it used to be king. Then again there are places where it will never go away.
My lumberjack friends in Colorado will never switch to boots or gloves made of synthetic materials. Leather is durable and protective and those are qualities that are appreciated in places that don’t have cellphone signal. In fact many of the people that I know in the Trades would never give up their leather goods, whether it be tough gloves, or an apron that can take sparks, boots that don’t melt or absorb, or a bag that won’t fall apart just because it’s been repeatedly poked with sharp objects.
Leather isn’t all utility either, there’s an aesthetic side to it too. I’ve always been partial to leather goods, but finding things I’m willing to pay up for is tough. Would I like a pair of square toed cowboy boots? Of course! Am I realistically ever going to need cowboy boots for any reason? Need, is a strong word. No, I don’t need cowboy boots. I have, on the other hand, needed a new belt for years. And I figured now that my nephew was starting to wear more than just sweatpants, he might need a real belt too.
I was coming back from a quick side quest in the Dominican Republic and really didn’t want to take the seven hour bus ride back to San Luis Potosí. I knew that I was going to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato soon, but wasn’t quite ready yet. I looked on the map and saw this largish city to the west of them. Google proclaimed “Leon is a city in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. It’s known for it’s leather goods, sold in the Zona Piel district.” It went on, but that was enough to pique my curiosity. Leon, Mexico, leather capital, who knew?
Leather is more complicated than simply taking the skin off an animal. The difference between the hide and the finished leather product is the the tanning process which makes the rawhide a stable product that won’t rot or putrefy. And it is a process, to be sure. There are various soakings in alkali baths and acid baths, there’s degreasing, where the oils and fats are removed. After several days of this process you finally come out with a soft piece of material that you can then color, mold, cut, and form into nearly any shape you desire.
Need a thin long piece to help you keep your pants up, easy enough. Need a place to carry important document on your way to business meetings or to court, no problem. Several pieces of leather can be stitched together to form a beautiful briefcase that will get you compliments. In the olden days there were processes that hardened leather to make it more suitable for armor. They would boil and then form it over a mold, as it dried it would hold it’s shape and become hard. Would it stop a direct blow from a sharp sword, no, but it could definitely help with a less than 
sharp sword in the melee of battle when blows tended to be less accurate. I’d certainly take it over a wool sweater in that scenario.
In the Zona Piel there are multiple markets that sell the normal assortment of leather goods. Some shops dedicate themselves to a singular style like ladies handbags, or motorcycle jackets. There were whole stores dedicated solely to belts. I’ve always been partial to a good leather belt, but it never occurred to me that there would be so many belts that you could fill a store with the different styles.
I will say though one of my favorite discoveries was La Luz, a leather market dedicated to the manufacturers of leather goods. I walked by it and stopped short. The sign said Bienvenido, but the entrance said otherwise. The thing that kept me from just moving on, was a guy walking out with a small bundle of leather sheets rolled up and tucked under his arm.
Ironically for a place called La Luz, the light, it was the most dimly lit market I’ve been to in Mexico. You would 
think this place was going out of business, but you’d be wrong. Each stall was packed high with folded and rolled leathers in a variety of browns, reds, and blacks. Some had full fur-on-pelts, there was one that specialized in crocodilian leathers. There were tool shops with knives, razors, chisels, stamps, punches, edgers, and bevelers. Other shops carried shoe and boot treads, heavy duty thread, paints, stains, and and a huge assortment of buffing wheels hanging overhead.
Arranged on a grid, these shops maximize what space they have, no matter how small or large the shop. Some of the stalls are just storage for the stall next door. All the different lengths, colors, textures, and finishes rolled and folded into columns and rows ten feet high and sometimes twenty feet wide. Some of the corridors were choked with scraps and tubs and bins overflowing from the smaller stalls that weren’t quite making enough money to make the investment in a larger stall yet.
The streets surrounding La Luz have the sole vision of giving the leather industry what it needs to make their wares. It’s more like an open air mall with heavily trafficked streets running through it. Storefront after storefront of buckles, zippers, and clasps for backpacks; highly detailed cowboy belt buckles; accessories and adornments for belts, purses, wallets, jackets, briefcases, or cowboy boots, or work boots for that matter, maybe some sandals. Hell, I lost count of how many shops, I walked past, that had shoe, sneaker, and boot tread sitting in big bins out front.
Then there’s the finished product. There is an actual mall, it happens to be located right next to the bus station which is also surrounded. The five or six blocks that radiate out from it are simply covered in every manner of leather good you can think of including fully leather baseball hats. The streets are lined with slick talking men and beautiful women in their tightest outfits touting how good their products are compared to the next guy, who says exactly the same thing, sometimes using the exact same verbiage.
I promised my buddy Matt that I would pick him up a leather apron. He didn’t really give me any instructions, just make sure it’s big enough. Simple enough. Oddly aprons seemed to be one of the few items that didn’t have its own specialty stores. So, I 
stopped in one of the hundreds of stores that offered aprons along with a thousand other things. The place that had what seemed the best selection of aprons also carried designer looking wallets, clutches, handbags, briefcases, backpacks, knapsacks, suitcases, duffels, hats, caps, jackets, boots, shoes, sandals, and keychains.
I sifted through three stacks, two feet deep, of nothing but leather aprons in every imaginable combination of colors. The designs changed little, mostly whether or not it had the beer pocket up near the chest. There were color combinations that would’ve made a 
clown blush. I went more conservative for Matt, I just couldn’t see him in a purple leather apron with red pockets and trim.
I also decided to buy my fifteen year old nephew a simple but nice looking brown belt made from a single piece of thick leather. Just a bit of oil every once in a while and that belt, even with daily use, could be good for decades. Not too many things nowadays are being made to last that long. I know that sounds curmudgeonly, but I don’t care. In a world focused on replacing rather than repairing, it’s nice to have something that can provide long term continuity.
I left Leon, on mission to meet a contact in San Miguel de Allende. I would like to have stayed longer and explored more. For a population of 1.7 million people it did not feel very crowded. While no lifelong catchphrases were spoken in the week that I spent in Leon, I’d go back in a heartbeat if for no other reason than the fact that they do in fact do leathaa. And they do it well
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The Masks We Wear
by Thaddeus Ressler
The world is a scary place, but masks offer us armor against exposing our true selves. Psychologist talk about the constellation of personalities that make up who we are. These are just masks though. We put on a different face at work than the fun one we put on for friends, or the more intimate one we put on for lovers. Different ways of presenting ourselves, different ways of addressing the world and how we’re being perceived by it. There are figurative masks like these and then there are literal masks. 
Masks have been a part of humanity for as long as humans have been human. They allowed witch doctors to embody deities that protected the village, or ended the drought. Actors use them to create characters and enhance storytelling, not to mention bringing monsters and demons to life. And sometimes they’re simply for fun, like in the case of Halloween, a costume party, or a parade.
San Luis Potosí has an entire museum dedicated to the mask, The Museo Nacional de La Máscara. A building that weaves through two stories of masks starting with ancient burial masks and ending in the masks used in Carnival processions. They spend most of the time focused on Mexican masks, but there is an “international room.”
The masks of the ancients were made from wood, clay, leather, stone, really any substance or combination of substances that would form the shapes they needed. These masks could include specialty items like feathers, precious stones, teeth (both human and animal), bones, antlers, shells, or anything that made ‘em feel giddy. The masks were used to confer fertility, protection, abundance, good luck for them and bad luck for others. They could be used to call down the gods to divine information or dole out justice.
Burial masks were used to present an idealized version of the deceased. If you’ve ever been to an open casket funeral you might understand why a mask made of jade might be preferred. 
In per-Hispanic Mexico the funerary mask conveyed their deep reverence for the dead. The officiating priest would perform rituals wearing the mask and then place the mask on the dead. The jade used in the masks was considered valuable and made a wealth statement, but it was also meant to confer immortality, ward off evil spirits and help them on their journey into the afterlife.
Funerary masks are all well and good, but those tended to be reserved for VIP’s. One of the more popular types of ritual masks of the ancients were those of animals, intended to help the wearer embody the characteristics of an animal. 
There’s the classic Eagle Warriors like the one to the right. Other warriors might try to embody the fierceness of the Tecuani, or beasts that eat, like the jaguar or wolf. Or maybe to take on the cleverness of a monkey, or the night vision of a bat. God knows what this guy(right) is supposed to be, but I’ll tell you if I saw him running at us with that sword over his head, good luck catching up to me.
Mexicans being Mexicans though, the broadest category is most likely the celebratory and processional masks. 
Solemn is a word that exists in Mexico, but from what I’ve seen publicly, it embodies a different connotation than what we think of in the United States. Dancing and loud music seems to accompany even the solemn processions. While the people may walk quietly there are almost always trumpets and drums leading the way. In these parades and festivals you will often find people wearing masks of all types.
I got to see The Danzas De Los Viejitos(right), or dance of the little old men, on the streets of Patzcuaro in Michoacán. Their smiling pink masks with white eyebrows are almost as much fun as the broad brimmed hats and clacking dance that the young men inside the costumes do.
There’s a variety of non-combat related animal masks too. Including(left) bull masks and a “fish:” mask. If the sheer number of them on the walls counts for anything bats have got to be their favorite animals. There’s even a “La Danza de los Murciélagos,” or dance of the bats, which symbolizes the hunter, closeness with nature and the natural world. In a land of many insects, bats would be seen as helpers and protectors.
Then of course there are the myriad of devil masks that come from all over and rarely have any more significance than they would to an American during Halloween. Except that the masks that Mexicans use are not the cheap little plastic dollar store types that you don’t remember.
These are far more intricate and interesting than anything you could buy in a store. The devil is real here and they do take him seriously. I will say that they are some of my favorite masks. Something about the immense creativity that goes into them really makes me smile, I am a heathen though.
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Should I Stay or Should I Go
By Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
Click on any image to enlarge.
Mexico City is a cultural glut. Feet from the zocalo in El Centro are the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Across the square, The Metropolitan Cathedral in all it’s stonework glory. Within blocks there are dozens of museums of all shapes and sizes. The Anthropological Museum, or Museo Nacional de Antropología, is a short metro ride away. I managed to go to four different museums, four churches, and wander through a city park twice the size of Central Park in New York.
Thanks to my art loving, itchy-footed mother, I’ve been to art museums all over the world. I was taking drawing classes at The Met before most kids had even been to New York. I spent three consecutive days in The Louvre when I was eight, and then had to write essays mom thought up on the sculptures and artists I had seen. We went to so many museums it sometimes feel like it takes physical effort to remember all the different ones. However, I think we may have missed out by not having taken a trip to Mexico City.
Having been to so many of the great museums and cathedrals of the Western World, I’ve grown a bit jaded. I’m tired of European style religious art, not because it’s not good. The finest of them are exquisite and transcendent masterpieces worthy of long and repeated study. 
However, there are only so many versions of a tortured and dying man, or holy and precocious child paintings that I can take. Then there’s the postmodern art that fills most modern art museums. Generally speaking, that has never been able to capture my attention. But when I walked past an old familiar art museum style banner hanging in front into the Palacio de Cultura Banamex, I had to give it a try.
They were doing an exhibit on Covarrubias. I had never heard of the style, but I can admit that my fine art knowledge has definitely degraded over the years. Once inside, I did a little survey to see which way I wanted to go. That’s when the confusion started. Up front there was a huge painting of an illustrated map of Mexico, and behind it I could see paintings of Polynesia. I didn’t think much of it and started my walk-through.
I walked the perimeter first. I looked at some beautiful Art Deco style ink drawings, then a few political caricatures. There didn’t seem to be a stylistic through line to what I was seeing though. Towards the interior there was a whole case of Vanity Fair covers with a singular style to it. For some reason, that clicked something in my brain. I looked down at the little name plates to the right of the paintings. I realized, 
Covarrubias wasn’t a style, I had stumbled my way into the exhibit of an artist that I had never heard of before. I couldn’t remember ever having seen any of his paintings before either.
Miguel Covarrubias was an artist from Mexico City, born in 1904. When he graduated high school at the tender age of fourteen he started producing caricatures and illustrations for the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. At the ripe old age of nineteen he was sent to New York City on a grant from the Mexican Government. In NYC he met people that would introduce him to New York’s cultural and literary elite. This would lead to the Vanity Fair covers that I was looking at a hundred years later.
He also designed theater sets and costumes, made giant murals of illustrated maps, and in 1930, he delved into the geography of the Pacific and the island of Bali, producing some of the most illuminating ethnographic work of the era. 
He studied Mexico, contributing understanding of pre-Hispanic art with emphasis on the Olmec culture, and its origins and influences in the Mesoamerican world.
He was proud of his Mexican roots and created many paintings that detailed the wealth of Mexican culture. He painted country folk like the Huapango dancers to the right, and also painted political figures like the revolutionary Emiliano Zapato, below to the left. He is a painter that I will be studying long after I leave Mexico, and is surely worthy of your research.
The next museum on my list was actually the first I’d intended to visit. 
The Museum of Anthropology, is a deceptively massive building. We spent four hours, walking steadily through, really only stopping to take pictures at the very end. Even then we only got through a quarter of it. It is absolutely a museum that takes, and is worth, several days to get through. I could have spent another few days there and had promised myself to go back, but as they do, things came up.
Over the entrance is a massive carving of the Mexican eagle standing on a cactus with a snake in it’s beak. This leads into a massive “vestibule” that leads to an even more massive courtyard with a fifty-five foot high fountain known as El Paraguas, or umbrella, due to it’s unique design. (below to the left)
We started with the pre-history of man, but to be honest, that’s the least interesting part of any natural history museum for me. Show me the civilizations, show me the tribes, the pyramids and ziggurats. I want to see how we got from nomad to farmer, how we became the dominant species on the planet. And in Mexico, that means that I want to see the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Olmecs. The Maya and the Aztecs being the ones closest to us in history, we have the most amount of information on them. Olmecs on the other hand have a lesser known past, although it now seems that they may have been the progenitor culture of the other two plus many others in the region.
The Olmecs are an interesting one, because there’s not a lot of information to go on. Olmec heads range from huge to massive with distinct facial features and headdress, which some 
archeologists suspect mean that the Olmecs could have been trying to depict individual rulers.They all have broad faces, flat noses, thick lips, and large prominent eyes, sometimes with a slightly crossed appearance. Interestingly they do not look like ancient Aztecs or Mayans. They seem to have more Polynesian or African features than any of the other Mesoamerican people, yet no DNA evidence, and there has been plenty, traces either to the region. Compare them to the sculptures on the right, of Aztec warriors, that show a distinctly different facial structure from that of the Olmecs.
Mayans, on the other hand were well known for their sculptures of animals, priests, and gods. They made some very intricate and fantastic snakes thanks to their love and worship of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god. 
And there was of course their calendar that nearly brought us all to ruin in 2012. It was a close call but we made it through.
Ancient American history is a fascinating subject with a lot of new light being shed on it in recent years. In the last five years alone LiDAR imaging has revealed tens of thousands of earthworks, both village and city throughout the jungle reaches of the Yucatán and Amazon regions. That alone raises the population estimates in the Pre-Columbian new world, by many millions of people, over what was previously thought.
Next I checked out Museo Nacional de Arte, with their “Under the Sign of Saturn” exhibition going on. It examines the influence of the esoteric on Mexican art. The exhibit opens with a small room filled with fantastic and surreal paintings like these. The one to the left is called Auto De Fe, or Act of Faith, showing a priest praying in front of a crucifix with a vaporous 
woman floating above a candle, while a demon-like creature in the foreground appears to be mortally wounded. The one to the right is called Allegory of Profane Knowledge, showing the mainstream view of esoteric knowledge, equating it to witchcraft.
Then I was confronted my this magnificent bronze. The Palmist made by an English born, naturalized Mexican citizen, Leonora Carrington. 
This beautifully macabre sculpture looks like it would be right at home in a fantasy movie about gods and sorcery. While at first it appears to be simple sculpture, there is a lot of little details that Ms Carrington did in a way that really had me wowed.
This etching on paper by Alberto Duero is titled The Knight, Death, and The Demon. It is a surrealistic onslaught of detail and precision. 
Outside of the knight and his steed, no part is untouched by oddity. Even the dog in the etching appears wrong and out of place between the legs of the two horses. It seems more a meditation on the evil that surrounds those on the militaristic heroic quests.
The rest of the exhibit and the museum were fantastic, but I do have one complaint about the museums I’ve been to in Mexico, overall their lighting could use some work. It does the job, but there were many times that I found myself trying to find a spot to stand 
where there wasn’t glare on the oil paint, or glass. There were also a number of very intricate sculptures that were just not lit in a way that did the pieces justice. I know it’s a hard job, I did lighting for film in Los Angeles, but it’s also vital for any visual medium. I won’t harp on it, I’ll give this as an example and move on.
The Museo de Arte Popular greets you at the front door with this wickedly bright and terrifying Alebrije. Alebrije doesn’t have an exact definition but think along the lines of spirit animal. They are a very popular and colorful art form around Mexico. They stem from the Zapotec and Mixtec cultures where they were believed to be protectors and spirit guides. However the modern interpretation of them came in the 1930’s from Pedro Linares, a papier‑mâché artist, who began creating the surreal creatures after experiencing vivid hallucinations during an illness. Mexicans embraced them much the way they did the Catrinas that Diego Rivera popularized in the 40’s. 
Now they can be found in everything from cartoon movies to artisan workshops to trinket sellers in every Mexican city.
One thing to keep in mind while touring Mexico City museums is that they are a bit rulish about the path you take. For instance in this museum, you’re meant to take the elevator to the fourth floor and then follow the signs for which room to go in first. And the guards will politely turn you around and ask you to go the other way. 
As an antiestablishment type this grated on me until I remembered the population of Mexico City and god only knows how many tourists come through. So, I begrudgingly forgave them their trespass on my artful wanderings.
Circling in the proper direction the museum started with hand crafts from each of the states of Mexico. Everything from clay figures, silver, copper, porcelain, and woodwork. To be honest though I was still fixated on the Alebrijes and the surrealistic art. Every time I saw one of the Alebrijes, it put a smile on my face.
The Alebrijes are not to be confused with the other fever dream surrealism that Mexicans seem to love so much. For example the mask to the right is not an Alebrije, it’s called The Purgatory Mask. It looks a bit hellish if you ask me, but what do I know.
That said though, I do love a good representation of the Devil. I find him fascinating as a character of literature and liturgy. Not to mention that his representations in art are often times, in my less than humble opinion, far more interesting than those of the heroes of the Bibles.
By the time I got to the third floor of the museum I started to feel dizzy and nauseous. My body had been battling something since my second day in Mexico City. I ended up rushing through the last two floors and still managed to see some very interesting pieces of art. Like this one that’s meant to tell the history of Mexico, and made entirely of seashells. 
Being an agricultural country, whose national sport is the Mexican version of rodeo, Mexicans ascribe an odd and profound respect for the animals they keep. One of the animals that Mexicans have a bit of reverence for is the rooster, or gallo. 
He’s meant to represent strength, courage, and virility. There are hats and shirts emblazoned with the rooster. And here are two roosters in bronze getting ready for a fight.
Mexico City is a fascinating city of twenty-two million people. It’s the seventh largest city in the world by population, second largest in the western hemisphere. It stands more than two thousand feet above Denver’s mile. It also has over a hundred and fifty museums, and over a dozen archeological sites within city limits with many more nearby. My assignment in coming to Mexico City was to determine whether it would be a mistake to skip it. Was it worth it despite the congestion (both vehicle and human), despite the air and light pollution, despite the noise, despite the price, despite the safety concerns. I only got to spend five days in Mexico City, and one of those was spent in bed helplessly sick, but even if I had only spent two days I can confidently answer this question. Yes, it would be a mistake to skip Mexico City.
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The Difference in a Day
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
Cuetzalan is a very different place on a Monday morning than it was Sunday morning. On Sunday at 8 a.m. many vendors on the top tier above the square were diligently building their tents. Flower sellers were trimming and arranging. 
On the lower tiers teenage girls and gray-haired mountain women in colorful vestments were trying to place hangers filled with necklaces, dream catchers, or pendants, high in their umbrellas, or arrange their wares on tables and hanging matrices. Today though, no one moved with purpose. There were no tents to set up, no tables to arrange, no tourists to haggle with, nothing going on.
Yesterday had been loud and raucous. I saw the famous Voladores de Cuetzalan perform their ritual and civic duties that are meant to bring the rain. Dressed in colorful garb it involves whistles and drums, dancing, and a hundred-foot-tall tree trunk sunk into the ground in front of the town church.
I watched as two of the Voladores climbed to the top an hour earlier to set the ropes. At the top there’s a suspended wooden square for a “bench”, attached to the metal cap at the top of the pole with ropes. They sat on this square rotating around the pole to emplace the ropes, ensuring that each wrapping was tight against the one before it. It was both fascinating and nerve wracking to watch. Apparently they screwed up, because at one point they unwound the ropes and did it again. Safety first, I guess, I still would’ve liked a harness were I in their place.
Just before eleven the crowd gathered close. One man in charge of the high-pitched whistling and drums started his routine. After a few moments the Voladores lined up and walked in rhythm to the pole, then circled around it and danced in rhythm to the whistling. Once finished with the dance they took turns kneeling before the pole and saying a little prayer. And well they should, the steps to the top of this pole are simple one by fours nailed into it. There’s a rope woven up the pole, but to be honest, that didn’t change my feelings on the subject.
The Cuetzalan Voladores are proudly the only Voladores that allow women, a girl in this particular case. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. It must have been her first time, because she moved very cautiously up the ladder, unlike the rest. She got about twenty feet up when the elder statesmen of the group, which I think was her father climbed up next to her to lend his support. It took her a bit, but she got it and everyone cheered.
Once at the top the group tie the rope to themselves. Now mind you, this is the only safety device in the whole affair. No net, no harness, no safety cable, just you and your relationship with the Almighty. After a few minutes of preps and checks the main dancer who had been working the whistle and wrist drum, stood on the cap and played the whistle and drum music and danced for a few minutes to set the mood. Then silence as he took his place near the girl’s side, to balance the weight.
Then they rotated the square, and before they got through one rotation, they threw themselves backwards into the air. The main dancer must have handed off the whistle and drum to one of the other Voladores, because while he sat at the top, the music was now coming in spirals from the swinging ropes.
Then in a move that made my jaw drop, that man started shimmying his way down one of the ropes. About halfway down, he proceeded to wrap his leg in the rope and flipped upside down for a few turns. That man then righted himself and shimmied the rest of the way down. Had I enough jaw left over for it, my chin would’ve been scraping pavement. Here’s a link to the full 15 minute video.
On Sundays the market extends onto and down the main road. Tents, tarps, umbrellas, and ropes cover nearly every square inch of space above the street. Under the multicolored ceiling of plastic and fabric are vendors of all types. Each one specializing in their own thing. One table has beans of all different varieties. Another has a tarp on the ground with bananas still on the stalk, mamey, lychee, and avocados. A guy with a cooler sitting on a card table is selling still warm tamales, while the guy next to him sells fruit syrups from a wheelbarrow. There is no rhyme or reason to where vendors sell, they just set up wherever there’s space.
There was one tent that I visited on the two Sundays I was in Cuetzalan, the fried fish tent. Tables were set up in a horseshoe surrounding the servers and cooks, with benches underneath. Communal dining at its finest! First come first served is the order of the day. 
When they run out, they run out, and that’s all there is too it. That includes drinks, which is how I got to try sangria soda. There’s no alcohol in it, but it did remind me of sangria. I would love to have had it colder, but they ran out of ice too. Who cares about the drink though, these guys were frying up whole fish dusted in God knows what, that was absolutely incredible. The skin was crispy-crunchy, and the meat was delicate and moist. I would’ve said it could have been eaten just as it was, but they had a chipotle sauce that was absolutely to die for. 
It was smokey. It was rich. It had a touch of sweetness. It could’ve used a touch more heat, but I lost my mind over this stuff. I got every last bit of skin and meat that I could off that fish and wished there was another whole one to follow it. However, the first time I didn’t find them until later in the day and they were starting to close up shop, and the second time it started to pour so they closed early.
Today though, Monday, none of that was going on. The square was clear. The owner of the breakfast restaurant closest to the square sat lazily scrolling through her phone. Her normally sharp eyes and tongue on vacation when the waves of tourists weren’t around. She glanced up and instead of selling me on trying her tlayoyos or chilaquiles, she merely nodded and said, “Buenos días.”
What I needed was coffee, cafe de olla to be precise. This is a mixture of coffee, cinnamon, and depending on the place, sometimes contains cardamom and/or chocolate. The cinnamon and whatever else is boiled up beforehand to extract the flavors, and then the coffee is added. Some places put piloncillo sugar directly in the coffee, some allow you to add it yourself. All said and done, this is a beautiful way to coffee in the morning. And today I had time to write rather than experience and that’s exactly what I was going to do.
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Beautiful Mud & The Pork Of Dreams
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
To understand the arts and crafts of the small towns in and around Michoacán you have to understand how they originated. Vasco de Quiroga, the first bishop of Michoacán(1536), was a fascinating character in Mexican history. He is credited with bringing peace through prosperity and religion to the rebellious Purépecha tribes in the region. Utilizing Thomas More’s Utopia as a loose model, he “congregated” the indigenous tribes into towns. Each town was then taught specific crafts which became their mainstay. For example, pottery crafts went to Capula. Tzintzuntzan, being right on Lake Patzcuaro, got reed crafting for things like mats and baskets. Santa Clara, of course, was assigned copper. Quiroga itself theoretically got lacquered wood crafts, but everyone knows it as the home of carnitas.
Karina, my most excellent tour guide and hostess, took me to the little town of Capula first. The dusty streets were dotted with little shops showing off their mugs, cups, plates, serving dishes, comals, pots, and figurines. The figurines have definitely taken over their trade. With colorful Catrinas, that have become synonymous with Día de Muertos taking center stage. Every storefront had the Catrina figures and skulls of different varieties on their shelves. Most were brightly colored, some were unpainted brown clay, but some of my favorites were pure black clay with incredible attention to detail.
Originally Catrinas (Spanish for dandy) were calaveras (skulls or skeletons) created by José Guadalupe Posada to show the macabre egalitarianism of death. Regardless of status, death comes to us all. The first to be published was the Garbancera, or a female garbanzo bean seller, in a 1913 broadside who the accompanying text, which Posada had nothing to do with, portrayed quite negatively due to the ongoing Mexican Revolution. It was thought that these garbanceras were traitors dressed in European fashions and selling a Spanish import. Later these same pictures would take on a whole different context when Diego Rivera was introduced to them and popularized them in the 1940’s. In the mixing of cultures, dress, and ideas, they became a symbol of national identity.
After walking around town for about a half hour in the hot sun, we realized it might be time to get some “Jesus in our lives.” Churches in Mexico are not only centers of refuge for the devout, they are also incredibly beautiful artistic creations, and as a bonus, at least ten degrees cooler than the outside temperatures. And while I may not be Catholic, I have always appreciated the Catholic attention to artistic detail in their churches and cathedrals. The church in Capula did not disappoint.
The most striking part were the six large boldly colored draperies hanging from ceiling to either wall. Done in the bright red and yellow of the Michoacán flag, with a stream of white to represent spirit on the inside. The walls had several sections of repeating patterns running the full length of the church, while the ceiling repeated vines and leaves broken into geometric designs. I think it shocked me because it’s such a small town, and to be honest the outside of the church was a touch drab. It really shouldn’t have though. Churches in Mexico, especially in smaller towns tend to be the focal point of social life.
After that, we realized that we had taken in all of Capula and it’s pottery market. Karina asked if I was interested in going to Quiroga for lunch. Before she finished the sentence I cut her off with an enthusiastic, Yes! She jumped and laughed at the force of my enthusiasm. Then again, few understand my love of all things pork, and carnitas is high on that list. Whenever someone asks me what my favorite thing to cook is, I go into a Forest Gump style litany of mostly pork dishes. Without pork fat in my life, everything seems gray and lifeless, and apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way.
In Michoacán they say that you can only really make the classic carnitas in a copper pot. The copper pots that made Santa Clara del Cobre famous to be precise. Most of the pots you find for sale in touristy areas are relatively thin, like the ones you might find in a French kitchen, which is perfectly fine for the home cook. However, for industrial scale cooking you have to turn to the thicker ones that I saw proudly displayed at the museum. They’re nearly a half-inch thick hammered copper. These are no-nonsense workhorse pots that will sit over a wood, charcoal, or gas powered fire for hours every day of the week, slowly cooking down thirty to forty pounds of spiced pork in it’s own fat and juices. If you couldn’t guess, this is one of my favorite dishes in all of Mexico. There’s nothing quite like pork confit, or pork cooked in it’s own fat, and this is simply the Mexican expression of that classic dish. And I was getting to have the fortunate experience of eating carnitas in the home of carnitas.
In Quiroga, in the center of town, there is a lineup of carts, tents, and stalls where the food vendors have taken over. It feels like a crowded farmers market filled with cooked meat smells, right up until the first vendor starts shoving a soft tortilla jam packed with carnitas uncomfortably close to your face. My Spanish is still remedial, but I can tell a food sales pitch from a mile away, and this guy was two feet from my person, with the taco inches from my face. For a moment I was put off, but then I realized what I was being prudish about. I mean who cares if this loud sweaty man was in my personal space, he was desperately trying to feed me food that I was desperately wanting to try. I took the taco in hand and bit off half.
The tortilla itself was impossibly soft, and followed up by a beautiful explosion of spiced porky flavor with just a touch of fatty goodness. It was both tender and juicy without sacrificing the texture of being meat. The liquid fat that remained after cooking transferred flavor directly to my tongue. I moaned. Karina eyed me suspiciously at the sound, but I couldn’t give an explanation in my native language much less in a language I’m barely capable of paying a compliment in. We didn’t stop walking though.
The guy handed me a taco with an assurance that his were the best in all the land, while his waitress tried to usher us to a communal seating area, all while we were walking, eating, and checking out the other places. Then two more hawkers approached us, speaking loudly over each other. One attempting to shove another taco at me, while the other was telling us about her barbacoa, a dish I still need to try. Now, I’m not squeamish by any means, but I’m also not accustomed to being accosted by grown men trying to shove food directly in my mouth. It’s a touch overwhelming, but I might suggest, that if it ever happens to you, just go with it. These are people concerned with feeding you, just trying to give you food, how bad is it really going to go? I took the second taco. It was delicious too.
We decided to go to the first one, since, why not? When we circled back the waitress ushered us to a table under the canopy. There we found out we would be ordering by the kilo, like the drug that carnitas are. Being an American, metric is not my strong suit, but weight is a pretty easy one(1k=2.2lbs). I felt like two pounds of meat, even one I love as much as carnitas, might be a bit much. We went for a half kilo. That came out with a stack of fresh hot tortillas, a plastic cup filled with guacamole, and pickled Serrano peppers. I was in my happy place for the next fifteen minutes.
A boy came over from the drink stand, which is a separate business from the meat vendors, but works in conjunction with them. This seems to be a thing that happens often in a lot of these communal vendor areas. Drinks are separate from food, but they all work together to ensure business flows smoothly. When I was in Oaxaca with Gabby, we went to an indoor market that had a “smoke alley” where you order your meats, sit down, then drinks and tortillas are offered to you, but all by different vendors. Everything was à la carte and paid separately. It can be a bit confusing at first, but once you get the process, it makes sense.
Well Karina decided to tap out after two tacos. I, on the other hand, gladly finished off the rest of that pound of meat. Now, one interesting thing I found in Mexican carnitas versus what I’ve had in the US, there was skin, or chicharrón. Cooked down till it was falling apart, but completely saturated in all the herbs and spices that went into the dish. It ended up being my favorite part. I made sure to get at least a little strip of chicharrón in every taco.
After eating all that pork, I needed to go for a walk. Which with any good Mexican town leads you straight to church. The ceiling was covered in the painted and lacquered wood that the town is supposed to be known for. The designs were beautiful and there was a rich depth of color to them. Each panel had an individual theme, some were symbols of Christianity, others were biblical scenes. Above the altar was a scene of Jesus, arms outstretched 
toward the congregation, with the universe in the background. As beautiful as the artwork was, I couldn’t help but think that there was room for debate as to what could be considered the greater art form in town. Sure, beautiful art feeds the soul, but great culinary art feeds the soul and fills your belly. For me it comes down to this, to really remember the beauty of the church I will need to look at some of the pictures I took, however the beautiful flavor of those carnitas will haunt my dreams for eternity.
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Heavy Metal
There’s no sound quite like the rhythmic striking of metal by another metal object. It’s a sound that instantly draws my ears and focus. Maybe I was a blacksmith in a former life, who knows. However what I was hearing wasn’t blacksmithing. There is a high pitched ping that is distinctive to iron and steel. What I was hearing was coppersmithing. Instead of a ringing, I hear a thwack-thwack-thwack. The softer metal stole the reverberation from the thick raising stake the man was forming the copper sheet around. 
Just as Karina, her son Gerardo, and I stepped from sales shop into the workshop, the smith turned on the blowers for the forge. In just a few moments the whole space, despite being partially outdoors, filled up with smoke. The smith wore a green polo, black pants, and running shoes, not exactly what I think of as approved workwear for a fiery, metal bashing environment. Then I remembered the lack of controls on getting a driver’s license in Mexico and realized their version of OSHA might be a touch relaxed too. He shuffled over to a woodpile stacked high with slats of raw wood. He grabbed a few chunks and gently tossed them onto the rising flames before he took note of us. He greeted us with a warm “¡Buenas tardes!” 
Behind him was a forge unlike any I had seen before. First off, it looked like an amorphous mass of mud or concrete on the ground with embers, ash, and unburnt wood piled up in front of it. On top of the mass was a copper tub who’s function I never figured out. From what I could figure, it had to have been some kind of protection for the blower tubes that ran underneath the pile of embers and wood. A mass that big with a tub of water on top would certainly mitigate the amount of heat going back to the blower motor or in the old days the poor bastard working the bellows. This outbuilding had a steeply sloped roof that funneled most of the smoke skyward, but certainly not all.
At the National Museum of Copper, three artisans gathered in the courtyard under a wooden roof. The two men hammered away, while the woman, Carmen, carefully scraped away designs in a copper plate. The older of the two men hammered out rivets that would be used to put handles on the cooking pans stacked next to his feet, while the younger hammered leaf and vine designs into copper strips. The younger man’s movements were as sure as a chef chopping onions. First he would draw the pattern he wanted in sharpie and then with a hammer and a thin piece of rebar, he had fashioned to the shape he wanted, would create the pattern. When asked, the older man told us that he had been working in copper for seventy years, he was eighty-two. The younger man was a spritely sixty-three and might as well have still been an apprentice with only fifty-two years under his belt. I decided out of politeness, not to ask Carmen how long she had been working copper for, but it had to have been at least as long as the younger man considering her equally deft touch. 
She gripped a copper plate covered with a black tar-like substance and with a scrap piece of copper scraped away a design that she had scratched into the black. The plate she was working would eventually end up in a chemical bath of uric acid to slowly eat away at the exposed copper. The tar coating was there to protect the design from the acid and would be removed later to expose the shiny copper underneath.
The only thing that was missing from my trip to Santa Clara del Cobre was an actual copper smithing class. Unfortunately they don’t do those on Mondays, but there are workshops that do offer it, so I’ll just have to go back. The best I could do to soothe my rejection was to listen to heavy metal music on our hour long ride back to the house. 
Cultural Definitions Of Time
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
“The Mexican ‘ahorita’ is a measure of time as elusive as a coyote in the middle of a full moon. It’s like trying to catch a shadow with a butterfly net. It always seems just out of reach. It’s that moment when time seems to bend and twist, turning a simple ‘ahorita’ into a temporal odyssey worthy of the labyrinths of the underworld. It’s a promise of promptness that can translate into minutes, hours, or even days, depending on the whims of the universe and the individual’s disposition. In short, the ‘Ahorita Mexicano’ is an experience as surreal as a singing mariachi band performing while riding a unicorn through the cobblestone streets of a magical town. A true gem of Latin American culture and time!” ~Ahorita! by Ozwaldo Olvera Trejo
Ahorita is a word that means many things to many people in Mexico. Translated directly it means ‘right now’, but it’s true meaning comes down to the person saying it, the timing of it, and the context. It could mean right now, if that person is in front of you and you’ve just asked when they were planning on leaving the party. Then again, it could mean right after he says goodbye to everyone in his immediate and extended family and has taken multiple shots of tequila with them. It is widely accepted here, and joked about often. Mary Carmen’s son, Oswaldo, lovingly makes key chains similar to the plaque above as tribute.
In a country where showing up on time to a party is considered uncouth and downright rude, Mexican culture demands a word like ahorita. It is both lie and fact, honest desire and mythic brush-off. It can be used to postpone or indirectly cancel plans without ever having to say the actual words. On the phone it could mean that person is still in bed and considering what clothes to wear, despite having told that they’re coming over, ahorita.
It requires a knowledge and understanding of the person you’re speaking with. If a more serious person says it to you, feel free to take it more seriously. If a more… carefree person, says it, be more liberal with the grains of salt you’re consuming. If even a drop of alcohol is involved, “may the odds be ever in your favor.”
Everywhere I’ve been has something akin to this. We all have friends that are chronically late or blow us off by saying one thing and meaning another. A sizable number of people I know get annoyed and call it irresponsible. However, my Dominican and Jamaica friends in New York shrug, raise an eyebrow, and state “Island Time”, like I should’ve known better. My black friends in Chicago laughingly call it “CPT”, or Colored People Time. However, nothing I’ve come across seems to have quite the elegance, finesse, and cultural understanding of the singular word that is the Mexican, Ahorita.
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Ancient Zapotec Rugs & Old School Mezcal
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
Jorge asked for volunteers. I laughed considering it was just me and Gabby. He walked over to a cactus paddle that was hanging from a rafter. It had a white dust all over it that made me think that it was just a dusty ornament. He plucked something out of it and walked back over to us. 
He motioned for me to hold out my hand, and I did. He dropped a small white thing in the center of my palm. It looked about the size of a fat grain of rice, which might have been why he called it un grano. Upon closer inspection I had no idea what this foreign little thing reminded me of, maybe a tiny pinecone. Jorge grabbed my hand and took his pointer finger and crushed the thing into my hand. As he started to rub circles into my palm a bright red circle appeared as if by magic. Cochineal!
I knew it somewhere in my brain! It’s a bug that lives on cacti. Specifically the Nopal cactus, which is a farmed crop here in Mexico. The young paddles, known as nopales, are harvested and cooked up and used in everything from salads and soups, to grilled meats dishes and tacos. The bright red fruits, which Mexicans call tuna, are sweet and juicy, reminiscent of dragon fruit, or watermelon. The cochineal bug infects the pads of the cactus spreading a white substance over them. They’ll cluster and then spread, clustering again, and then spreading again. Those little guys produce carmine, a natural dye, that indigenous people of the Americas have been using on textiles for over two thousand years. One only needs to brush the bugs off the plant and crush it up, and voila, a rich red dye.
But then our new friend showed us something even cooler. He started doing chemistry on my hand. He squeezed a bit of lime juice into my hand the color turned from deep red into a brighter red. Then he added a bit of ground up marigold, turning it to an orangey-red. A bit of baking soda rubbed into the pinky side of my palm, made it transform to a plum color. I can’t remember how he made the green color, but by the end my hand looked like a painters palette.
After washing my hands, it was on to the weaving. Thanks to my parents, I am quite familiar with looms. I spent a whole summer weaving with a loom that my grandfather and I had modified to make ribbon fabric. I hadn’t made any designs, just placed the ribbons as aesthetically as my seventeen year old brain could muster. These guys, however, were putting animals and geometric designs into their wool rugs. He showed us how they would weave individual bundles of yarn that make up the weft(across), to match the outline drawn onto the warp yarns(lengthwise). Then if it was at the front of the weft he could pull back on the beater, or if the beater couldn’t reach it, he would use a comb to pull the yarn tight into the rug. Jorge told us the stories behind the patterns on the rugs. The steps represented the steps of life, and the geometric spirals represented death and rebirth. The central part was meant to be the eye of god.
This had turned into a really fun and educational day. Gabby and I had been packing in the sights as best we could, since I only had a week in Oaxaca. Before this we had come from down the road at a mezcaleria, where we learned how mezcal is made. Well, because of my tenure behind the bar, I’ve actually taken many classes on the fermentation, distillation, barreling, and bottling processes. However, it was very cool to see the mezcal process up close and personal in a place that’s actually making it, rather than seeing the pictures or videos on a screen. Nothing can compare to the burnt wood smells of the roasting pit, or the fruity funk of the agave mash fermenting. Plus, not a one of those classes I took offered up slices of freshly roasted agave to try, and that transformed the way that I thought about the flavors in Mezcal and Tequila. It had a sweet-sour, earthy, honey thing going on in it. Because it’s so complex, it’s hard to pinpoint exact flavors, but good lord did it taste good.
A quick walkthrough of the Mezcal process is as follows: allow agave to grow for ten years, cut all the leaves off and pull “piña” out of the ground, cover with aforementioned leaves and roast piñas for a few days in a pit loaded with coals underneath and over top. After that mash the piñas under a huge circular millstone dragged in circles by an unamused looking horse or donkey. Then take the mashed up agave and mix with water to extract all the sugars out and then allow to ferment. Strain out pulp from mash and allow to continue fermenting for another week or two. Then distill out the alcohol, maybe even a few times. Then serve with chili-salt and a wedge of lime.
It doesn’t seem like it, but this is a similar process to making any other kind of alcohol. Want to make the most basic beer? Just boil malted grain to extract all the sugars, strain it out, and then ferment it with yeast for a few weeks. For wine you would mix fruit juice with yeast and then let it ferment for a few weeks. Then to make liquor from it, you would distill the alcohol out of it. It just requires the right equipment, which can be improvised handily for under $100. That said, there’s good reasons why home distilling doesn’t get the same allowances that home brewing does. Click this link to see a short video Agave Mash.
At the end of the tour we got to taste several varieties that they happened to have for sale. Some were specific agave varietals, others were infused with fruits or herbs. I bought a bottle of an agave varietal called Tobala for a friend back home, and Gabby grabbed one for herself because in her words. “This is Mexico. You don’t know when somebody comes to the house. You might need Mezcal.”
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Testing And The Art Of Driving On Mexican Roadways
Growing up in New Jersey, a place where there is a rule, regulation, law, directive, and tax on everything that a person does, it seems crazy that you wouldn’t need certification to drive on public roads. Yet, those certifications have never stopped Americans from being terrible drivers. It does, however, give us the comfortable illusion of safety and competence. And this is coming to you from someone who has traversed the entire East Coast, all over the Midwest, and Southwest. I’ve also driven most of the highways, byways, state, county, and surface roads of the three largest metropolises of the United States, as well as a handful of smaller ones too. I have driven in thirty-eight of our fifty states, and I can say with absolute certainty that the United States has no shortage of horrendous drivers in it. Each and everyone of them went through “thorough” training and testing. 
On that trip I had opted for a front row seat, thinking this was going to be like the luxurious coach I had taken in the opposite direction. It was not. More than that, the driver was not the same relaxed gentleman we had on the way to Puebla. This man drove like he had just stolen the bus and was trying to flee the country in the most convoluted way possible. Every turn felt like a test of my core strength. I averted my eyes when he overtook vehicles, I braced for impact every time he came right up to the bumper of slow-moving vehicles that hadn’t moved to the shoulder fast enough. If I had pearls, they would have been clutched every time he took a turn that, by my estimation, came far too close to other vehicles or buildings, which was literally every single one of them. Yet, the man never flinched, never stopped, there were times that he didn’t even stop to let people jump on. Cucumbers dream of being this cool. He was as sure in his movements as a surgeon doing the routine removal of a mole. The only thing that ever seemed to slow him down were the topes (pronounced TOE-pace), the Mexican word for speed bumps. 
These “sleeping policemen”, are ubiquitous in Mexico. The only place they don’t exist is on the high speed toll roads. The smaller the road the sooner you can expect them. For instance on the one-way streets of Zacatlán, they come at least once per block. You can count on them popping up least every kilometer on a bigger road. They’ll stretch them out further in farm country, where you mostly get them at crossings or more populated areas. I even saw a couple of them on dirt roads, which makes no sense to me. They vary in age, height, shape, and markings. Some are a serpentine row of steel half-spheres crossing the road, some are eight inch wide asphalt rows with a slope so sharp it feels vindictive. Others are tall and long enough to make a bus rock like a boat in stormy seas. To top it all off, the Mexican government doesn’t seem to value the universality or consistency of road signage. Nor do they seem to care if these topes have markings on them that signify their presence at all! On more than one occasion these unmarked topes afforded me an unexpected Spanish lesson in the proper use of foul language.
I got to experience highway topes on day one with Dick Davis, when we took a taxi from Mexico City to Zacatlán. There must have been at least a hundred of them in the three hour drive. Apparently there aren’t as many of them in Mexico City, because it seemed like our cabby’s first experience with them too. Many of them were hit at speeds well in excess of what his little car’s suspension could handle. Each one earned a quiet curse and/or grunt from all three of us. In one case, Dick and I hit the roof of the cab with enough force to stun us and make us slide deep down into our seats for fear that it might happen again. 
Lying in bed in Oaxaca, weeks later, I was trying to figure out how I could make sense of all of this, especially those damn topes. I thought about the fact that Mexico is a country that enjoys its drinking, a lot, and their drivers don’t go through testing. My mind reeled at the idea that swearing to a government official that you know how to drive, plus a birth certificate and proof of address, was all that was necessary to get a driver’s license. From that angle though, all those topes started to make a little more sense to me. It’s hard to cause a massive car wreck when you can’t get over 35mph. Could you, sure, but it had to limit the possibility tremendously. Hell, I’d be willing to bet that most of the drunk driving accidents are caused by very short people, because as Dick and I can attest, smacking your head into the roof of a car is a sobering experience.Flores de la Primavera
Flores de la Primavera
by Thaddeus Tripp Ressler
Spring in Mexico, even in the mountains is a very warm affair. It’s only the beginning of April and already hitting the mid-eighties. A far sight from the sub-zero temperatures I was dealing with just two months ago in Colorado, though it’s certainly just as dry. None of that seems to bother the flowers though. There’s an explosion of color on the streets of Zacatlán.
Turning a corner can put you face to face with a Paperflower bush hanging over walls or through a gate spilling into and over the sidewalk making beautiful canopies of orange, pinks, reds, and purples.
I found feral Fuchsias growing out of a corner of a small church.
Geraniums in pink and red give little pops of color to balconies and windowsills.
I even saw a beautiful Chilean Jasmine bloom in pink winding it’s way up a staircase.
High up in Popotuhuilco, I found Red Hot Pokers blooming, and waiting for hummingbirds.
Blue Lily’s bunched at the top of a tall stalk in a garden where a White Foxglove was showing off a stack of blooms and buds, two feet high.
But the most interesting to me is the Spiky Mexican Pricklypoppy. This thorny relative to the thistle has beautiful white or yellow flowers, and seems to only grow in forgotten places.
