Deidre in Mexico

I spent a day on a tour around Mexico City beginning at a place called Tlatlolco, an old market meeting place for pre-hispanic peoples and on the pathway of the old walkways and paths and river systems now covered over with concrete and buildings. The Franciscans built a church near this place, a tall but plain edifice which in effect dominates the lower lying structures of the ancient monuments. The plaza more recently constructed and used for a meeting of 200,000 people, many of them students in 1968 seems to share a history of bloodshed with the ancient monuments nearby, but on a much larger and less ceremonial scale.

Next to the Catedral of the Virgen de Guadalupe, where a man saw a vision of the virgin and she is more or less the patron saint of Mexico and this place is where many people make pilgrimage to. It was filled with people from all parts, judging by their clothing.

Our guide Monica provided an account of how catholicism engaged the indigenous peoples' interest by various means, symbols and instruction and gradually displaced the older beliefs by incorporating some of their meanings such as the flower insignia on the robes of the virgin which is the ancient symbol of the 4 elements with the birth of humanity in the centre.
In spite of this a candle from FDB's in Ocean Shores was offered as a votive at the shrine and the mother earth invoked in whatever form she manifests.

We then went to the site of Teotihuacan and spent the afternoon walking around this site, climbing to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon and joining with others in delighted breathlessness as we all made it to the top.

Walking along the extensive site and looking back to the afternoon storm clouds and a bolt of lightning descened from the sky to the pyramid and feeling the elements and the soaking rain and the presence of the ancestors.

Drank pulque, mezcal and tequila and saw how it is taken from the centre of the maguey cactus and fermented.