Ways to Make a Living

I'm takin' what they're givin' cause I'm working for a livin'! Yeah, that's a song lyric from Huey Lewis, and I have to be honest, in my life, they aren't really giving anything so bad. But one thing I love about travel is seeing differences. Here in Puebla, I've seen a few ways of making a living that aren't like those I've seen before. Here are two examples.

The Bus Counter and Change Giver

At one of the bus stops not too far from where we live, there sits a woman in a plastic chair. She must bring the chair herself. This isn't a bus station, just a stop on the side of the road. But it is near the Walmart parking lot, so it is a major stop that lots of the different buses stop at. As far as I can tell, this woman is doing two things: She seems to be keeping track of the buses. You know at a baseball game, some enthusiasts keep a notebook and write in codes for each pitch and hit, the outcome of each play? She seems to do something similar, though she isn't recording strikes swinging or how many are left on bases. She seems to be recording which buses stop. I don't think she is counting how many people get on the bus or get off the bus. If she is, she has great visual acuity.

Her other job is making change. She has lots and lots of coins. When a bus driver has been paid in bills too often, he starts to run low on coins and high on bills. So he stops at this particular stop, calls out to the woman, and she steps on the bus. He gives her some bills and she gives him an equal value in coins. Eventually, she would have to run out of coins, or so I would think. I don't know what happens then. Maybe that's when it's quitting time.

There doesn't seem to be just one bus company here. There is one that is run by the city, but there are many, many other bus companies. They all pretty much agree on prices, but they all have various routes, even if they end up in similar places. So I am not sure who pays this woman to do this job. Is it the city of Puebla? Is it a conglomerate of the bus companies? That I don't know, but she is making her living with her notebook and plastic chair and a whole lot of coins.

The Traveling Knife Sharpener

One day, Alrica and I stopped by a taqueria that we like. Parked on the sidewalk just outside was a motorcycle. And on the back of that motorcycle was a machine that grinds and sharpens knives. There is a man who comes to a restaurant on his motorcycle, talks to the chef or owner, and then takes a few knives at a time and sharpens them. Not the table knives (which you don't tend to need at a taqueria.) I mean the knives that the chef uses.

Sharpening on the sidewalk

Throughout our meal we could hear the grind grind. Then the sharpening man would come back in with the knives he had just done. If the chef wasn't satisfied, he would take the knife back and do it again. When he was finished with a few knives, the chef would take those and give the sharpener man another few knives to work on.

This continued through several rounds of knives until the chef was happy. All the knives were done. The chef got out some cash, paid the sharpener man. And then the sharpener man climbed back on his motorcycle and rode away, presumably to another restaurant whose knives had gotten a tad dull. I don't know how he finds the places. I don't know if they call him. But isn't a relief to know that he's out there, somewhere, keeping knives in proper condition?

To paraphrase another lyric, this time Dolly Parton: Working knife to knife, what a way to make a living!

Abundant Prickly Pear (on Rocks)

In the 1300s, a tribal group from present day Northern Mexico migrated south. They were told, in prophecy, to build a city where they found a bird eating a snake while standing on a cactus. They found such a bird eating such a snake on such a cactus, and it happened to be on an island in the middle of a lake. So they did as their gods had commanded them and built that city on that island in that lake.

The best full scale view of the Municipal Cathedral I could get

This is the mythical origin of Tenochtitlan, which means the place where abundant prickly pears grown on rock. The tribe which build Tenochtitlan became the Aztecs. For around 200 years, the Aztecs ruled the city and much of the area around them. They were terrible neighbors, very militaristic. And sometimes they fought wars not to conquer land or people, but just to spill blood. They believed that the universe had to be nurtured and fed the blood of battle.

More translation: Piedra is stone, Tuna is prickly pear, and you can figure out abundancia

In the 1500s, the Aztecs were replaced by another people from the north. And the east. They were the Spanish. The Spanish, with a much smaller force, defeated the mighty Aztec, but not so much with their better technology. Mostly it was their germs. The Aztecs had never been exposed to smallpox, measles, and the flus that were common in Europe. They had no immunity to these new pathogens. So microscopic organisms were the biggest ally of Cortez and his Spanish troops.

What was Tenochtitlan became Cuidad de México, or in English we say Mexico City. But the Spanish drained most of the lake or built over it and now it is a gigantic city.

Alrica and I spent two days in Mexico City, and that is not long enough to see even a tiny fraction of what it has to offer. There are so many amazing sites in the city, it would take months to see them all. But I can give you an idea of the smattering we did get to see.

Statues honor great musicians in Garibaldi Plaza

We stayed in Garibaldi Plaza. This is a neat area and it is full of music. There are mariachi bands playing almost all the time. Literally, they are still playing at 5 or 6 AM. While we liked our hotel, it isn't exactly the quietest part of town to sleep in.

Monument of the Revolution

We came by bus from Puebla, a ride of about two and a half hours. After we arrived on the first day, we visited the Monument of the Revolution, which commemorates the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. I wrote about that after we visited the Regional Museum of the Revolution in Puebla. The monument is impressively big. My picture of it doesn't really give you a sense of the scale. So Alrica stood against the side to get a better impression of just how large it is.

You can barely make her out there on the left

Church of Santo Domingo

We visited the Plaza of Santo Domingo. Here you can see the church of Santo Domingo.

It is hard with perspective to see the lean, but it leans!

But I also want to show the Convent of Santo Domingo, also in the plaza. Can you tell that it is leaning? Mexico City has a big problem. It is sinking at a rate of about 15 inches per year. That's a lot! It is not uncommon to see buildings in the capital that are tilted for this reason. And the government doesn't really have a plan about what to do. I don't have any good suggestions either. But like other places in the world, Mexico City has this problem because they have removed so much water from the permeable rock on which the city sits that it is compressing under the weight of the city. It doesn't take long to drain an aquifer, but it takes a long, long time to refill one.

Some of the Templo Mayor

We did a walking tour with an excellent guide and got to see many sites over a period of two hours. We visited the Templo Mayor. This is an archaelogical find right across from the Metropolitan Cathedral. (More on the cathedral in a bit.) It was a major Aztec temple, said to have been built exactly on the site where they first saw the eagle eating the snake atop a cactus. After the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they tore it apart and used some of the stones to build their cathedral (the Municipal Cathedral which still stands today.) Then it got buried and there were buildings over it. But in 1978 some electrical workers stumbled upon a piece of the temple in their work. The government decided to demolish the colonial era buildings which were on top of this site and turn it over to archaelogists. Today, you can see many of the remaining features.

That winged serpent is Quetzalcoatl

We visited a governmental building where the public education department is housed. Why? Well, in the 1920s, the government hired painters involved in the muralism movement to paint beautiful murals all over the walls in the interior courtyard and along the staircases. These were major works of art by many famous artists. There are over 120 murals by Diego Rivera and many more by other artists. Eventually it was decided that it was silly to have these beautiful artworks and only allow the government workers who happened to work in public education to see them. So they opened the doors to the public. It is still the department of public education, but visitors can walk through the courtyards and appreciate all the murals.

This mural depicts the Day of the Dead

We came back near where we met for our tour to see the Municipal Cathedral. it is the largest cathedral in all of North America. And it is large, with so many entrances. I tried to get some pictures of various details, but it isn't easy to get it all.

One of the entrances

Another entrance

A better view of the towers

We cross the historic center of Mexico City and visited Casa de los Azulejos. This means the House of Tiles.

It is an impressive number of tiles.

The story of its creation, which may or may not be true, is that there was that it was built by the son of a rich man. The son was a playboy, not taking anything seriously. His father told him to straighten out his act or he would "never build a palace of tiles." Tiles were very expensive at the time and a sign of great wealth. So the son, in a bout of filial spite, did exactly that. He built a mansion covered in tiles. I'll show you, Dad!

The Palace of Fine Arts

The tour ended at the expansive and beautiful Palacio de Bellas Artes or the Palace of Fine Arts. My pictures can't do justice to the majesty of the architecture.

Yep, looks like an entrance to Chinatown.

When the tour ended, we traveled to Barrio Chino, or Chinatown. It's just south of the Palace of the Fine Arts. Here we had a delicious lunch of Chinese food, but we also got steamed buns.

We ate one before we thought to take a picture

Steamed buns are a thing in East Asia. They are a white bun that is cooked by steaming and there is a filling. Sometimes the filling is savory, like marinated pork, and sometimes it is sweet, like a red bean paste. Well, the steamed buns of Mexico City have taken that idea but also fused them with Mexican flare. The buns are multicolored and come in all kinds of flavors like cherry chocolate, key lime pie, cajeta (which is a caramel made from goat's milk), and gummy. (We got a gummy, but I'm not sure I could tell you what that flavor actually is.)

Mexico City is definitely one we need to come back to. And we will need to give it a lot more time. I'm sure it will be worth our while.

Perfection Can Be Small

Yesterday was a perfect day. At least, it was as perfect as one could ever reasonably hope a day might be. And it wasn't perfect because I got any amazing news or even did anything so incredibly different that it is unimaginable. It was perfect in all of its little things.

It started off with Dungeons & Dragons. In May 2020, as COVID kept me in my home, I reached out to the guys I used to play with in high school when I lived in Florida. And we restarted our group. We meet every few weeks on the internet. There is always some time chatting about our lives, children, goings-on. Sometimes there is some politics. But ultimately, we get into the game and play.

Yesterday was a pretty major boss-level battle and the party won! No one died (though a few were close, and one character was one hit point away from the end.) It was pretty fun. I'm the Dungeon Master, so there was no threat of my character dying. (Or you could say that all my characters, the enemies, died.) 

After we finished our game for the day, Alrica and I walked to the historic center of Puebla. We were planning to go a dance performance, traditional Mexican dances. But along the way, we stopped at a street vendor and bought two cemitas with carnitas. Carnitas is a marinated pork. You can find carnitas in the United States as well.

Then, across the street from where we bought cemitas, we found a market with several stalls serving all kinds of foods and drinks. We went to a shop selling juices and aguas naturales. I got a coco (which is coconut) and Alrica got a jugo verde. (That literally means green juice. But it is an orange juice base with several greens like celery and cilantro added.)

From there we continued our walk and reached the Zocalo. The Zocalo is the center town square. The entire downtown region was hopping. The skies were blue with puffy white clouds. The temperature was around 70 Farhenheit (21 Celsius) and super comfortable humidity. There were families out walking and shopping and enjoying themselves.

We sat on a bench in the shade of a tree very near the fountain in the center of the Zocalo. We just listened to water, watched the people, and enjoyed doing nothing. There were families with bubble wands and children excitedly chasing the bubbles. There were couples walking together or eating ice cream. We probably sat there for 45 minutes and it was perhaps the best time of the day. I got to thinking about this crazy life, all the adventure, being in so many new places, and having Alrica with me for all of it. It was a beautiful moment to spend with the perfect adventure partner.

Statue at the top of the Zocalo fountain, white stone with black metal

We left the Zocalo and walked around the gorgeous Puebla Cathedral to reach the dance performance. The performance was fantastic. It was perhaps 90 to 120 minutes long. And one didn't really need to speak Spanish to appreciate it.

Aztec Dance

We saw dances that called back to the Aztecs. In some, women danced with earthenware pots on their heads. In one of the dances, then men wore masks and carried canes, as if they were very old and infirm, but then stomped and jumped and kicked. There was a balletic dance. And there were many super colorful costumes throughout. In the dances in which the women have flowing skirts with stripes of color, and they have their hands in a pocket so they can swish the skirts in arcs while they dance, I get mesmerized by the moving stripes of color. I sometimes forget there are people attached, it's just a flow of hues.

You don't call them potheads, right?

Point being, we loved the performance.

The "old men" approach

After the dancing we got a momia. Now, the word "momia" means "mummy" (and in particular a female mummy. A male mummy is momio.) But this was not eating a mummy. A momia is a hot dog on a stick, surrounded by a fried bread (like a corn dog, but the bread isn't cornbread) and then a strip of something similar to bacon is wrapped around the bread. I suspect this is what inspired the undead name, the bacon around it like the bandages of a mummy. It came in a paper cone full of fries and with a sweet sauce on them. The only real downside is that, near the end, you couldn't help but your get your hands sticky as you reached for the remaining fries.

Don't her toes hurt on a stone floor?

It was a fun day, and fun in so many different ways. And it made me appreciate just how perfect the little things can be.

Comidas con Mitos (Meals with Myths)

The photograph below is the Convent of Santa Rosa. Well, it was. Today it is a museum of ceramics, but it was originally built to be the Convent of Santa Rosa. This is the setting for one of the many tales of foods born in Puebla.

Was mole poblano born behind these walls?

It is staggering how many different foods, some of local fame and some of national fame and even a few of wide spread international fame, had their start in Puebla. The beginnings of these foods are often an interesting mix of history and legend.

One of the most widespread foods in Mexico is mole (pronounced MO-lay). A mole is a sauce which could have a variety of ingredients, but always includes some dried peppers and cocoa. Every region in the country has its own take on mole, but the original and perhaps most well-loved in the nation is mole poblano. (Poblano means Pueblan or of Puebla.) It was the very first mole and there is a legend surrounding its creation.

Mole Poblano

The word "mole" comes from the indigenous people who made sauces that they called mulli. Just like words taken into English are often changed to match our pronunciations better, the same happened to mulli, becoming mole in Spanish. So the idea of rich sauces pre-existed the coming of the Spanish colonists. But mole as it is known today originated in the 17th century.

The legend says that the Sisters of Santa Rosa invented it out of necessity. They received a surprise visit from some important dignitary. (In many versions of the tale it a bishop.) They hadn't prepared anything to serve the bishop and knowing they would need an amazing dinner, they rushed to the larder and took whatever leftovers they found there: Old bread (broken into breadcrumbs), dried chilis, cocoa powder, tomatoes, onions, and possibly some sweet fruits. They mixed this into a thick dark brown sauce which they served over meat. It was a hit.

Another food with an origin myth tied to nuns is Chiles en Nogada. Chiles en Nogada is a chili pepper that is stuffed with a sweet and rich sauce that includes nuts and usually meat. The whole thing is topped with pomegranate seeds. You can only find Chiles en Nogada on the menu in July, August, and September, because that is the time of the pomegranate harvest.

This myth takes place in 1821. Mexico had won its independence from Spain. The Mexican emperor, Augustín de Iterbide had just signed the Treaty of Cordoba which officially recognized Mexico as independent. He was returning from Córdoba back to Mexico City and would pass through Puebla. This is a rich legend in which the sisters of Santa Mónica developed the dish for the Emperor. The colors of Iterbide's army, called the Trigarante Army, were red, white and green. (This will give birth to the Mexican flag.) So the sisters wanted to use ingredients with those three colors to honor his victory and Mexico's independence. They chose green chiles, made a white sauce, and topped it with perfectly in season red pomegranate seeds. Today it is a dish still associated with Mexican Independence.

Chiles en Nogada may not be common in much of the world outside of Mexico, but a food that has a much wider reach is Tacos al Pastor. We've enjoyed tacos al pastor here in Puebla and we enjoyed them in the US as well. But their preparation is different. Here in Puebla the meat is on a long spit (called a trompo) and is cooked, rotisserie style, but vertically rather than horizontally. It's exactly like how meat is prepared for gyros and pitas in Greece and for Souvlaki in the Levant and the Balkan region. That might seem strange, but when you delve into the history of it, this all makes sense.

This is a surprisingly recent food, less than 100 years old. In the 1930s, there was an influx of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico, many of whom settled in Puebla. They brought with them their culinary ideas and techniques. One of these ideas was shawarma, seasoned lamb meat prepared on a trompo. When they got to Mexico, they were forced to make a few changes. Lamb wasn't prevalent in Mexico, so as the years went by, more and more of this variation was made with marinated pork. And the bread it was served on transitioned from pita to something similar, sort of a cross between pita and tortillas. This new food is still served today, called Tacos Arabe.

Arabe on the left, al Pastor on the right

Tacos Arabe was a precursor to its evolutionary descendent, Tacos al Pastor. In many ways the two foods are similar, but the marinade changed to include fruit juices, oregano, chiles, and cumin. When you see meat on a trompo, if it is a brown color, it is meant to become tacos arabe. When it has a red color, that's meant for tacos al pastor. And at the top of the trompo, above the meat, is a large cylinder of pineapple. When tacos al pastor is prepared, the chef slices down the meat in vertical strokes with a knife, catching the meat on a long thin spatula. Then he slices off a few pieces of the pineapple. And the whole is served, along with cilantro, on corn tortillas.

Another food of note is cemitas. Outside of Mexico, cemitas may not be well-known. And to some degree, a cemita is merely a sandwich. But what makes it a cemita is the bread, also called cemitas. The bread has an interesting fusion history. When Mexico was still a colony of Spain, the Poblanos paid tribute to the king, and one of these tributes included two types of bread. The first was a descendent of the unleavened bread made by Sephardic Jews that dates back to Ancient Rome. It was a sort of long, hard, sponge biscuit. The other was similar to a French bread roll but was hollow. Both of these breads were made because they were durable, they could last four to eight months, long enough to cross the ocean on a trip back to Spain. They were also popular with the sailors.

It was a fusion of these breads that became cemitas. This wasn't a fast fusion, and cemitas didn't appear until the 19th century. In these early days of cemitas, they were filled with potato or beans or prickly pear. It was a food of the poor working class, and meat was scarse and expensive. Later, avocado was added because the bread was hard and the avocado helped to offset this. The cemita continued to evolve, and today is filled with meat like chicken of beef or carnitas (which is a marinated pork) and cheese like queso Oaxaca (also called quesillo.)

Finally, a food that we think we know in America, but we're wrong is the chalupa. Why are we wrong to think we know it? Because what makes a chalupa a chalupa is the tortilla. You see, tacos and chalupas are similar beasts, but the tortilla makes all the difference. In the U.S. a chalupa is made with a wheat flour tortilla that is deep fried. But in Mexico, a chalupa tortilla is made from masa flour. This is a flour made from nixtamalized corn. (This is the same hominy like corn that is found in pozole which I mentioned in my post about our trip to Cholula.) The dough is flattened and poked with a fork to prevent it puffing up when it is fried. Then it is fried (but not deep fried) giving it a crunch, but also, importantly, making it curl up on the edges. This curling gives the overall tortilla a boat-like shape. The word chalupa refers to the boatiness. The exact origins of the word are unclear, but it may come from an Aztec word for a canoe-like boat, or it may come from a Spanish word for a sloop. In Mexico, if it isn't served on this boatlike masa flour tortilla, it's not a chalupa. What Taco Bell calls a chalupa is really a taco with a deep fried shell.

Alrica often says her favorite part of travel is the food, and good news. She has no shortage of Poblano foods to discover and enjoy.

The Start of a Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a long and chaotic process. It lasted 10 years, or I should say there were 10 years of active fighting. After that, there were 20 more years of the country being ruled by revolutionary generals (and then the son of a revolutionary general.) Even when a firm democracy was established, the government was dominated by a political party formed by the military. That domination lasted another 60 years.

When we talk about the American Revolution, we refer to the War for Independence from our imperial power, England. The Mexican Revolution isn't that. It is well after their fight for independence from Spain. It would be better described as a Mexican Civil War, a war fought with the hope of a democracy that was truly democratic. The Mexican Revolution was scheduled to begin on November 20, 1910. Scheduled to begin? Yes, literally it was scheduled. I will explain.

The President of Mexico leading up to the revolution was Porfirio Diaz. He'd been the president about 44 years at that time. (That's a bit misleading. For four of those years, he let one of his buddies be the elected president. But he was still the power behind the presidency.) Diaz and his party controlling the government believed in "reelection." Basically, there were no term limit. And elections during his reign were all for show, but the vote didn't really matter. Diaz was always going to win.

Now, he'd been doing this for 40 years, and in the early twentieth century, Mexico was having a lot of problems. Diaz is very old at this point (80 years), there are labor disputes in the country, and plenty of income inequality. Access to education and opportunity is limited to very few people. And there's a drought from 1907 to 1909 that hurts agriculture greatly. Diaz told an American journalist that he wouldn't run for reelection in 1910. When this was published in America, Spanish translations flooded Mexico. A lot of people had hope for a change.

Among those was a man named Franciso Madero. He thought the idea of "reelection" was terrible, there needed to be term limits. When Diaz changed his mind and decided he would run again in 1910, Madero announced he would run against Diaz. Madero was popular, things looked bad for Diaz. So what did he do? He put Madero in jail. And Diaz won the election (though whether it was a fair election or not is an open question.)

While Madero was imprisoned he wrote a letter called the Plan de San Luis Potosi. It called for real elections, no more continual reelection, and most aggressively, it called upon Mexican to start a revolt against Diaz beginning on November 20, 1910. That's what I mean about the revolution being scheduled to start.

Alrica and I visited the Regional Museum of the Revolution of Puebla. The museum is housed in the former home of Aquiles Serdán Alatriste. This house saw action, technically not in the revolution itself, but in the two days before. When I say the house saw action, I mean fighting, violence, and death. You can see the bullet holes in the facade.

It's not just a few bullet holes

Aquiles Serdán was a revolutionary, opposed to reelection, opposed to Diaz, and definitely planning to start fighting on Novmeber 20. He, his brother Miximo, and his sisters, Carmen and Natalia, had been purchasing weapons, shipping them in from Mexico City, and were prepared to distribute them to their followers for the fighting on November 20. But the authorities found out and learned that Aquiles was keeping the weapons at his home, and also learned that Aquiles met with revolutionaries there.

The four siblings

On November 18, a force of armed police laid siege to the house. They mounted the roof of the Church of Santa Clara across the street and began firing. The Serdáns and their followers who were in the house at the time fought back. During the battle, Maximo was killed. Carmen was captured. Natalia wasn't present. And Aquiles hid in a hole beneath the floorboards after his group was mostly dead. The authorities found him there and killed him.

They still have the mirror that was hit by bullets from outside

While this all took place before the official beginning of the revolution, word of the Serdáns spread. They were considered martyrs for and heroes of the revolution. To some, the battle at the Serdán home was an unofficial first fight of the revolution.

Did Madero's call to revolution work? Well, yes and no. The revolutionary armies that formed had a lot of success. I say armies on purpose. There were many, each headed by their own leader with various levels of attachment to Madero and his goals. But they did deal many defeats to the Federal Army, and eventually Diaz renounced the presidency and accepted an exile to France. There was an interim government until elections could be held in October 1911. That government tried to undermind Madero, but Madero still won the election. And then there was the classic problem.

Madero instituted some reforms. But many of the revolutionary leaders who had supported Madero wanted more more sweeping and immediate reforms. And perhaps in the biggest blow to the desires of these revolutionaries, Madero signed a treaty that kept a lot of the system in place that had existed under Diaz. This included the Federal Army. So it was only a matter of time until the civil war restarted. In fact, Madero was overthrown by his defense minister (with a strong assist from the United States) in February of 1913, arrested, and assassinated before he could ever be tried.

That's just the first few chapters of the story. As I mentioned before, the active fighting would continue for another 7 years. The lesson, I suppose, is that pursuing and establishing a real democracy is a pretty chaotic, violent, and bloody process.