Independencia y Graduaciones

Hola a todos,

The top picture is Nancy, my friend the accountant and me at the Mexican independence day celebration, note she has fake eyelashes with the mexican flag. Underneath that, is part of my face and my friend Erica at the mine. Then you can see my friend Beu in the purple dress and me in the suit and my other friend Cecy in the yellow, at my Beu's graduation party. I am practicing my trumpet skills during dinner at the party. Then Cecy and my other friend Dinorah, yes that is her name, and me at the dance. I am getting up close and personal with a cactus lol. Then you can see my friend Beu, washing her hands at her dad's new house. The house is not complete but it is coming along nicely and will be lovely when it is done.


Sorry it has been so long but you will see from my post I have been very busy. Continuing from the last post after the Packers game not much happened during the week. On both Thursday and Friday night we celebrated the birthday of Sary a friend of ours who is a salsa dancer. Thursday was just a party at our friend Chuy's which is pronounced like Chewey from the Star Wars movies. Then Friday we went to a Chinese restaraunt and had about 20 people with us. The food was ok and actually it was so good that my friend Erica who has a lot of food allergies ordered food that was bad for here. Then we went out dancing at La Patrona, it is intimidating to try to dance with salsa dancers, but I gave it a shot. Then Saturday morning we bordered a bus for zacatecas a historical area of mexico about 7 hours away from Monterrey. We visited many churches and museums in Zacatecas. We visited an old mine and heard a legend. A miner found a very valuable half gold and half silver rock, he hid it in the mine and returned later that night after the mine had closed to collect his prize. The patron saint of the mine, threw him in the water and killed him, because he refused to share with his coworkers. The owners of the mine which came from the criollo class, would spread stories among the indigenous workers to stop them from stealing gold and silver. It is really interesting to learn Mexican history. In colonial times, the people were divided into groups based on their ancestry, similar to the caste system in India. At the top of the group were the Peninsular's which are 100% Spanish ancestry and born in Spain. Beneath them were the Criollo's, which were of Spanish ancestry but born in Nuevo Espana (the colonies), beneath them were the Mestizo's which is a mix of indigenous people and Spanish people, almost equal to them were the Mulatto's which is a mix of African slaves and Spanish people. Then the inidgenous people; Aztecs, Mayans, Chichimecas, Zapotecas, Incas and many more other pre-colombian civilizations. And at the lowest level were the African slaves. This ranking lasted from 1492 and is still seen in today's society here. There were many rules; Bishops which are second in the catholic church only to the pope could only come from the Peninsular class. The Peninsular's also controlled the flow of goods from the local source to the rest of the world. The Criollo's owned most of the land because they were the descendants of the original conquistadors, who were given a lot of land in exchange for their help en la conquista. So, the Criollo's would use their mines and other resources to extract the raw materials. Then they would take them to the market and sell them, they couldn't get that good of a price because of the abundance of supply. So, the Peninsular's who were the only ones allowed to sell goods to the outside world, would buy the goods at a cheap price and resell them in europe at a much higher profit, which would net them exorbitant amounts of money for very little work. The basic idea for the colonies was twofold; the first to spread catholicism in the new world, and secondly it was like a pyramid scheme. The most powerful men in the colonies were the Virreys of Nuevo Espana (Mexico) and Peru (the rest of central and south america). Then the governors and other officials, basically everyone's job was to make money for the people above them. The jealousy of the Criollo's is directly responsible for almost every revolution in South America, they got tired of being subservient to the peninsulars. It was so important to be born in Spain, that parent's would get on a boat if the wife was pregnant to try and have the baby born in Spain. I digress from my Zacatecas story. We went to the church of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the story of the virgin of Guadalupe is very interesting. A woman was on a hill and the virgen appeared to here. She went to get a priest to tell him about the appearance, the virgin didn't reappear. The woman came back to the hill by hereself and the virgin reappeared and told the women to go back to the priest. One more time, she went back to the priest and brought him to the hill, the virgin didn't appear. The woman came back to the hill and the virgin told her to gather flowers and take them to the priest to give them to him and to tell them they were from the virgin. The women went to the priest and let the flowers drop from where she was holding. Then an image of the virgin appeared on the womens shirt. It was an indigenous woman and it made it a lot easier to convert indigenous people to Catholicism, when they had a virgin that looked like them.

Onto indenpendence day, we went to some pyramids made by the chichimecas, the indigenous people of zacatecas. Then we went to a church in zacatecas and finally, the guides mixed fresca and meztcal (it's like tequila in giant 3 liter jugs and we joined in the celebration. There was a band of Mariachi's that we followed all around the city into the plaza. When we got to the plaza the Mexican army showed up and played some songs. Then the governor of Zacatecas showed up and did the yell, which goes like this, Viva Mexico, then we yelled Viva and we repeated this several times. Then everyone started to dance and we danced all night. The history behind mexican independence day is that a priest and several other criollos had a plan and it was discovered. The priest decided to ring the bell of his church and have his congregation raise up in arms.

The food in zacatecas was dreadful most of the time and most of our days started behind schedule which meant that we had no time to relax. This lead to me being ill most of the last week. I didn't sleep for almost three days and had almost no energy and could barely even eat. I spent most of the last week sleeping and trying to get better. Then Saturday i journeyed to Saltillo which is an hour to an hour and a half away. I went there for my friend Beu's graduation party. the graduation happened in June, but they just had the party last week. I rented a smoking jacket and shoes and everyone else was also dressed to the nines. It was a lot of fun and very formal. It was really weird to be the only American there and everyone else was Mexican.

I think this is enough history and news for now. I will post again soon.

cuidanse,

Kyle