Puebla and Cholula

March 9, 2009

PUEBLA
We boarded a double deck bus at 8AM to tour the busy city of Puebla. The name Puebla has nothing to do with Pueblo. Puebla isn't rustic, isn't rural, and isn't small in any sense of the word.
The main boulevards in and out of Puebla are similar to some other large Mexican cities. They are wide streets with parks in the medians, statues in the gloriettas (huge roundabouts) and many cases laterales (urban “frontage roads” for business, parking and sidewalks). The five lanes on a side with parkways and a median probably occupy a swath about two hundred feet wide all told.

When one leaves the boulevard the common side street is about twenty two feet wide. This space is taken up by one lane of parking and two lanes of traffic. By the way, two buses and a parked care will add up to twenty two feet precisely, not counting mirrors. All Mexican buses have have folding mirrors. Buss drivers don't slow down; They reach out the open window and fold the mirror.

Puebla is a busy city with a strong European flavor to the architecture. The business district in fact has block after block of European brand-name shops with large windows and high gloss brass hardware. These storefronts are carefully, tastefully and seamlessly inserted into fifteenth to nineteenth century buildings of French, Italian, Spanish and Moorish architecture. Spaced neatly among the blocks of buildings are church after church. Each of them add to the antique flavor of the town with carved stone embellishments and soaring bell towers.

Puebla claims its own place in the history of Mexico. It seems that a French military presence occupied Puebla when Benito Juarez was elected President. President Juarez, in an attempt to make his books balance a bit better defaulted on some rather staggering sums in French loans.
France, with righteous indignation, rallied a few thousand troops. Apparently they intended to “occupy” Mexico, starting with Puebla.

Round one, on the 5th of May, 1861 the French found out you can't occupy Mexico with a few thousand troops. Round two, the French proved that you could re-take your own fort (in Puebla) with a few thousand troops. Round three, Benito Juarez ran the French out of Mexico once and for all.

El 5 de Mayo isn't celebrated much in Mexico. Most Mexicans here don't even know the significance of the day. Only in the U.S. do we celebrate when Benito Juarez skipped out on a loan.

We toured a tile and pottery shop in the artisan section of Puebla. They've integrated slab work and wheel work to form molded plates and bowls. Vases and the like are still made by throwing on a wheel.

Puebla pottery glazing has its own characteristic look. A big part is in its blue glazes. They're put on like any other glaze, but when fired they raise above the surface to add texture to the design. Cobalt Oxide is said to be the key ingredient.

On the same street we found a jewelry store making replicas of ancient gold necklaces and such. The pieces are made in these little shops by the lost-wax casting technique. Wax pieces are made in rubber molds, then set in a refractory plaster slurry similar to plaster of Paris. The dried slurry is baked to temper the plaster and vaporize the wax. Gold is poured into the mold in a centrifuge to fill the mold well. When the plaster is broken the gold pieces are ready for finishing. These handsome, well crafted pieces speak to us with ancient Mesoamerican voices.
Just south of the zòcalo we found the Benito Juarez Market. It is an indigenous day market that has been in full swing for as long as the city has existed. Everything from the unidentifiable to the familiar is here a-plenty. Crowds flow like water through the market and it gives life to the very air we breathe. Once again we're caught up in a culture we hardly recognize, yet we intuitively understand and embrace.

Puebla is yet another city that rests comfortably in the happy parts our memory.

Cholula
Cholula is being absorbed by Greater Puebla as size and population increase. Cholula is home to Tepanampa; an Aztec – Cholulatec ruin. The base of the main pyramid at Tepanampa is over a quarter mile on a side. It is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in Mexico, and bigger by far than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

Much about Tepanampa is lost to the overbuild that the indigenous city suffered in the fifteen hundreds. Spanish conquerors brought priests and one of the priests' projects (as usual) was the construction of a church. The priests had Tepanampa buried in adobe bricks and covered with topsoil. They then built a Spanish – Moorish church atop the pyramid's disguise. Not until the first part of the last century did archaeologists begin in earnest to tunnel into the mound.

Today much has been learned, and much left protected by the adobe. A nice museum shows a model of the city and many of the best recovered artifacts. The archeologists' tunnels are partly open to the tourists. A tour of the tunnel through and around the pyramid is an experience offered nowhere else in Mesoamerica.

High above the ruin the Church of San Gabriel is still active. People in this hilly environment are content to scale the man-made hill over 300 feet to worship. We were lucky enough to visit on a day when San Gabriel's icon went to visit another church. A parade of escorts, rose petal spreaders, icon bearers, their relievers, and a lavender-shirted brass band came down the hill and through the little park where we ate ice cream. The obligatory rocket salutes sounded at irregular intervals – apparently to keep evil spirits off-guard.

It seems that for any event, religious or political, when folks gather the Mexican zest for the festive is always present. What a wonderful way to keep a little town grounded and bonded.