The Story Factory, Visit to Barra de Navidad, Silao, Culture

The Story Factory


The road from Guanajuato to Leon is a four-lane divided highway, most of it without access control. Cars whiz by at 90 miles per hour while some slow-moving trucks struggle to go forty. It’s best not to gawk at the scenery while doing this stretch, but having made this trip numerous times I have noticed a few things of interest. About two-thirds of the way to Leon there is a road on the north side of the high-way leading to a place called Comanjilla. Comanjilla is a very posh thermal spa that has everything from mud baths to hot water pools. We have been there to have a drink and a sandwich but what catches my eye is the number of Mercedes Benz’s, BMW’s, and Lexus’s one sees in their parking lot. My little made-in-Mexico Nissan Tsuru would probably not feel comfortable parked with these high-powered, high-priced vehicles so Carole and I will have to wait for some very special occasion before we get wet or muddy there.

On the other side of the highway there is a dirt road leading south, marked by a sign that says in faded letters, aguas termal. One day, having noticed the sign and being by myself, I thought I would take that road and see if there might be a less fancy and less expensive hot water spa. The waters should be the same as Comanjilla, but a visit there would probably be less expensive. I could hardly wait to announce my discovery to our Gringo friends.

The dusty road went further into the countryside than I expected, with several forks and very little indication that I was headed for a spa. Just over a slight rise I came upon an old but quite beautiful hacienda with no signs of human activity. Some of the walls were crumbling but I could see that a number of modern aluminum framed windows had been installed. Something unusual must be going on in this old hacienda, I thought. I stuck my head into a deep window well and with the brightness of the sunlight outside and the darkness inside I had trouble making it out but what I saw astonished me. Here was a very large room with rows and rows of people dressed like monks sitting at desks with computers. They were all typing away. As I watched I heard a loud bell ring and the monks, if that is what they were, all filed out through a double door to a courtyard. The courtyard was set up with tables and the monks seemed to be settling in for the mid-day meal. I knew I had to find out more of what was going on in this most unusual and intriguing place. Here in the middle of Mexico, in the middle of nowhere, were perhaps 40 monks all typing away at their computers. Just what was this strange enterprise I had stumbled upon? When I tried the heavy doors leading to this room, I was surprised to find them unlocked, so I slipped in.

What I saw on the computer screens, when I pressed the monitor buttons to turn them on, was surprising. Each computer had a story written on it of such incredible beauty and pathos that I could not stop moving from one computer to the next to read these stories. Most of them were a couple of pages in length. They were wonderful stories, some of human selfishness but more often of human kindness. Stories of children dying of leukemia, with appeals for prayer or for sending the child a cheery card. It is hard to describe how touching these evocative little essays were. I managed to scribble down a passage from one of them. Listen to this from a dying girl: “I stood by the window this morning, just a sliver of promise touching my cheek. I stood there but didn’t feel alone. It was like a million smiles were shining on me, and I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t ever alone…”

As my eyes welled up, I felt a lump in my throat; I wondered, “God, what is this place I have stumbled onto!” As I read story after story I began to feel a presence behind me. There, approaching me was an old man with kindly eyes. He spoke first. “Are you looking for the abbot?” I don’t know why I responded in such a crude way, but what I said was, “I was hoping to find Costello.” As the words came out of my mouth I thought that it was hilariously funny but almost immediately realized that what I said was more than just impolite. I am almost too embarrassed to write of this even now. I started to blabber an apology but the old man smiled and said that I should not feel bad. “I know that sometimes we say things we don’t mean and that it is easy to offend, but that in my many years of living I have learned that it is best to not respond in kind, even to thoughtless words.”

I never found out what the explanation for this story factory was and why there were scores of monks typing out these incredible tales. While each of the stories was quite different, they all had a similar concluding paragraph. My experience here was profound and one I know I will never forget.

Please send this message to seven friends to share with them what you have just read. This will bring joy to their hearts. If you do not send this message to seven people you will suffer seven years of bad luck and will receive 700 e-mails with stories very similar to this one.

Nathan and Tara Arrive for Visit

It finally happened: Our son Nate and his girlfriend, Tara De Prima came to Guanajuato. It was a first visit for both of them to Mexico. Tara had mentioned that she was anxious to see the ocean. Guanajuato, of course, is in the center of Mexico and just about as far as you can be from any ocean, but even at that, it is only 380 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and 360 miles from the Pacific. So off we went to one of our favorite playas, the beaches of Barra de Navidad on the Pacific. Inasmuch as I recently wrote about our visit to this laid-back village in my last Letter from Mexico, I will try not to repeat myself.

Barra doesn’t have a bank or any ATM machines, but Malaque, a town about five miles north, does. Some of our friends prefer to stay at Malaque. Apparently there are some beautiful villas in this town and our friends like to kid us as to how sorry the hotel we were staying at was in comparison to their lodgings. But, as my friend, Phil Contreras said, when he had to go to visit the ATM machine there, “Malaque makes Silao look like Paris.” I have always considered Silao, which is ten miles southwest of Guanajuato, a gritty little town, but you will hear more about Silao later in this issue. I also had to tap the ATM machine, so I took a jaunt over to Malaque. This town has that special look that only a recent earthquake and tidal wave can give a place; rows of apartments and hotels were devastated.

During our visit to Barra de Navidad we did pretty much the same things Carole, I, and our friends did on our earlier visit including an evening meal at the beautiful cliffside restaurant, El Recife. One difference though, was that Nathan and Tara were here and Nathan proposed to Tara, giving her a beautiful ring, one of those sparkly kinds. It all was very romantic.

We use our 1996 Ford Windstar van for longer trips such as this one to the coast. It’s much more comfortable with its greater room, plush seats, a lot of bells and whistles, and two air conditioners, one for the front and the other for the back. But a few things have started to go wrong with our van. For one thing, the dome light plus several courtesy lights stay on while you are driving. It’s very annoying having these lights on while driving, especially at night. In addition, a little icon image of the car lights up when you open the doors to warn you that the doors are open but it stays on for half an hour or so after the doors are closed. It’s not a big thing but it is annoying to think the doors may not be fully shut. A further problem is that the automatic window on the driver’s side does not open or close. The local Ford garage doesn’t seem to understand what to do about these problems so I took it to a Mexican auto-electric place that had the intriguing name of El Cachoro, which means “The Puppy.” Three grease monkeys came out to work on my car. Well, they weren’t really monkeys, but their clothes were amply covered with grease. The head mechanic, el maestro, brought out his two wires connected to a twelve volt light bulb, a diagnostic instrument that they used on my car. El maestro probed around with his diagnostic instrument, the second mechanic shouted out whether the lights were on or off, and the third watched the operation. I was worried about the bill I would receive, what with the amount of time the three mechanics were taking just to fix the lights. When they were finished fixing the lights I asked them how much I owed them and they informed me that until they fixed the window, I owed them nothing. They were able to get the lights to turn off, at least temporarily, but said they would need a relay for the window and would order this from Ford. I was encouraged that they actually thought they could fix the car, particularly the window. When you pull up to a tollbooth you have to drive a car-door’s length beyond the toll-taker so you can open the door without hitting the attendant with the door, but still pay the fee. Then, when you need to stop to ask directions you have to shout and wave your fingers at the closed window in hope that someone can hear you or read your lips, as well as understand you. Instead of giving me the directions, I think what they are saying is Why don’t you roll down your window? It’s definitely a problem, and it’s one that we have lived with for over three years.

When Nathan and my daughter, Jenny, were growing up I did not put a lock on my large basement workshop, which was loaded with tools. They could use them and Jenny, more toward what can be done artistically, and Nathanthey did more toward making and fixing things. This is kind of a long way around, but while Nate was visiting here he spotted a dimmer switch on the van and turned it down from full intensity. The dome lights and the courtesy lights, which had all remained on while the car was moving, now went out. He then tore into the van, first checking the myriad of they were all O.K. Then he checked the relays and they were allfuses O.K. Then he removed the inside panel of the door and checked the various switches which opened and closed the window and finally he got to the window motor and found that it was dead. He removed the motor, cleaned and oiled it, and somehow got it to work. He re-placed the door panel and our car is now back in order. It would be nice if Nathan would visit more often.



Silao

“Why would anyone want to visit Silao?” is what we asked ourselves when we learned that the Friends of The Alhondiga Museum were planning a tour to this town only 10 miles away. The Friends arrange marvelous trips to various parts of Mexico and so when they announced this excursion to Silao, Carole and I decided to go to find out if there was something about Silao that we ought to know about. For those of you from Wisconsin, going to Silao is a little bit like going from Janesville, where I grew up, to Beloit, which was our hometown rival. Beloit of course is the home of lovely Beloit College, but there is not much else noteworthy there except that Beloit has the distinction of being the only town in America whose name sounds like dropping a quarter in a toilet bowl. Beloit!

Silao, unlike Guanajuato, is flat and is about one thousand feet lower in altitude and is thus warmer. I go to Silao occasionally because I found a wonderful barber who is able to give me a haircut without buzz-cutting the remaining hairs on my head or trimming my beard so short that it looks like I forgot to shave. As far as I can see, Silao has a nice mercado and a lot of good hardware stores, but not much to make it a tourist destination. While Guanajuato has so many historic plaques on the side of buildings, one has the feeling that if they ever removed the plaques from the walls, all the buildings would collapse. Silao, on the other hand, has only one plaque, at least only one that I ever saw. Sadly, this tells about an Italian racecar driver, Felice Bonetti, who lost his life, March 21st, 1953 while running the IV Carrera Panamericano, a famous Mexican automobile race. I have been told that Bonetti and his piloti, I Giovani, hit a bump in the road and that Bonetti flew out of the car, hitting an overhanging balcony. The street he crashed on is the main drag in the center of town and is straight as an arrow. There are still bumps in the road, however.

The tour to Silao took us to a cluster of rug-weaving shops. The looms were hand crafted and located in a shelter open on three sides. Alas, the weaving was with acrylic yarns, not like the tightly woven wool yarns of Oaxaca that are so beautiful. The interesting thing to me is that the weaver said he could weave any design we wanted, just bring him a picture of it. He was working on a rug that had a fancy crest for a fire company in Leon. The cost of rugs this size, about 30 by 40 inches, was $35. I wondered if he could do the Montemayor crest we saw in Spain? The trouble with that idea is that the only picture I have of the crest is about a half-inch square. I spoke to him about limitations like this and he pulled out of his pocket a design he said he would do next, which was about the size of a postage stamp.

We had a fine meal in a large restaurant, El Portrero, followed by a speech given by the official chronologist of the State of Guanajuato, who gave us some of the history of Silao. I couldn’t understand much of the speech but I did catch a few bits and pieces of his address. Pancho Villa’s army passed through Silao on its way to Celaya, 45 miles east, where he attempted thirty cavalry charges to break through the lines of General Obregon, but without success. He suffered an enormous defeat. Another bit that I caught was that Silao has long been a place where traditional Mexican toys were made. Today, along the high-way, stretching out toward Leon, one can see about a mile of venders selling furniture for small tots: small chairs, highchairs, rocking horses, and that kind of thing. But our chronologist went on to say that years ago the locals harvested a very fine white wood from trees that grew on the surrounding hills and mountains. The local artisans cut the trees and made wonderful toys. A few years ago, I read in the New York Times an article that said the antique toys of Mexico had become collector’s items and museum pieces, and were quite valuable. Our chronologist said that Silao produced a charming toy with a monkey head on it that was very popular. He said some Germans moved into the area and copied the toy in ceramic, and that it proved to be more popular than the hand carved one. Over time, with the loss of the special trees that grew in the area and the diminished market for the handmade item, the local artisans completely for-got how to make those toys. There is however, he said, a monkey toy that is still made in one shop in Silao. We visited that shop and saw them making the toy that they sold for forty cents. You have probably seen it, two parallel bars that you squeeze to make the monkey, dangling from his arms, flip over and over.

We then visited the new museum of Chaves and Tomas Morado, two brothers, one a painter, and the other a sculptor. They were born in Silao and are nationally known and revered in Mexico. The museum devoted to the work of the two brothers is very well done and I recommend it the next time you are in Silao.

We visited the main church in town, Santiago de Apostal, which is cathedral-sized, and quite beautiful. The spires are exceptionally tall, and being made of cut stone piled on cut stone, offered testimony that this part of Mexico is not earthquake prone. (Everybody cross you.) Not included on the tour was a visit to a small church I find charming, the steeple of which is rounded and in the shape of a beer bottle.
One can only imagine what some native artisan mason had in mind when he built this church or to what God he prayed.

We’ve Got Culture

One of the nice things about living in Guanajuato is the continuing array of cultural events sponsored by the city. Sometime ago I wrote about the annual event, The Day of the Flowers. Mexican folks make a floral altar in their homes and shops and people converge on the center of town to buy flowers for their sweethearts. Kids bop each other over the head with eggshells that look like ice cream cones, and that are filled with confetti. It’s all great fun. Thanks to our neighbor, Irene Buchanan, who is the new head of the City Office of Tourism and Public Relations, we received a special invitation to a breakfast for about two hundred dignitaries. The invitation was delivered to our door by a smartly uniformed, motorcycle-policeman. Ah, to think that after all those years of living in Wisconsin, we finally made the “A” list in Mexico.

On previous Dias de las Flores we had noticed that the four outdoor cafes located in the Jardin de la Union, that very special plaza in the center of town, had been cleared out and one big outdoor dining area had been set up. All the chairs had white covers and big blue ribbons attached to the back. There were no speeches, only a fine breakfast of fruit, crepes, a lovely sauce, and other morsels. We watched the young couples promenading the Jardin hand in hand, with the girls carrying bouquets of flowers and the kid’s bopping each other over the head with those confetti filled cones. After the breakfast we went to a second invitation held in the ornate meeting and reception room of City Hall. The purpose of the get-together was the formal presentation ceremony of Guanajuato’s Man of the Year award. This year the award went to the famous Mexican ceramicist, Capelo, whose name is actually Rodriguez. We heard speeches and re-marks from the Mayor of the City, and the Governor of Guanajuato. La Reina de Guanajuato, the City Queen, was also on hand to lend her beauty to the occasion.

Mercedes Lichtwardt later told me that Capelo, dressed in complete charro outfit with a big Mexican sombrero, occasionally rides into town from Valenciana on his horse. Now I know who it is I’ve seen that looked like a Mexican movie star trotting on his horse through downtown Guanajuato. After the presentation, we stepped out on an ornate balcony and looked down and waved at the huge festival crowd made up of, you know, your regular type people.

Almost every Friday there is a concert of the Guanajuato symphony orchestra. I cannot imagine what we could have been thinking when we complained to our friends about the increase in ticket prices from $2 to $5 that took place shortly after we moved here. The orchestra plays superbly and, subsidized by the government, the tickets are quite a bargain. The orchestra retains a lot of autonomy and is able to offer modern selections beyond the more familiar Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven. Unfortunately for me, that’s the kind of music I like.

In addition, the city sponsors a continuing series of special events. One of the invitations we received from Irene Buchanan was to the Fourth Annual International Organ Festival sponsored by the city. A few years ago the city brought over from Germany a master organ restorer to work on three antique Guanajuato church organs. The concert we chose to attend was at El Templo de Mellado, a church overlooking the city and built to serve the Mellado miners and their families. It was very nice, especially if you are like me and enjoy the big sound of a venerable pipe organ.

Even though our municipality provides a rather full plate of musical events, some of the folks in town hungered for chamber music. A small group of musicians from our symphony orchestra organized a mini-concert series. The concerts are being held in the home of Rocendo Gutierrez, an American architect practicing his profession and living here with his wife and two children. Their home is a large portion of the Ex hacienda de la Trinidad, a very fine example architecture from the Spanish colonial period. The living room is large enough to accommodate the quartet, including a grand piano plus forty concert attendees. The large patio, almost totally illuminated with candles, served as a grand place for intermission, where hors d'oeuvres, champagne, wine and, of course, a fine tequila were served.

Our friends and neighbors, Bob and Judith Patout, who live two doors down from us in a large beautiful home, recently sponsored a concert fundraiser for the orphanage in Salamanca. They invited three special friends of theirs, two doctors and an anthropologist who live in Cuernavaca, and who happen to be excellent musicians, to perform for friends and neighbors. We were entertained by two recorders and a keyboard. I found this music particularly delightful because of my own mastery of the recorder when I learned to play “The Irish Washerwoman” on this instrument some years ago. Their living room holds an audience of ninety persons and is a great place for concerts of this kind. A large table held an assortment of delicious nibbles, wine, and Bob’s own sangria potion.

Another formal invitation was hand delivered to our door recently, The Coronation Ceremony for the Queen of Guanajuato, held in the Teatro Juarez. We thought this would be fun to see and so Carole and I went. We arrived on time and although many events held in Mexico tend to start late, with people arriving late, we found ourselves relegated to the fifth balcony of the five balconies of this ornate old theater. Aside from the lack of oxygen and the heat we endured, we had a marvelous view of the ceremony.

On one side of the theater there was an honor guard made up of sixteen local silver miners wearing red safety helmets with their little lights turned on. The reigning reina, wearing a long satin dress with full skirt, sash, coronet, and scepter, walked in majestically to the booming accompaniment of royal coronation music. Do you remember the introductory music from Masterpiece Theater? Well, that’s one of the pieces they played along with the Te Deum, and music by Handel. She walked down the aisle, circling it, so that all could see her, then climbed the steps to the stage and took her place at an elaborate throne. Following her were about twelve more queens who entered the same way and stood on both sides of her. One of the queens was probably seventy or eighty years old and received thunderous applause as she slowly made her way to the stage. We later learned that this court was made up of queens from various organizations in the city including the old folks home.

The finale came when the queen-apparent entered the theater to even more thunderous applause. The flashes from a half dozen photographers and the bright lights from several TV cameras illuminated the new Reina de Guanajuato. She was more petite than the current Queen but strikingly beautiful. After cir-cling the aisle she climbed the steps and was crowned and presented with the scepter.


Nuevo Valle de Moreno

There are 5,000 comunidaes in the State of Guanajuato. These are hamlets, villages, or just little clusters of houses. Many of them are isolated and difficult to reach. One of these is Nuevo Valle de Moreno, about 15 miles as the crow flies but almost two hours by car from Guanajuato. I went with Phil Contreras to visit several of these places, including Valle de Moreno. The village, with about 360 families, is composed almost entirely of women, children, and a few old men.

Phil is an interesting fellow expat who has taken on a special mission of helping these villages, one village at a time, and starting with Nuevo Valle de Moreno. At one time he was a corporate lawyer for a large multi-national firm in Cleveland. For various reasons, too involved to explain, Phil left the corporate world and opened a legal office in San Marcos, Texas, practicing poverty law. Of course, some of us think defending the poor, making wills for $35, and counseling battered women was a step up in his career. After doing that for several years, he and his wife, Jan, were visiting Mexico, and fell in love with Guanajuato where they decided to retire. During his years in Texas, Phil had plenty of experience with helping migrants from Mexico with legal problems. He would advise them not to be out after 12 at night, avoid the booze, and on how to stay out of trouble with the law.

When Phil came to Mexico he volunteered his services to help the State agency that assists Mexican migrants and their families. I joined him and Carlos, a state field worker, on visits to some of these remote villages. Carlos and Phil spoke to the villagers, mostly women, who listened intently. The agency also sponsors Casas Guanajuato, in various American cities where migrants from this state can meet and receive help, meager as it may be. I inquired as to what kind of help this could be and was told, for example, if a migrant died, someone at the Casa would let the family back in Mexico know what happened and try to make arrangements for the return of the body. With limited phone service to the village and no funds to cover the expense of transportation, the death of a loved one in a foreign country becomes catastrophic. The agency has no grants to give the villagers for catastrophes or basic improvements. But over the years they noticed that some of the migrants pooled their funds earned in America and paid for improvements to their respective villages. In the State of Guanajuato, the government, rather cleverly, in my opinion, came up with a program that matched two pesos for every one that the migrants sent home for projects or for starting a maqiladora factory. These are factories more often found along the U.S. border that permit components or raw materials to be brought in from the U.S. without paying duty. The products made and exported back to the U.S. are duty free except for the value of the labor added to the product. These migrant worker funded maqiladora factories in Guanajuato are Mexican-owned and initiated, unlike the American and Japanese factories on the border. I don’t know how successful this homegrown opperation has been, but it is a marvelous idea that I hope can be further developed.

Studies have been undertaken as to why so many Mexicans migrate to the U.S. The simple, but only partial answer is, that there is greater economic opportunity in America; in other words, the U.S. is a powerful economic magnet. What the studies revealed, however, is that the depletion of Mexico’s soils, desertification, and the lower cost of subsidizes corn from the United States have made it impossible for many rural Mexican workers to continue to raise crops and live. These folks are being driven from the land. These forces are so powerful that, at least, until the law of supply and demand is repealed, migration to the United States is inevitable.

Phil and Jan Contreras recognized that they couldn’t tackle the problems of all 5,000 comunidades. But they might be able, in some way, to assist at least one village. They chose Nuevo Valle de Moreno, high up in the Sierra Guanajuato Mountains.

Using their own funds and soliciting funds from friends back in the U.S., and raising money from fundraiser breakfasts, they went to work rebuilding the toilets and resealing the roof of the grade school. Learning that the state government provided the school buildings, but no maintenance, provided teachers, but no supplies, and even provided computers, but practically no software, provided a satellite dish to receive educational programs from the Mexico City, but no T.V. set, Phil and Jan set out to fill some of the gaps. They bought books, computer programs such as a CD Rom disk on the history of Mexico, they bought a T.V. set, a printer and supplies so that the teachers and children had something to work with. I met one of the teachers on a visit there and was impressed with his dedication and enthusiasm. The young male teacher, who came from the distant southern state of Oaxaca, lived in a dingy room attached to the school. It was impossible for him to go home for visits and not much for a young man to do in this tiny village. There must be thousands of young teachers, male and female, in the state of Guanajuato alone, people we don’t even know exist, toiling these dry education vineyards.

The fundraisers that Phil and Jan organized, were held in the large patio garden of Ruth Burchard. Ruth is 91 years old, sprightly, and a remarkable Guanajuato expat. She decided to move here from Florida because there were just too many old people living there, she said. When she came to this city she found a house that had been part of a fine old hacienda, but was in need of repairs and refurbishing. The owner was not interested in selling it, so Ruth struck a deal to rent it and fix it up at her own expense. The place she ended up with is the envy of all of us. In addition to a very large bedroom and living room, one steps down into a large garden patio with a long roofed open gallery and a separate visitor’s house in the back, all of this built of stone and very old.

The Contreras’s brought the main ingredients for the breakfast and many of us brought something to add. Raymond Lévesque, from Quebec, one of the newer experts, brought a huge platter of crepe suzettes. The men did the cooking, but before eating, Phil and Jan explained the village project. I wanted to include a picture of Jan and Phil talking to the villagers but could not find one, so I used a picture of Raymond and me at the breakfast instead.


Luau Party

“I don’t dance, and I certainly don’t know how to do a Hawaiian hula.” That’s what I told Sandra Ward and Ron Mann when they asked me if I would do the hula at a Hawaiian luau that they were putting on to raise funds for a program dear to Sandra’s heart, the sterilization of dogs in Guanajuato. “There is really nothing to it,” they explained. “All you have to do is be willing to make a fool of yourself,” Sandra added. “Oh, in that case, I’m your man,” I responded. A few days before the event, I received my first les-son in the art of Hawaiian dancing.

Ron prepared a great variety of authentic Hawaiian dishes learned while in Hawaii. People were asked to wear Hawaiian garb, long colorful dresses for women and Hawaiian shirts for men. Sandra and Chili Hernandez did the Hawaiian hula and I did my own carefully learned dance routine. The ninety-four attendees who came enjoyed the party and the fund-raiser was a huge success.

Movie- Once Upon a Time in Mexico

We read in the paper that a motion picture was going to be made with locations in San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. It was going to be an action picture starring Antonio Banderas and Salma Hyack and apparently a sequel to some other action picture. We saw some articles in the paper about the filming, but my first contact with tinsel town came when I received a telephone call from the City Office of Tour-ism and Public Relations. I was told that the film company needed some up-scale houses for their stars and did I know of any. I thought I should consult my Rolodex but the truth was I couldn’t give them any help. The person I spoke with sighed and said finding accommodations for the film company was not their only problem. The action was going to be filmed at the Plaza de la Paz, the main plaza in town, and there would be many unhappy merchants who's restaurants and stores faced the plaza.

My next contact with the movie was a call I received from a woman named Gabriella, who was the head costume designer. She had been billeted in a small hotel she did not like and had heard that we owned a condo apartment. She was looking for a place to stay while they were shooting the movie. Gabriella turned out to be a charming woman of Mexican descent who had lived in Mexico, France, Italy, and now Los Angeles. She asked me if I liked movies and when I answered yes, she asked me if I had seen Zorro with Antonio Bandera’s. I answered that I hadn’t, although I had seen an earlier version of Zorro. She had done the costumes for the more recent movie. I don’t know how high up head costume designers are in the world of movies, but she had her own driver with a large Chevrolet Suburban. We drove out and looked at our little apartment and with the nicest diplomacy she turned it down. I think she wanted some-thing a little bit grander. I ran into Gabriella the next day at the Plaza de la Paz where the moviemakers were set up for filming. She spotted me and came over to explain some of the process. The plaza was filled with huge movie company trucks and vans labeled “Star Wagons,” but I didn’t see any stars. The newspaper reported that helping make the movie was a firm named “Balls Out Production Co.” Somehow I don’t think they will get listed in the film credits. There was a trailer loaded with Honda all-terrain vehicles, which several of us had speculated were going to be used for a wild chase scene up and down the callejones. As it turned out, the ATV’s were used to run film crews from one end of the set to the other. A full company of young Mexican soldiers was on hand for the coup d'etat that was scheduled. I can’t wait to see the picture.
posted by Charlie's Letter from Mexico @ 7:28 AM 5 comments