Skip to content

Category Archives: Mexico

Permanent Change of Station, Again

It is the madrugada of our despedida, the hour before dawn on the last day we will spend in Monterrey.  I can smell the desert night that was and the desert day that will be.  This day has been months in coming, postponed, canceled, rescheduled.  It is almost September and summer still fills the darkness […]

The Last Coliseum

SAN PEDRO GARZA GARCIA– My taxi headed north on Avenida Cuauhtémoc through downtown Monterrey to my first bullfight.  It was a fine, hot Sunday in northern Mexico and the cloudless sky was the starched, flat blue of a faded work shirt.  I had bought my ticket, front row in the shade (barrera y sombre), a […]

Day of the Dead, Land of the Living

OAXACA — There is less distinction in Mexico between the great passions of love and death.  The two are acknowledged in life and depicted in art as intertwined, inseparable, a reminder of the other and the fleeting nature of human pursuit, the sweetness of the sun, the chill of the grave, the ever-present skull beneath […]

Guanajuato Guanajuato

GUANAJUATO — The shutters are thrown open to the sounds of the rain and the city.  Thunder rolls over the hills and valleys of Guanajuato.  Outside, the steep streets and narrow callejons have become rivers and waterfalls.  Every day for the last three the rains have begun in the afternoon and lasted through until morning.  […]

Shades of Brown and Dust

JUAREZ, MEXICO and EL PASO, TEXAS–On each of my trips over the last few years I have used the iPhone (first the 5 and now the 5S) as a companion to whatever cameras I am working with. The iPhone has, essentially, taken the place of a point and shoot in my gear lineup and is […]

Centro Santa Catalina

JUAREZ — South of the city the trash fires burn, sending a rolling plume of black smoke towards the sky. The Centro Santa Catalina is a compound in a very poor neighborhood that encloses several buildings including a church, a school and the workshop. In the organization’s words, “We are a faith based community founded […]

Periphery

EL PASO — The border is a fact of life here. There is no politics in that statement, no right or wrong. Whether you think the border should be torn down entirely or made an impenetrable wall, it exists here in El Paso in a way I have seen nowhere else. Years ago, when I […]

Crossing and Moving

EL PASO–About a year ago, give or take a week or three, I was in San Salvador and had just found out my wife had been offered a job with the Foreign Service. This meant that the month after my return from Central America would be a blur of moving, packing and goodbyes ending with a […]