The procession started as people left La Iglesia de San Rafael after attending services. Four burly men carried a statue of Jesus. Not visible in the image is the rope that binds his hands, the end of which is held, I think, by the Roman soldier. The choir in cassocks and cottas sang hymns as they marched.
Gone was the celebratory spirit of Viernes de Dolores. I saw no smiles on the faces of the participants.
Costuming was elaborate. Considerable effort and expense had gone into preparing for this event.
As the Roman soldier marched toward me, I found myself faced with a dilemma. I wanted photographs. The participants wanted a reenactment of a hallowed moment. My flash might intrude.
I was positioned at the edge of a crowd (many of whom were taking pictures as well) such that I was crowding the soldier's path. He came on toward me, apparently intending to brush me aside if I didn't move. If my hands had been folded in prayer, he might have moved around me. But with a camera in front of my face, I clearly wasn't a part of the memorial, and he rightly treated me as such.
I backed out of his way and snapped the photo.
Pharisees followed, looking grim. In case you couldn't identify them as such, one wore a Star of David on his breast. Did this symbol exist in biblical times?
The figure of Judas was arresting. He jangled his bag with thirty pieces of silver. He carried a lamp that was not lit. My sister Suzie says that it symbolizes that he has lost the light of the spirit. To me, his expression looked agonized. The man played his difficult role beautifully.
Photos don't begin to capture the sad flavor of this event. This short clip may convey a sense of the dirge-like quality of the procession.
The choir's sad refrain, the sonorous playing of the brass, underscored the solemnity of the moment. This little girl's face echos the feeling perfectly.
Even we photographers and bloggers, scrambling for positions, were moved.
He's got chicken wire covering the bars. He's got broken glass imbedded in the ledge.
And—remember how I've been telling you about all the uses Mexicans find for plastic soft drink bottles? Well, here's one hanging from a string over the window ledge. It blows back and forth in the wind, presumably discouraging birds from making homes there.
No, birds are really not welcome here.
Somebody ought to tell it to that pigeon.
This car looks like a disaster. It was delivering vegetables to the San Juan de Dios Mercado. It's a commercial vehicle, a business asset.
Chunks are missing. Body rot has advanced to where the integrity of the chassis is seriously weakened—it looks like it's about to break in two.
It's really, really ugly.
That's a stick holding up the trunk lid. That's a home-made hasp welded to the lid, to which a chain, hanging from a welded-on box member, is attached to secure the (no doubt) valuable freight carried inside. There appears to be no actual lenses in the left tail light assembly.
Against all odds, the interior is even worse.
No door panels, no horn button, NO DASHBOARD. Hence, no speedometer, no gages, no headlight switch. I think the driver twists some of those loose wires together when he wants lights. Or maybe when he just wants to start it.
There are a couple of small speakers perched where the speedometer used to be. Gotta have tunes, man. And a good gear shift knob.
It's a running wreck. Probably unreliable as hell. Or is it?
Look at the quality of that tire! Best-looking thing on the whole car. There's probably good money in everything that's really needed to make that car work right. Work right when there's daylight and it's not raining, that is.
I feel good about this vehicle. It reminds me of cars I owned as a teenager that I kept running with chewing gum and spit. It has been run for so long and so far that its per-mile ecological footprint is negligible.
Jean and I drive a 2002 Ford Explorer. I feel prodigally wasteful when I fire it up. Somebody sideswiped it and sheared off the side view mirror. We replaced it. $300. The heap of rust we've been discussing hasn't had side view mirrors for years. Replacing them would be a needless expenditure. All you have to do is slow down and look over your shoulder. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Our Explorer has been scraped on all four sides, now. Someone sprayed gold graffiti on it. Someone else stole the radio antenna. Cobblestones and potholes have loosened up a lot of stuff: it rattles and squeaks. But none of the stuff that's wrong with the Explorer actually needs fixing. Better to save the money for really good tires.
You can see why so many people do pieces on Mexican color. The images are arresting. They call to photographers the way crack cocaine calls to junkies. I shoot a couple of scenes, and before I realize I'm hooked, I have hundreds of them. Like these first two images captured in Jalpan.
So sooner or later, I knew I'd have to do a post on color. But by the time I succumbed to the urge, it was too late. Too many images; too little time.
I think that we Norteamericanos are a little afraid of color. Earth tones, pastels, muted tones go on our buildings.
In Mexico, exuberance is the watchword. The owner of this building in Xilitla woke up one morning and said, "I see green."
Why not? The saying here is "It's only paint."
Xilitla is not a particularly attractive town. Most of its buildings are drab. But a few brave souls want to make statements, and they do.
Tequisquapan and the towns stretching eastward into the Querétaro Semi-Desert favor an orange and yellow theme, especially on public buildings.
Use of a common color scheme provides a soothing sense of unity, compared with the chaos on the other side of the Sierra Gorda.
In Aquismón, contrast is the watchword.
Even so, a kind of unity exists here, owing to the common roof line in this block. The drugstore below coordinated with the shoe store next door: colors that are as different as possible, but lines carried from building to building.
Campeche bucks the trend toward strong colors, requiring pastels on buildings in the centro histórico.
Photo credit: Jean Wood
But it's still every man for himself when it comes to which pastel to use. Somehow, it all seems harmonious, though.
San Miguel regulates color choices in its centro histórico too. The rule here is earth tones: browns, terra cottas, mustards. The house below has complied, although they've taken some liberties with their door.
These colors define San Miguel and meet approval by visitors. The architectural board insists the city center look authentically colonial. The only problem with their interpretation is that in colonial times, the city was white.
Outside the colonial portion of the city, the gloves come off.
You can paint in whatever way you're inspired.
That's any way you're inspired.
Nearby Delores Hidalgo allows any colors you want, Red is nice.
Photo credit: Paul Latoures
Unlike suburbia, there's color everywhere you look in Mexico.
It's a country where hot pink is a neutral.
Means "little worm." Intriguing, no?" I wonder what they sell?
The place isn't open, so we can't look. Let's read the small signs taped to the door.
The left one says, "Please check your purchases. No refunds or exchanges."
Humph. I thought an important rule of merchandising was to invite your customers into your store. I'm not sure I'd ever want to go into Gusanito considering they hit me with the legal notices before I even know what they're selling.
We'll check the right one: "If you need something from the store, please ring next door." Gee. It seems to me, you gotta want what they sell really badly to shop there.
The graduating cadets are destined to become members of our Preventative Police. You can tell who the Preventative Police are because they're the ones with the guns. The other group present was the traficantes—traffic cops. Their holsters contain screwdrivers—for removing license plates from illegally parked cars.
Festivities got off to the usual slow start, everyone waiting—and waiting—for the brass to show up. This traficante, long experienced in delays of this kind, used the downtime to attend to a couple of personal hygiene issues.
OK. I know that's a cheap shot. But look, in these days of cellphone cameras, everyone is doing it, and besides, our traficante is much more circumspect than this Russian cop:
Oh, Jeez, Boris. Get your hand out of there! (Let this be a lesson to you: Be careful who you shake hands with.)
The graduating cadets, less inured to delays, found other ways to amuse themselves.
Bored myself, I asked these young officers to smile. In response, Cadet Deciderio made faces. The cop on the left lost it just after I snapped the photo.
Finally the Mayor arrived and ceremonies got underway. We were all looking forward to a timely finish when one of the Mayor's constituents insinuated herself into the picture with some complaints.
The cameraman and a bystander are cracking up. The guy on the right is taking notes: "Yes, Ma'am. Of course, Ma'am. No, we won't forget, Ma'am."
You can tell she's not buying it. The mayor might run for the Senate in another couple of years. He's gonna have to work hard for her vote. My advice to him: It wouldn't hurt to lose the cigarette-hiding-behind-the-back trick. It sure isn't fooling her.
After the abuela let the Mayor go, everybody lined up to get this thing over with. The high and mighty in the Police department came to attention, more or less.
The Generalissimo there on the left is the Chief of Police. He is so exalted he doesn't even need to shine his shoes. The officer with the radical cuffs is Director of the Police Academy. He looks like a can-do guy to me. Confidence-inspiring.
The cadets wiped the silly expressions off their faces, formed up and came to attention as well.
A few new Robocops, resplendent in body armor, proudly bearing their white "training" batons, with their pink plastic "training" pistols properly holstered, joined the ranks.
I'm guessing we're deploying them in case things get out of hand at San Miguel's running of the bulls this year. Let's see, 50,000 drunk teenagers, a handful of Robocops. I think I'd call in sick that day.
The cadets were becoming restive, standing at attention, so the Academy Director made them run around the block.
This new generation of police takes itself seriously.
Officer Tovar, in her "one-size fits-most" hat.
As the Mayor pointed out in his address to those assembled, our cops by and large are free of corruption. Times have changed. Today we have a professional police department bent on serving the public; not a band of government-sanctioned extortionists.
The cadets exude determination to be good cops. They haven't become disillusioned and I hope they don't.
Everytime I become jaded about our police, I run across a picture of some Eastern European cop, and I'm reminded to be grateful for the ones we have.
—§—
The city seems to have good funding this year. Nor did the outgoing administration steal everything that wasn't nailed down, so there was money for all kinds of police goodies. We got some new pickup trucks, a couple of new motorcycles and a couple of new patrol cars.
"Hand up... to request your right of way." I think this is intended to assist pedestrians, who presently are treated as fare game (Oops. That's fair game) by many drivers. Could this be a little police humor?
We got lots of new walkie-talkies, without which no traficante can properly function.
We got spiffy new bicycles, important in our congested streets.
But do you think they'd let those enthusiastic young officers ride them away? Nooo. They might scratch them or something. Better to load them up in one of the new pickups and take them back to HQ. With an officer in the bed to keep them from rattling around. Safety first.
Traficantes can be serious, too. More women are joining the police, and their presence seems to temper all of the officers. I'm finding both men and women to be more competent and helpful, and I read that experience shows they are pretty much immune to the lure of corruption, and serve as examples to the men.
Finally the celebration was over. Time to go back to work.
OK. Refreshments first. Then back to work.
The hacker's choice. "All the sugar and twice the caffeine." A minor brand, but a memorable one.
Jolt Cola doesn't appear to have much of a presence in Mexico. Too bad for Wet Planet Beverages, the parent company, because Mexico is a great cola market. In fact, it's tied for #1 in the world with the U. S. for per-capita consumption.
Of course, Coca-Cola is the biggie. Vicente Fox ran Coca-Cola Mexico before being elected the first non-PRI President of the country. But as in the U. S., small brands compete here too.
The U. S. has Jolt Cola; Mexico has Goat Cola.
Chiva means goat. The choice of name will leave you scratching your head unless you follow Mexican soccer. Chivas are the professional team of the City of Guadalajara and current national champions. They are the most popular team in Mexico with a huge following. The co-branding is ferocious: cola is one of a large number of products leveraging the team's popularity.
For example, there's water:
If that's too tame, there's tequila:
That covers the drinks. There's much, much more. You got your toothbrushes, deodorant, dog collars, rice, watches, chewing gum, and diapers. It goes on and on. You could stock your entire house with Chivas stuff. And I'm sure there's fans who do.
I tried the Chivas Cola. It tasted like—Jolt.