Patzcuaro is a handsome colonial town with distinctly bohemian airs. This is Oaxaca City, 30 years ago.
“Michoacán is a very rich state.” Says Miguel Angel Nuñez, a Mexican anthropologist specialised in this evocative and often overlooked land in Western Mexico.
“It has an incredible abundance of natural gifts – most importantly, a wide variety of climates and landscapes. Here in Michoacán, you’ll find desert cacti on one side of the road and pine trees on the other.”
Michoacán’s profusion of micro-climates is the reason why local markets are overflowing with such an abundance of fruits and vegetables – plantain and bananas, sweetcorn, mangos, watermelons, apples, mandarins, nopal cacti, pineapples, avocados and more. From the sweltering coastal lowlands to the chilly, mist-swathed highlands, delicious crops are always in season in this ‘Garden state’.
“We are spoilt here, really.” Continues Miguel. “But as an anthropologist, I am also spoilt. I’ve spent thirty years studying Michoacán and I have yet to tire of it.”
Michoacán’s environmental diversity is matched only by its rich cultural heritage. Communities of indigenous Purépecha, directly descended from the ancient Tarascans, inhabit the valleys, mountains and lakes, where they forge an existence through agriculture and artisanship. Tradition, family and a reverence for music are guiding social forces here.
The colonial town of Patzcuaro, perched on a lakeshore and steeped in wraithlike splendour, is a regional centre for many such communities. Each morning, the bright, white, mountain light awakens the town from its chilly, mist-swathed slumber. One by one, the market stalls open. Cooking pots are filled, fires are started.
Old women sweep down the plazas with palm fronds, overseen by thick-walled adobe houses of white and terrocata, giant eucalyptus and fir trees, colonial arches and a sea of red clay tiles. Soon the plazas are busy with activity – trucks arrive and leave, loading and unloading their parcels, boxes, crates, produce, people and livestock. Wizened old men in cowboy hats banter with Purépecha women wrapped in indigo shawls.
“Patzcuaro might have the appearance of a colonial town,” explains Miguel. “But, like many Spanish colonies, it was built directly over an indigenous settlement. Patzcuaro is a Tarascan name – it means ‘gate to the otherworld’.”
“Along with Patzcuaro, Tzinzunzan was one of the great Tarascan capitals,” explains Miguel, as we stand on top of a hill, amid the ruins of that Pre-Hispanic city, a lake-side village of the same name occupying the land below us.
“After the Spanish conquered Tzinzunzan, they forced the people out of the city, down the hill and to the shores of the lake, where they could be controlled more easily. They took the bricks and stones from the pyramids and used them to build their churches and houses. You see, the areas surrounding the village are fields and forests, but if you look at the satellite pictures, it’s easy to tell that there’s much more to this story. Before the Spanish destroyed it, Tzinzunzan was spread over 10km square.”
Today, the only visible remains of the ancient Tarascan capital is the reconstructed ceremonial centre, featuring five unusual round pyramids assembled in a row – east to west – following the path of the sun.
They correspond to the five cosmic mountains that hold up the sky, a universal motif in Mesoamerican mythology. No one is sure why the Tarascans uniquely fashioned them in the round, but Miguel speculates that they mimic the rounded appearance of volcanoes, clearly visible on the horizon.
Down below, present-day Tzinzunzan is the largest craft producer in the area. Woodwork, basketry, textiles, and pottery particularly, are among their arts, originally introduced by Catholic missions, whose presence persists in the form of crumbling monasteries and ancient, gnarled olive groves.
This olive tree must be nearly 500 years old and one of the few surviving in Mexico. The Spanish outlawed them when they realised they were a potential threat to the success of their own groves at home.
But Tzinzunzan is just one of thirty-four indigenous villages surrounding Lake Patzcuaro, explains Miguel, as we speed past fields of golden maize, the sun burning like a bright cold pearl in the sky. Each community is different, and the tiny, peaceful settlement of Santa Fe de la Laguna is famed for its political independence and spirit of resistance.
“Santa Fe is a Zapatista stronghold,” explains Miguel, as we observe a bright mural depicting the social history of the village. “Most people think of Chiapas when they think of the Zapatistas, but the Zapatista movement is actually a nationwide struggle for human rights, land rights and the preservation of indigenous culture.”
The mural, created shortly after the village declared its independence from central government, is emblazoned with the words: “This community has said ‘enough’.” Images depict the land disputes and massacres of the 1970s, as well as the role of local women in promoting the cause of resistance.
“The army would not dare slaughter the village’s women,” says Miguel.
This revolutionary mural depicts the struggles of Santa Fe's population.
Today, Santa Fe neither pays taxes nor accepts financial help from the government. It is self-supporting and subject to its own laws and governance, which include a ban on public drinking and drunkenness.
But Santa Fe’s revolutionary roots reach back far in time. As much as four hundred years ago, Santa Fe signified a whole programme of social reform – a revolutionary programme and a kind of primitive communism grounded in religion.
The village ‘hospital’, built by missionaries, is the oldest of its type, and functions as a community healthcare unit, church, school and centre of decision-making. The vast array of cooking utensils pays homage to the great social gatherings that occur in the hospital’s courtyard. Inside the church, a bright Pagan-style floral display has been arranged in the shape of a butterfly.
“Resurrection,” explains Miguel. “A metaphor for Jesus Christ.”
Back in Patzcuaro, we drink a coffee by the plaza and watch a re-enactment of a famous local dance – The Dance of the Little Old Men. Five dancers pace around wearily, banging the earth with their walking sticks, slowly and painfully, like ancient arthritic farmers. Soon they gather speed, tap-dancing, faster and faster until finally they break loose and dance at breakneck speed.
The dance signifies the blessing and return of ancestral forces, the renewal of the earth and the return of fertility. It signifies the coming of spring after winter, where the banging of the earth is reminiscent of the sexual act, and the manner in which pre-Columbians planted maize – using a stick, one seed at a time.
Michoacán is steeped in the same ancient, ancestral concerns that have governed its people for millennia – the health of the land, the approval of their forebears and the constant cyclical motions of time, season and spirit. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
