Día de Guadalupe, Guadalajara-Style

(Editor's note: The following is a post from Chris, reporting on events in Guadalajara! Enjoy!)


Matt has already posted on the activity at the Basilica de Guadalupe, which is the epicenter of Guadalupe activity on December 12. But Guadalajara is known for being the most Catholic city in Mexico, and though millions converge on the Basilica on December 12, not all Catholics make a pilgrimage there every year. Those who stay at home make a visit to the Guadalupe shrine closest to them. There happens to be a Santuario de Guadalupe in the heart of Guadalajara’s historic downtown.

I saw the first signs of celebration when I got off the bus this afternoon. The sidewalks were packed with people. Vendors lined the already narrow walking space along Guadalajara’s main artery. Families were moving slowly down the street, carrying small children and holding their hands as they toddled along. Almost all the children were in costume, the girls wearing braids with ribbons, colorful skirts and white cotton blouses, the boys in white cotton (known as manta) some with ponchos, others with embroidery of the Virgin of Guadalupe on their front. Several chubby cheeked toddlers had black mustaches penciled on their upper lips. My friend María from Indiana University had told me about the tradition – the children dress as Indians for December 12. I don’t know the history of the practice, or exactly what the story is behind it, but the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared over 500 years ago to an Aztec convert to Christianity, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. When he couldn’t get the bishop of Mexico City to believe his story about the apparition, her image was miraculously imprinted on his tilma, or cloak. These kids dress up as little Juan Diegos and Marías, María being the first name of a female convert to Christianity.

Although I saw that people were out in celebration of the Día de Guadalupe, I didn’t know where the center of activity was – people were moving in both directions. So I headed toward the cathedral, which seemed empty, and sat down to text Matt about the cute kids. When I look up, there is a cute kid standing right next to me, not in costume, and he asks me if I speak Spanish or English. Both, I say cautiously. This is usually the start of a sales pitch or a request for money. But it turns out the kid just wants to talk, and when I answer one of his questions in English, he runs back to his grandfather, shouting “oh my goodness she said something!” This gives me an opportunity to start a chat with his grandfather, who recommends that I check out the lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) match that’s going on tonight behind the Cathedral, that I should go to the Hospital de Belén, which is a graveyard where people get married at night (it’s a tradition, he says), and that I should see the Santuario de Guadalupe, because it’s beautiful and only about nine blocks away. I thank him and walk off, thinking, wow – random conversation with a stranger and I get not only a great story (marriages in a graveyard) but the location of the local Guadalupe shrine. I head up the street.

As I get closer, I can tell that the vendors are set up for this day. They are selling children’s soccer uniforms, socks, toys, little Juan Diego outfits, a few things for adults, and refreshments – potato chips, cold squirt with chile, buñuelos (a Mexican carnie food in the elephant ear family), and as we get to the last block, roses. Roses are the Virgen de Guadalupe’s flower. Guadalupe told Juan Diego to take roses to the bishop when he didn’t believe his story, Spanish roses that were miraculously growing on the hill where she appeared to him. It was when he offered the roses to the bishop that there was a blinding light and her image appeared on his cloak.

The churchyard outside the Santuario is a carnival. Literally. There are carnival rides for the kiddies, carnival games to win prizes, and more carnival food: cotton candy, special carnival sweet breads, and more potato chips. I am hugely tempted always by street potato chips. They look amazing – big golden slices of potato, always larger and thicker than the Lay’s variety, only slightly curled. Anyway. I get on line to enter the sanctuary, along with tons and tons of families.

Today, as at the Independence Day celebration, I am surprised by the number of small children. I’ve been living among students the last several years, and so I don’t spend much time with children. But I don’t feel like they are out in public space as much in the U.S. as they are in Mexico. This may be because Mexicans are just in public space more than Americans are. I also wonder if part of it is that Mexicans think of having a family as matter of fact. You have kids and you keep living life. At home, it’s like you’re supposed to do stuff before you have kids, because you can’t do anything after that, because you’re a parent. I don’t know… it’s a working theory. And Mexican parents make parenting look cool, some of them because they look like they’re having fun with their kids, but some of them because they are quite simply young and hot and quite comfortable in a halter top with a baby on their hip.

As we approach the gates to the church, we can hear a loudspeaker, which starts with some “vivas!” to the Virgin of Guadalupe. The response gets weaker as the vivas move on to a viva for the Catholic Church. The priests begin to recite the rosary. The woman behind me recites along with them. I know the Lord’s Prayer almost by heart in Spanish. It starts to get to me – the families, the mass of people in line to enter the church, the prayers being said over them. I try not to start crying. It seems kind of lame for the lone gringa chick to start weeping at this moment, since the Virgin of Guadalupe isn’t part of her tradition, since she’s the outsider here.

We get inside the church. Pews have been moved aside to make a bigger central aisle. There are people stationed every few feet to collect donations. The church is opulent, beautiful and well maintained. And the altarpiece, below Guadalupe’s portrait, is completely covered with flowers. About halfway up the aisle, the smell of roses overwhelms me. We approach the rail at the front of the church, and people beside me start crossing themselves, the Mexican way, of course, with the extra kiss of the hand at the end. And as I walk out of the church among the mass of believers, I again fight back the urge to cry. A couple teenage boys hand me a card with the rosary on it on my way out.

As I move back through the carnival, I think, Wow: Catholics really know how to bring the party.

Another Year Over

Well, that’s that. The Mexico City Semester Program has come to an end.

Transitions are rarely simple or easy, and this one is no different. As you know, faithful reader, I’ve often struggled during these last four months through such an intensely structured program and such constant community. I am ready to move on to the next adventure, ready to join mi esposa Christina in Guadalajara and discover what’s around the next bend of life, the next circle of the caracol. Because of all that I am quite ready to escape from this Lutheran Center compound.

At the same time, I felt some seriously bittersweet pangs these last twelve hours as I packed up and said goodbye to Casa D and its inhabitants. When I left Chicago, I wondered whether I’d ever be able to make friends as good as the ones I made there. I’ve had that question answered. El viaje de la vida would be near impossible without companions like these. Of course, karma extracts its price in the goodbyes. Always the goodbyes, the inevitable goodbyes…

Above: Our group in Chiapas, with program director Kim on the far left, professor Hector in the middle, and administrator Susana on the right in the back row.

Above: My host family in Cuernavaca.

Above: The group on the last day, with our professor-in-residence Randy Nelson.

As for the program itself, well, sometime in November, sometime in Chiapas, the scales tipped for me, and everything became worth it. It wasn’t a perfect program. I have many regrets about things we didn’t do. But I wouldn’t trade Acteal for all the world. I wouldn’t trade the faith I was given there, a faith that had withered suddenly filled with life and energy, hope and light. And all in a place of death…it is such a mystery still. I’ll spend the spring turning it over in my head, and in my heart, I am sure.

And if Acteal filled my faith, this last week of the program has re-forged my vocation. Ethics professor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has been with us all week, giving us feedback on our papers, putting everything we’ve learned into a rigorous theoretical framework with deep Lutheran roots, offering us advice, support, and challenge as we head on to the next place God calls us. As she bid us goodbye last night, she called out: “See you in activist clergy circles!”

It was kind of funny comment; I’m not sure I want an “activist” label placed on me. I don’t know why I fear that, but I do. Yet within her goodbye was something beyond labeling. She was taking us seriously, as colleagues in ministry, as fellow church workers in the vineyard of the world. She and her husband (a Lutheran pastor) and Kim and all of the people who travel in their “circles,” whatever you want to call those circles, are inspiring examples of people making their faith active in love, day in, day out. They really believe in these things, and they are making their beliefs reality.

And if I’m honest, the things they believe in are things I believe in, too. I’ve been disillusioned more than once for at least the last six years. And my disillusionment gradually wore down the things I thought I believed in, ideas of justice and peace and a radical following of Christ. They were all there in college, I know they were, but somewhere along the way they were worn down or fell away or were softened beyond recognition. Life in the “real world” drained it out of me. I suppose I’m being too hard on myself, remembering the story differently now. Yet I can’t help feeling that this sense of deepened faith and commitment and the life-giving energy that is filling my heart is a great gift, the sign of something new, something restorative, planted within me. It is, I think, indicative of a faith that was planted many years ago, nurtured anew at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and radically deepened by the people we have met here in Mexico these last four months. I don’t know where it will lead – life will throw up its obstacles, as it always does – but I hope this flame of new life will stay alive, somehow, some way.

Well. Enough navel-gazing. Now I find myself on a bus to Guadalajara, watching the increasingly arid, desert-like landscape fly by outside my window. “Time is a train / makes the future the past / leaves you standing in the station / your face pressed up against the glass…” Bono once sang in a song on my favorite U2 album. For the last several hours, though, I’ve had a different song in my head, John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” Just that one line: “And so this is Christmas / and what have we done? / Another year over / a new one just begun…”

Well, Sr. Lennon, there is a lot left to be done, it is true. I have seen some of the deep suffering of this world, and I have heard the call to accompany it, to help the crucified bear their cross. I can see the work before me, laid out as if on a vast landscape not unlike the one outside my bus window. I have snippets of Oscar Romero’s Prophets of a Future Not Our Own sermon running through my head. But you, Sr. Lennon, asked a retrospective question: What have we done? And this year, I have to say, we’ve done quite a lot.

And so it is: “Another year over, a new one just begun…”

La Noche de Guadalupe, Part II

Around 7:30 we leave the throngs at Tepeyec and head south to the Zocalo.

Neither of us have the Mexico City Metro memorized just yet, so we stop at one of the posted maps inside the station and figure out our route. We figure we can avoid a transfer if we just walk from a stop on the green line, so we get off at Hidalgo.

When we surface we immediately sense that we are in the central city now. The buildings all tower high above, the streets are wider and more like boulevards, and there is a giant digital Coke ad, plucked out of New York’s Times Square and dropped into Mexico City. Ah, la ciudad. How I've missed you! As city people who have been protected from the city all semester, we are…pleased.


Except that we don’t actually know where we are. I figured the Alameda Central, a giant public park, would be nearby, except that because it’s dark out I can’t really tell what’s a park and what’s, say, an empty parking lot. We walk to the nearest corner, thinking I could recognize the streets, but no dice. None of this looks familiar…until I suddenly see the Torre Latinoamerica, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city, which, I remember from other visits, just happens to be right across the street from the Bellas Artes. “We just need to get to that tower…!”

We walk for a few blocks, and things start to look more familiar. The Alameda really is invisible at night, but the Bellas Artes is all lit up. It really is a beautiful building – and you’ll recall from earlier posts back in August, is best seen from the 5th floor of the Sears (here pronounced Say-ars) across the street. (Yes, Sears has five floors; this one is really more like the Michigan Avenue Macy’s than your typical Sears hardware store.) So we head for the Sears and gaze out at the Bellas Artes, the entire scene soundtracked by Sears’ shopping music: The Chipmunks singing Christmas carols en español. I didn’t know Alvin spoke Spanish…

We leave Sears and head down the street toward the Zocalo. Jen has never seen most of these buildings, but I am remembering the week Chris and I lived in the Centro Historico and all of the things that we learned, so tonight I get to play annoying tour guide. It is a fitting end to my time in Mexico City to be reminded of our first week, and of just how beautiful this city can be, even amidst its sprawling madness.

As we near the Zocalo we can see the brightly lit Christmas lights already. It is a narrow cobblestone road we are walking down, and the Zocalo is a massive space, so it’s like seeing the shaft of light through a window that is open just a crack. We are already getting excited. And when the side street finally spits us out, the wonders are well worth it.


I had only heard about the giant ice rink – that’s what the news reports on – but no, this is much, much more. It is a winter wonderland, full of massive constructions that are only meant to be temporary, like the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. There are several igloos, around which snake long lines of people waiting to get in. We peek inside – all that’s inside are those giant inflatable lawn Santas and snowmen. A little cabin with Santa’s name on the door is nearby…and inside is another giant inflatable lawn Santa. All around the igloos and cabin are street performers decked out in costume – Batman, Don Quixote, Santa Muerte…strangely, no Santa. (Though Guadalupe is present here, too – there are a few people with Guadalupe paintings strapped to their backs even here, and alittle girl, who probably just returned from a visit to the Basilica, stands with her family wearing an oversized Guadalupe t-shirt that reaches down to her feet.)


To help you pretend that you are actually in a wintry, snowy place, there are giant cutouts of snow mountains made of white cardboard. It’s as if we were walking around a stage play with its two-dimensional sets everywhere. There is a little hill set up for people to go sledding. And next to the hill: A Make-Your-Own-Snowman tent. There appears to be a giant repository of snow they have carted in from somewhere (there is no snow falling in Mexico City, that’s for sure), and on tables around this repository are little baby snowmen, clearly made from some kind of mold, and each one placed inside a little cardboard box. It’s like a snowman factory. We arrive just as they are closing up the snowman shop, and the last child is putting the finishing touches – a hat and scarf – on her little baby snowman.


And then, of course, there is the ice rink, which really is huge. It covers about half of the space in the Zocalo’s main central square. At the moment we cannot ice skate: Instead there is an ice ballet performance (the Nutcracker?), and people have packed the stands surrounding the ice rink to watch it. Those of us who didn’t get in watch for a few minutes on the giant video screens strategically placed around the square.

Most of the color of this winter wonderland comes from the tall buildings that serve as a kind of wall around the Zocalo. This building-wall is draped and decorated with huge red Christmas-light-Poinsettas (here called Nochebuenas), a huge multicolor Christmas-light-three-wise-men, and a huge multicolor Christmas-light-nativity scene.

I drag Jen up to one of the rooftop hotel restaurants that overlooks the Zocalo (I learned the rooftop terrace secret from Chris, who visited here when she studied abroad.). When we get to the top, we find that the terrace portion of the restaurant is closed for an event. Turned back again! So, we trudge back down and out onto the street. On our way toward the Metro, I notice the Hotel Majestic, which also has a rooftop terrace. We give it a shot. Success! We sip coffee and hot chocolate for awhile, then head over to the balcony to get the panoramic bird’s-eye view of the Zocalo in winter.


Exhausted and by now very hungry, we finally head home on the Metro. There is no Metro stop near the Lutheran Center, so we decide to go to Tasqueña and take a bus from there. We ride the Metro for the 40 minutes it takes to get to Tasqueña, trying to stay awake most of the time. There are lots of buses still running; that’s a good sign. Except that when we reach the place where our bus leaves from, our bus is nowhere to be seen. It appears to be the only bus that has stopped running for the night.

Fine. We decide to head for the street and hail a taxi. But on the way, we notice another bus going to San Angel. We take it. It gets us close, maybe eight blocks away from the Lutheran Center. Along the way, we encounter a nasty motorcycle accident that makes it nearly impossible for us to cross the street. Just before reaching home, we pass a little shrine the Virgin of Guadalupe. We have passed it a million times before, but tonight it is in its element. Maybe fifteen people are standing around it, and it looks like they’re preparing for a little ceremony. They’ve already decorated the virgin with red nochebuenas, Christmas lights, and balloons. She looks stunning.

Finally, at 10:45pm, nearly seven hours after we left the Lutheran Center, we stumble back through the gate. We are exhausted – the sooner we can find our beds the better. But there is one more obstacle.

One of the Lutheran Center staff is pacing outside Casa D with her cell phone at her ear. As we approach, she drops her cell phone and glares at us. “Cabrones. Where have you been?” she says with barely restrained anger. “You didn’t show up at the appointed time, we have been trying to call you for hours, I thought you were kidnapped…”

Taken aback, we explain. Our explanation seems to satisfy her, more or less. Feeling bad to have caused so much worry, we go inside the house as quickly as possible – only to be confronted by one after another person shocked to see us and wondering where the heck we were all night. We try telling the story, but now that everyone was worried all night and is now borderline angry with us, it’s not so much fun to tell anymore.

We recount our reasons for being late and staying out – they seem like reasonable ones. Both Jen and I have lived in a city before, and certainly neither of us was alone in the city at night, we stuck together. And it surely wasn’t our fault that the cell phone died. It was just a horrible – and now horribly awkward – situation, us getting stuck at the Basilica and everyone else being worried. And, just viscerally, a weird feeling: It’s as if we were 17 again, being chewed out for not coming home by curfew. I appreciate everyone’s concern, truly, but…I will not miss that part of living at the Lutheran Center. I suppose it’s one more kick-in-the-pants forward to the transition of this weekend. Thanks, Virgen, for that.

And Virgen, this was one crazy night, I’m sure you’ll agree. I don’t understand the meaning of everything I saw, from the sacred to the, well, “snowy” but, I suppose I don’t really understand what you mean, either, Virgen. I wish I knew more, had more time, had more anything, but the twilight of your feast is upon is. And so is the twilight of this semester program. And here at the end: A long night, a long goodbye, to a beautiful city, to a good friend.

Yet in only a few hours: another mañanita. Always another mañanita, for you, Virgen, and for us. Always.

Happy birthday, Virgencita – y gracias, para todos.

La Noche de Guadalupe, Part I

It is midnight. I sit here in my cuarto, writing and listening to the BOOM of firecrackers going off. It is the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Patron Saint of the Americas, Madre de Dios, and the celebrations have already begun.

***

We arrive at the Basilica around five o’clock in the afternoon. There is an hour of daylight left on this, the Eve of the Fiesta de Guadalupe, but the sun is already making its descent. The street leading up to the Basilica has been closed to car traffic and instead is filled with people. On the left side of the street, behind temporary green barricades, a steady stream of people is making its way toward the Basilica grounds. We join them.


Four-hundred seventy-seven years ago the Virgin Mary appeared to the indigenous Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin in this very place. She asked Juan Diego to build her a church. Dutiful, he went and told the local bishop. Naturally, the bishop was skeptical, and asked Juan Diego for some proof of his encounter with Nuestra Señora. Juan Diego, ever the dutiful messenger, went back to the place he had originally seen Maria, and he passed along the bishop’s request for proof. She instructed him to gather some flowers nearby. The flowers were not Mexican, had never grown in Mexico before, had no right to be on that hill – but the bishop would know the flowers well. They were native to where he had grown up in Spain. So, Juan Diego gathered the flowers in his cloak, and carried them back to the bishop. By this time, though the bishop’s gatekeepers were having none of Juan Diego’s shenanigans. They refused to let him enter. Juan Diego struggled to get in, the bishop came out to see what was going on, and then suddenly it happened: The cloak fell open. The flowers tumbled out onto the ground. And on the cloak was a unique image of the Virgin Mary, which came to be called la Virgen de Guadalupe, proof of the appearance of the Mother of God in the Americas.


Today that cloak hangs in the Basilica here, the old rural hilltop long ago swallowed up by the voracious city. But Guadalupe’s image is no longer limited to that bulletproof/fireproof/bombproof-glass-protected cloak. It is everywhere, on street corners and t-shirts, in small home displays and in every Mexican Roman Catholic Church. And on this, her feast day, her ubiquity in Mexico takes on a new dimension entirely.

As we make our way toward the Basilica’s entrance with the long procession of pilgrims, we begin to notice large, four-feet-tall framed photos of Guadalupe strapped to peoples’ backs. Every once in a while we notice someone for whom the giant framed photo is not enough; instead they have a the virgen in a giant glass case – again, strapped to their back.

Others go a different route, and hoist up large banners with the Maria’s image on them. Usually these banners lead a procession of a particular group of pilgrims, the group recognizable by its personalized group t-shirts, kind of like those you see at 5K races or family reunions. They might be all bright blue or yellow or green and read “The Rodriguez Family Visits Nuestra Senora – Our 6th Pilgrimage” or “The Neighborhood of Tlalpan – Our 29th Pilgrimage” or any number of other phrases and always, always an image of the virgin and sometimes an image of the distinctive-looking Basilica, too.


And then there are the kneelers. There aren’t as many of them as I’d been led to believe – maybe there will be more tomorrow on the actual festival day – but they are here, scattered throughout the crowd. They are approaching the Basilica on their knees. Usually they have a giant picture frame on their back, too – though one kneeler appeared to be bearing a duffel bag full of bricks on his back like a cross. What kind of devotional penance is this? It was beautiful, moving, mesmerizing – and nearly impossible for us Protestants to comprehend.


Once inside the Basilica grounds we second-and-third-time visitors immediately notice something different about the landscape (other than the thousands of people): whole areas sectioned off and filled with blankets and sleeping bags and camping tents. People are sleeping here tonight? And, it looks like, slept here last night? Off to the side of the makeshift campground, space has been made among the crowds for a group of men and boys in feathered headdresses doing what we assume are indigenous dances to the beat of drums, drums, drums.
Our group splits up, factions heading in different directions. We agree to meet back at the Metro stop in an hour and a half.

My colleague Jen has been pining to get her picture taken at one of the “photo-op” places, where you sit on a plastic donkey with a sombrero on your head, Guadalupe (and sometimes, oddly, Pope John Paul II) in the background, all surrounded by the most vibrant collection of colorful flowers anywhere. We find one of these little photo-ops on the way up the hill. Like so many Guadalupe things we’ve seen, it should be unbearably tacky, and yet…when we stumble upon it there is a family standing and having their picture taken, the youngest child on the plastic donkey, clearly having this picture taken to be just what the photo-op claims to be: a memory of a trip to the Basilica. Amid the gaudiness of the setup the whole scene is oddly touching. As for us, well: Jen pays to have a photo of herself taken, and then she has me snap another one with her holding her Glamour Magazine for some kind of “Where has your Glamour been?” feature. (Glamour readers, I assume you know what this means.) We are gringos, it is true…

We head further up the hill. There are people going on their bare knees up the concrete stairs. It’s a rather high and steep hill; the knee-climbing looks painful. When we reach the top of the hill we enter the little chapel. There are too many people, so we cross ourselves and leave. From this spot on the top of the hill the view of Mexico City is incredible – I can recognize skyscrapers in the misty (smoggy?) twilight, and mountains off in the background. I call Chris to tell her how incredible everything is. I wish she were here to experience this with me – as well as to help explain all this virgin-devotion-pilgrimage stuff that surrounds us and that we have no idea how to begin comprehending. It seems to foreign to our practice of faith…but alas, our cell phones get cut off, and I am forced to save my questions for later.

We head back down the hill on the other side. On this side of the hill, Christmas lights are everywhere. I’ve hardly seen any Christmas lights lately, so these are striking to me, and I suddenly realize: It’s December. Christmas is coming! I feel eight years old for a moment, and the moment passes.


Our time is almost up, but, checking our watches, we decide we have just enough time to step inside the Basilica itself to see the virgin cloak and the beauty that now surrounds it in the sanctuary: a hundred candles, a Christmas tree, a giant Mexican flag (and lots of other little flags from other American countries, including the U.S. – she is the Patroness of the Americas, after all), and a choir in choir robes waiting for its moment to shine.

We take it in, then turn to leave. Except that we suddenly find that we can’t leave. A police officer indicates to us that the way we came in is now only an entrance, and that if we want to leave we have to leave by the official exit. To our horror, we see that the official exit is on the other side of the Basilica at the end of a massive and growing procession. The only way out is to join the procession.

We check the time: We need to meet everyone at the Metro stop in 5 minutes. But there is no way we are getting through this mass of slow-moving people in 5 minutes. We look for another exit. There isn’t one – all are blocked by armed police. Jen pulls out her cell phone to call and let the group know we’ll be late. Except that her there is no battery power on her cell phone, and it refuses even to turn on.

So we join the procession. Flags of Guadalupe are hoisted into the air. Families walk together. The procession slows to a crawl. Someone strikes up a chorus of “Las Mañanitas,” the Mexican equivalent of Happy Birthday for the birthday of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I join in on the part I know, which is the part that goes “something something something LAS MAÑANIIIITAS something something…”

We check the time again. We are already 15 minutes late. We continue in the only way we can: In little steps forward, crushed in by the crowd.

Suddenly we see an exit off to the left, and we ditch the procession and hurry out the door. We make our way through the Basilica grounds toward the way we came in. When we reach the gate, a policeman puts up his hand and points in another direction. Again we find that the exclusive entrance/exit thing is in effect again, so we head off to whatever exit the policeman was pointing towards. We leave through this exit….only to find that its path is gated off and leads right back into the Basilica! We are now 30 minutes late, and vividly imagining how angry everyone will be when we finally find them. We find the nearest policeman and ask him if there is any way to get ourselves out of here.

He directs us to the one place that leads out: the massive covered street market that surrounds the Basilica grounds. Fine. We enter it. It’s kind of like when you have to leave a museum through the gift shop, except that the gift shop is massive and is crammed full of people and is shaped like a crazy labyrinthine maze that goes on for blocks and blocks. We ask directions at least three times before we finally find our way back onto the street.

Which is exactly when another policewoman stops us, and directs us back into the market, shaking her head as if we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. Jen seems unwilling to believe this is happening, and decides to try and keep walking anyway, right through the policewoman’s arm. The policewoman is having none of it. We hang our heads and trudge back into the maze-like market.


We are now 45 minutes late. We brace ourselves for our waiting colleagues. Except that when we reach the Metro stop, the meeting point, no one is there.

We sit for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. We try to remember what the plan was if any of us got separated: We were to make our way back on our own. At this point, since no one is waiting for us, we figure everyone else had come to the same conclusion and hoped to just meet us back at the Lutheran Center.

But there is a wrinkle: We had talked about going to the Zocalo on our way back, to see the giant ice rink. We had told everyone, including our group leaders, that we planned to do this. We decide to wait a few more minutes, just in case they show up. We buy some food and drink from street vendors. We make up our minds.

Zocalo, here we come…

Nuestra Señora

Tomorrow is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Tonight the Mexico Semester Program goes to the Basilica of Guadalupe, wherein is located her shrine and the original evidence of her appearance. Most of us have seen the the Basilica and its massive courtyard already...for example, see these pictures from my last visit.



No, tonight we are not going to see the buildings but the people. Millions of faithful pilgrims flock to the Basilica tonight and tomorrow, many arriving on their knees. Tonight we join them...

Working on a...Mexican-art-influenced album cover

Check out the cover art for the upcoming Bruce Springsteen album, out January 20! Chris says she thinks it's influenced by the color patterns in lots of Mexican art (see: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera...). See for yourself....

You can hear songs from the new album for free at http://www.myspace.com/brucespringsteen.

Xochimilco

Today we visited Enlace, a community organization in Xochimilco, a neighborhood southeast of the Lutheran Center in Mexico City. After the visit we took a pontoon boat down Xochimilco's Venice-like canals. All of us students were a bit sleepy, most of us having pulled all nighters to work on our papers, so a lazy drifting down overgrown canals was just the thing for this particular Monday afternoon.

I didn't take many pictures today, but I did take lots of pictures the last time we were in Xochimilco, back in September. Here they are...

Xochimilco