jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed May 28 00:39:00 CDT 2008
> Well I have lived with Mexicans all my life. As did I. I grew up in Yuma Az on the border of Arizona, California and Mexico, actually out in a farming community of California. I worked alongside the Mexican laborers as I was growing up and grew to respect and admire their hard work and the fact that they would live in such poverty in the US in order to send their money home to families in Mexico. > Before long I'll be moving south. I lived in Puebla Mexico from 1995 to 2000, and thoroughly enjoyed it. On the high plains 1/2 way between Mexico DF (Mexico City) and the port city of Veracruz, Puebla is one of the original Spanish settlements. It was built to support the conquest of the huge Aztec city Tinochtitlan, under what is now Mexico City, by the Spaniards landing in Veracruz in the early 1500s. Puebla is now a modern city of several million people, with all of the affluence and poverty to be found in most large cities of Mexico. There is still much of the Spanish influence in Puebla's architecture and culture. I got a consulting job there in 1995 and worked in Puebla for about 3 years before the company I was working for went out of business. I continued to live there for a couple of more years, struggling to survive on a slowly expanding consulting business. My wife and I lived in the shadow of the hill (fort) in Puebla where the Mexicans defeated the French (well, kinda) in the Battle of Puebla, Cinco de Mayo. 36 Norte y Blvd Xoanaca, about a mile or so from the Zocolo, you could literally walk up the hill to the fort. We also lived literally across the road from a 1/2 mile square mercado where we could buy all the produce, fruits, pollo y puerco, tortillas and other staples of life. Slabs of Chicharones and kilos of Avocados. Oh yea! Puebla, at an altitude of about 5500 feet, is centrally located to a lovely part of Mexico and my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed driving our Mexican built old style VW Beetle (but built in 1994 in the VW plant in Puebla) around the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and even down into Chiapas. For one Christmas vacation we drove through Mexico DF, through Guadalajara and over to the coast of the gulf of Baja, then north following the coast up to Nogales, up to Phoenix to visit my sisters, over to Yuma to visit other family, then followed the exact same route in reverse back down to Puebla. Another time we drove from Puebla up to Poza Rica on the Vera Cruz coast, north to Tampico and from there up to Matamoros / Brownsville, Tx, on up to Syracuse NY, and then back the same route to Puebla. THAT route you would not consider driving today due to the drug wars, but back when we lived there we drove pretty much anywhere without fear. Because it was so close to Puebla, we spent many weekends over in Jalapa Veracruz, or even in Quetzalan (IIRC) a tiny little Indian village at "the end of the road" in the far north of the state of Puebla. But of all the places we visited regularly, Oaxaca was our very favorite. The Centro is an eclectic mixture of French and Spanish, with wonderful museums and magnificent churches. Eat great food on the Zocolo or wander out past the airport to San Bartolo Coyotepec to could buy the famous "black pottery" or up to the north end of the valley to buy magnificent rugs and tapestries. I would love to live in Puebla still but had to move back to the US in 2000 due to insufficient Internet to support remote access to the clients I was cultivating up in the US. Sad but true. Mexico is a wonderful place, the people still have strong family and religious ties, and I would live there again given the chance. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Edward S Zuris wrote: > Well I have lived with Mexicans all my life. > Before long I'll be moving south. Can't beat > them then join them.