John Spencer wouldn't like this

John Edward Spencer and Lady Elizabeth Brown, his lovely “Boo,” arrived in Cuernavaca in 1967.  They were traveling the country with the book "Mexico on $5 a Day" tucked under John’s arm. He read that across the street from the Cathedral there were cheap furnished apartments for rent in a building called La Casona. To their delight not only was an apartment available, it was a second story corner apartment with windows on two walls and a view of the cathedral. “How grand!” John is reported to have said. "This will be my studio; we'll live here too." When the apartment next door became available they moved into it keeping the corner apartment as John's studio. 

Neither apartment had much of a kitchen.  I first met this wonderfully eccentric English couple on a visit with Cuernavaca author May Brooks.  Boo prepared our tea using only an electric hot plate. They walked everywhere -- to art exhibits, cultural events, museums, movie theaters, banks, the post office, restaurants, and friends' homes.   Those frequenting downtown Cuernavaca came to recognize them.  Elizabeth attended St. Michael’s, the tiny English-language Anglican church. John, a Catholic convert, attended Mass at the Cathedral.

Poised and elegant, Elizabeth dressed in dark colors with her hair in a tight bun. Though quite a bit older than John she walked with her back ramrod straight. John always wore a suit coat and tie. The coat rarely matched his trousers, his shirt collar was usually frayed, and his tie askew.  Following Boo, with hunched shoulders and his hands clasped behind his back, he seemed older than Elizabeth.

John was a multifaceted artist.  Hundreds of sketchbooks were filled with his drawings.  He painted on canvas and carved river-smoothed stones with a dentist’s drill.  He created large, intricate metal sculpture.  He loved reflections.  In drawings, in oils on canvas, or in metal sculpture, the top is often the inverse of the bottom. 

John’s largest project,  "Spencer's Walls," surrounds the churchyard of the Three Kings church in northern Cuernavaca.   John was asked by a Canadian priest if he would design gates for the 17th century church.  John replied. "How can I design gates without walls?"  Spencer's many gates are marvelous pieces of metal sculpture that are often overlooked because of the immense, intriguing, fantasy of the stone walls he created to hold the gates.  

After Lady Elizabeth's death in 1986, John was distraught.  Everything in Cuernavaca reminded him of her. He needed to get away. With his rent paid ahead for just shy of two years to keep his Mexican residency permit, he left for a trip to India and Pakistan. 

Upon returning to Cuernavaca, he saw a chilling sign over the doorway of La Casona-- "Se Vende" (for sale).  John realized if the building sold he’d lose his studio and his beloved view of the cathedral.  

The man who traveled with "Mexico on $5 a Day" under his arm bought the building.  In cash.  By then La Casona hosted sixty tenement-like apartments.  John dreamed of converting the building into an art museum and cultural center for Cuernavacans and their visitors. The garden in the courtyard would be the fourth public green space in downtown Cuernavaca -- others being Revolution Park, the Borda Gardens, and the Cathedral's atrium.  His dream was so convincing that only two renters demanded financial compensation for moving out. John removed the top floor and took the building back to what it had been in the 1920s. 

When Sally Sloan, the director of the nearby Brady Museum, asked him what his plans were for La Casona, John replied "I want it to be 'The Met' of Cuernavaca." 

I was invited to John’s last birthday party on April 25, 2004.  Addressing his guests, he told us his longterm plans for La Casona.  I had a small digital camera in my pocket and filmed what he told us (you can view it at http://youtu.be/OXLXwK6Tbew). In that short video John asked us to speak up if what he wanted for La Casona wasn't being carried out after his death by saying "John wouldn't like this.  This wouldn't do for him."  

Unfortunately that’s where we are today. I've spoken up a number of times and said "John wouldn't like this."  In February I even chained myself to the entryway of La Casona during the inauguration of the exhibit "Instruments of Torture and Capital Punishment."  It is hard for me to imagine an exhibit that goes more counter to gentle John’s wishes than one displaying instruments of torture in his and Boo's bedroom.  

I feel certain that funding is available for “Cuernavaca's Met” if the expatriate community supports John Spencer's vision for La Casona. I have the required legal documents to make this happen.  However a positive public opinion is needed to pressure for such change. I know John Spencer would be delighted if we join to get La Casona, his legacy, back on track.  

Happy birthday Dear John!

Dining with the Pope

Last month Bendicta Alejo Vargas of Michoacan cooked for the Pope. She honored the culinary traditions she learned from her grandmother by preparing a traditional Purépecha dinner for Pope Benedict XVI and other guests in the Vatican on December 12, the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

Benedicta, a Purépecha herself, has received numerous cooking awards and currently serves as a chef and instructor at Morelia's Culinary School.   In addition to the honor of meeting him personally and receiving his blessing, she is particularly thrilled to have prepared a meal for the Pope who is her "tocayo". 

"Tocayo" is the marvelous Spanish word that gets us around the awkward situation of addressing someone who has the same name as ours.  We can call that person "tocayo".  And when referring to him or her we can replace that person's name with "mi tocayo".  In most cases our tocayo is of our same gender, however there are cases of names that are similar for women and men -- with an "a" on the end for women and an "o" for men. 

For the Pope's dinner Benedicta prepared "corundas naturales",  similar to a central Mexican tamale. The corunda is traditionally more moist than a tamale, triangular in shape and wrapped in a corn husk and tied with a trademark knot.  For the second course she prepared two types of móle, rabbit and cheese.  The cheese móle was prepared with a kind of chile "que no pica" Benedicta said. I smiled when I heard her say that -- is there really such a chile? 

For beverages Benedicta prepared tamarind and sesame "atoles", flavored corn-based drinks.

The whole meal was prepared in the traditional Purépecha way.  The organizers of the event shipped the volcanic-stone metate (grinding stone), huge clay pots and a comal (a griddle on which tortillas are cooked) to Rome. They shipped stones for the hearth. They even shipped over Michoacan firewood.  Before setting off to the Vatican herself, Benedicta received word that the pottery had arrived in good order.  In her luggage she carried most of the ingredients she would need; however she purchased the rabbit meat at a butcher shop in Rome.  

A marvelous aspect of Mexican cuisine is that it has not changed much since the time of the Conquest.  UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has recognized this by naming it to its Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The same meal Benedicta prepared for Pope Benedict XVI and other guests had certainly been prepared in Michoacán in the late 16th century.  The non-Mesoamerican ingredients in Benedicta's dinner were few. Cheese is of European origin and tamarind and sesame seeds are both of African origin and used extensively in Asia. They probably arrived in Acapulco on ships from Manila shortly after 1565.  

European food of the 16th century was very different from the food today. Food historian and Mexico resident Rachel Landau tells us that a European court meal of that time would seem strange to anyone accustomed to today's Western cooking.  Dishes of that time period "might include blancmange -- a thick puree of rice and chicken moistened with milk from ground almonds, sprinkled with sugar and fried pork fat."  Accompanied by "fava beans cooked in meat stock sprinkled with chopped mint or quince paste, a sweetmeat of quinces and sugar or honey.  To wash it all down, we would probably drink hypocras, a mulled red wine seasoned with ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and sugar."  

According to Landau it was in the mid 17th century that the European diet became similar to what we know today. This is quite unlike Mexico's cuisine which has stayed the course through the centuries.

The dinner celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe Day at the Vatican was also unusual in that the Pope rarely attends large dinner parties. In fact, such is the fame of the Pope eating alone -- especially breakfasting alone -- that Cuernavaca artist of English origin, John Spencer, made a piece of sculpture he titled The Pope's Table.  Mounted on the base of a treadle sewing machine, the edge of the table has arches allusive of those in the Colosseum in Rome, with intricate sculpture rising up as a spire from the tabletop.  Characteristic of Spencer's quirky and whimsical sculpture, the pedals connect to a circle of bells to call for service.  

I haven't been able to find out how many people attended the dinner Benedicta prepared. She made 600 corundas and 700 handmade tortillas, both white and blue tortillas.  None were left over.  

And did Benedicto enjoy his tocaya's concoctions?  From the kitchen she couldn't see for herself, but she reports that members of the Michoacan delegation told her he liked the corundas and the cheese móle -- the one with the chile que no pica. 

The Days of the Dead

Tomorrow is Halloween, what I consider an imposition from the north pushed by chain stores here eager to sell costumes to children. Shortened from Hallowed Evening, Halloween is just the build up to the days traditionally celebrated in Mexico--All Saints Day on November 1st and and All Souls Day on November 2nd. Here both days are called the Days of the Dead--Dias de los Muertos. You know they are approaching by the mounds of marigolds, special breads, and sugar skulls abundant in markets.

In Christian tradition All Saints Day honors all saints, known and unknown.  All Souls Day is one on which to assist through prayer the souls of the deceased who have not yet achieved purification and are still in purgatory. 

While that's what the Church says, Mesoamerican tradition is quite different. Death is not the end of life, it is merely a transition.  Dias de los Muertos are days when the souls of the deceased return to visit with their families. Family members who have migrated away from their traditional home make their way back, just as the souls of the deceased return to where they were buried.  That’s why these are the busiest travel days in Mexico.

According to Johanna Broda, who has written extensively on the overlapping of Mesoamerican and Spanish rituals, "the dead make their appearance during St. Michael's fiesta on September 29, and share with their family members their happiness over the first corn cobs.  In this way the dead show their intimate link with the agricultural cycle and the welfare of the living." 

Early Spanish friars were successful in extending Mesoamerica's harvest celebration for another month to blend with the Christian All Souls and All Saints Holy Days.  You can't but give credibility to the idea that Days of the Dead are linked with a harvest celebration when you see an altar to the dead, be it an authentic family home altar or a tourism department sponsored extravaganza in which groups are competing for prizes awarded to the "best" altar.  Loaded with the foods that the deceased enjoyed in life, Mesoamerican crops are well represented.  You’ll find candied squash, tamales made from corn, turkey in "móle" sauce.  Rice and sugar cane arrived hand-in-hand from Spain, but strangely rice is not a common dish on the altars while four- or five-inch-long pieces of sugar cane are. European wheat is well represented in the fancy Pan de Muerto (bread of the dead).  In fact, bakeries usually do the best job of decorating their store windows with allusion to Days of the Dead. 

Though the underlying meaning is the same throughout Mesoamerica, the way the Days of the Dead are observed changes from one village to the next.  Don't be surprised if your Mexican friends each describe different ways of celebrating these days.  They are all correct.  Just listen and take it in with fascination.  The one constant throughout Mesomaerican is the use of the bright yellow cempasuchitl (marigold) to decorate tombs altars and walkways.  Yellow is definitely the color of days of the dead.

If invited to visit a home altar jump at the opportunity because it is very much a family observance and celebration.  As outsiders we don't really play a role in it unless we have deceased family members who are buried here. 

With that in mind, I invite you to accompany me to decorate the tomb of a dear friend of mine, John Spencer.  John has no family members in Mexico, yet his tomb has never been bereft of flowers on Days of the Dead.  His tomb will be decorated by friends of his in life as well as others who have come to be his friends through his lasting legacy to art and design in Cuernavaca. We will meet and decorate his tomb on Thursday with a design copied from a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, an artist he particularly admired.  We'll recreate it with marigold petals. 

If you would like to join us at The Church of the Three Kings in Cuernavaca, send me an email.  The more participants we have the grander the "painting" will be.  While we work, we'll be surrounded by the magnificent walls he designed. John Spencer was one of us -- a foreigner enticed by Mexico's charm who settled here.

For more about these holidays refer back to the very first Charlie's Digs in October 2010,  three in October 2011, and one in November 2011.  They’re all posted at <charliesdigs.blogspot.com>.

Last month in a column about Ivan Illich, another foreigner who has left his mark on Mexico, I told you I'd let you know the dates of the forum commemorating the tenth anniversary of his death.  It will be December 13-15 in Cuernavaca with a series of talks by an impressive list of speakers about Illich's thought and writing.  If you’d like to attend send me an email and I'll forward the registration form to you.

Poinsettias

As soon as the last Day of the Dead’s cempazuchitl were swept away, noche buenas appeared by the roadsides.  By now they bedeck stores, office buildings, gardens and homes. Because the cut poinsettia quickly wilts, we see them in pots of all shapes and sizes, or planted in the soil in park settings or boulevard medians.

Surprisingly, poinsettias are a relatively recent addition to Christmas tradition outside of Mexico.  Native to central Mexico, likely the areas around Cuernavaca and Taxco, the poinsettia was known by its Nahuatl name, Cuitlaxochitl and valued for the curative nature of the milky substance in the stem as well as the red leaves’ natural dye. Requiring repeated periods of 12-14 hours of darkness, the poinsettia’s bloom cycle serendipitously coincides with Christmas.

Early in Mexico’s Christian church the poinsettia became linked with Christmas through a myth of a poor child traveling on Christmas Eve to visit the nativity scene but without a gift to take to the baby Jesus.  Believing Jesus would welcome any gift offered in love the child stopped by a field and picked up some dry branches.  When carefully laid before the nativity, the branches transformed to crimson noche buenas.  It was the first manger scene adorned with the beautiful poinsettia.  It would not be the last.  

Like the bougainvillea, the brilliant red “flower” is actually the leaves of the plant, more properly known as bracts.  The flower, in the center of each leaf bunch, is tiny and yellow.

Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851), first U.S. minister to Mexico after independence from Spain, popularized the flower, and in doing so, managed to have his name become a household word in the English-speaking world.  He first saw the plant in 1823 when visiting a church in Taxco.  By all accounts the flower became his life’s passion.
  

Poinsett sent plants from Mexico to his home in Charleston, South Carolina. Soon the “star flower” was growing in his neighbors' gardens.  Poinsett, an ardent amateur botanist, spent the latter years of his life propagating flowers and making the “poinsettia” a symbol of Christmas. Whatever it is called, poinsettia, noche buena, star flower or Cuitlaxochitl, it is one of Mexico’s many gifts to the world.

In the early 1900’s German Albert Ecke immigrated to the U.S. and also succumbed to the poinsettia’s seduction.  For three generations the California Ecke Ranch has promoted the poinsettia as a Christmas flower.  Albert’s son Paul developed a secret grafting technique that allowed for the fuller plant we see today.

More recently, in the 1990s, a Canadian priest, entrusted with Cuernavaca's Church of the Three Kings, asked English sculptor John Spencer (1928-2005) if he would design some gates for the 17th century church.  He was startled by Spencer's reply.  "How can I design gates without walls?"  Spencer accepted the commission and designed many gates -- though only two are functional.  Just as the poinsettia's flower is outshone by the showier bracts, Spencer's gates are marvelous pieces of sculpture that are often overlooked because of the immense, intriguing, fantasy of the walls.

In his designs for both gates and walls Spencer focused on events revolving around the church's annual festival, Epiphany, when the visit of the three kings to the Christ Child is celebrated.  They were guided by the star of Bethlehem and Mexico's star flower is featured.

The grandest of Spencer’s gates is the Poinsettia Gate, with enormous steel bracts and brass flowers.  Towering over the gate is the Star of Bethlehem with an interesting twist.  Rather than the traditional five-pointed star, Spencer designed a three dimensional Star of David -- made of two intertwined pyramids, one right side up, one upside down.  Beneath it are three crowns.
  

The gate is the beginning of a path laid out in the shape of the cross.  The path appropriately leads to and ends at the altar inside the church.  Only by including the portion of the path doubling as the aisle in the sanctuary does Spencer's cross have the proportions of a Latin cross.  At the end of each arm of the cross are two other gates. It is likely that Spencer’s design was meant to incorporate the poinsettia’s relationship to the crucifixion.  The deep crimson color of the poinsettia may be a reminder of the blood of Christ.

These next few weeks leading to Epiphany are appropriate ones to visit Spencer's walls and gates.  They are easily accessible to all visitors traveling to Cuernavaca.  They are located at the north end of town and easily accessible from both Mexico City highways.  If you'd like a locater map please send me an email.

Until two weeks ago Spencer's tomb in the churchyard was covered with an intricate design made of cempazuchitl petals.  The seasons pass. From now til Epiphany I'll try to keep a potted poinsettia on Spencer's tombstone in the churchyard.  Perhaps you’ll bring one too.

Participating in Dia de los Muertos

Strict separation of church and state leads to peculiar relationships between Mexico's very religious population and secular law.  Today and tomorrow are two of Mexico's most important holidays -- Days of the Dead.  Not recognized by labor law, they end up being the days of highest absenteeism.  Firmly rooted in prehispanic Mesoamerican thought and culture they survive with a veneer of Christianity. 

Each town celebrates Dias de los Muertos in a different way.  Some decorate their tombs on the night of the 31st of October, some on November 1st. All will have done it by the 2nd.  The lower the income level the more decorated the tombs.

Families not only decorate tombs, they set up altars in their homes.  Most will graciously welcome visitors to see their altars.  As in a Catholic church, it's appropriate to make the sign of the Cross upon approaching a home altar for the dead.  If that isn't your custom have a Catholic or Episcopal friend teach you.  

Ocotepec, just north of Cuernavaca, has one of the most unusual ways of commemorating Days of the Dead.  Families in which there has been a death in the previous 365 days will open their homes to hundreds of visitors tonight.  The body of the deceased will be on display -- don't worry, it's an imitation life-sized body.  Last year this column was about Ocotepec.  Send me an email if you would like a copy of it and I'll respond before noon.   

To visit with departed family members, the living must return to where the deceased resided in life.  The souls of the deceased know their way back to where they lived, not to where their living family members may have moved or migrated -- making it difficult for most readers of this column.  If "our dead" did not live here all we can do is look in on the way others observe this day. 

However, I'll let you in on a loosely held secret and another way in which you too can be a participant in this day's celebration.  At midnight on March 16-17, 2005, a very dear friend died as I held him in my arms.   We buried John Spencer that afternoon in the beautiful churchyard of the Church of Los Reyes Magos on Calzada de los Reyes in northern Cuernavaca.  John had ringed that churchyard with fantastic stone walls of his design, making it a landmark in his adopted town.  

The "we" who buried him were his many friends.  John had no children, and his wife Lady Elizabeth had preceded him by many years.  Word of his death spread through Cuernavaca.  His wake was attended by people from all walks of life who congregated in his magnificent home for Mass; followed by another service across the street in the Cathedral; and then burial in the churchyard -- requiring special permission from the church and municipality, since it no longer functions as a cemetery. 

John had friends from many circles who didn't necessarily know one other.  This made for the most unusual wake I have ever attended.  "We" didn't offer condolences to anyone; no family members were present.  "We" had only ourselves to console.  I asked people how they knew John.  Some gave me snooty replies along the lines of "who are you to be asking me that?"  From others came fascinating stories.  One had known him when she and he were residents of La Casona, then a tenement-like building housing sixty apartments.  Another the widow of the welder whom John would contract to do the heavy lifting in his sculpture projects.  A student told me she didn't know him; she had always wanted to talk with him but was afraid to.  She finally found the nerve to approach the man considered by many to be a living/walking monument in Cuernavaca, went to his door -- and realized his home was open for a wake.  

Another woman knocked on the door early in the morning.  Word was relayed upstairs that she wanted to know if she could come in.  I replied, "Of course.  Everyone is welcome."  As she climbed the staircase I recognized the street sweeper.  She didn't know that John had passed away during the night.  She was coming because she hadn't seen him for several days and was concerned about him.

John’s grave is marked by a simple stone -- one of only a few gravestones in the churchyard.   For the first years after his death I placed flowers on his grave for his birthday, deathday, and on Day of the Dead.  A few years ago a group of students from the University of Minnesota were here for a semester-long service-learning project studying Mexican culture.  Carol Hopkins, also a friend of John’s and co-teacher of the class, and I decided that rather than just visit cemeteries it would be good for the students to have the experience of creating an altar and decorating a tomb.  It became an elaborate all-day event with ten of us using rebar and marigolds to copy portions of John’s walls in flowers.  

Each year since then we have created an elaborate decoration.  We'll be there again today, starting at noon, and will welcome any volunteers.  

Another event honoring recent dead, in which you can be a welcomed participant, is a 5 pm march today from Cuernavaca's Glorieta de la Paz to its Zocalo.  Though called by the movement headed by Javier Sicilia, it will be leaderless, without political or religious affiliation, silent, spanning all sectors of society.  White clothing and a votive candle are appropriate.