Catemaco Pilgrims

In a more than 300 year old tradition, pilgrims from deep within the mountainous Sierra Santa Marta began arriving in Catemaco today.

Thousands make the yearly trek, walking up to 60 miles, in the hot sun or pouring rain, crossing rugged mountains and, depending on the rain, torrid rivers. Most will stay in Catemaco till July 16th to worship the catholic Holy Mary in its local version of  "la Virgen del Carmel", alleged to have appeared here to a fisherman in a cave in the 1600's.

The pilgrims are accompanied by more than a hundred horse riders bearing the standards of their faith, while hundreds of bicycle riding pilgrims and road runners will brave the treacherous Los Tuxtlas roads from as far away as Oaxaca and Chiapas.

Dozens of tour buses, plus a downtown fair, choke beautiful downtown Catemaco and joyous singing and the smell of a plethora of dozens of open air food stalls permeates the evening. while in the nights every nook and cranny will be jammed with pilgrims overnighting on cold concrete.

Visit the Catemaco Basilica, Home of the Virgin

Catemaco Eggs

Growing up 60 years ago I was fascinated by the market stalls selling eggs sitting atop contraptions lit from underneath to see the condition of the eggs.

The memory crossed my mind after cracking my umpteenth rotten egg in beautiful downtown Catemaco, which is part of chicken country with 10 times as many chickens as people.

The last time I saw eggs for sale, which were maintained in a cooler, was years ago. Local eggs are kept for sale a room temperature which regularly reaches above 90 degrees in unventilated stores. And as for quality I regularly get eggs in sizes ranging from pigeons to small ostriches. And I have also learned to love fertilized eggs.

Egg flavors also come in surprises because of the food choices by free ranging chickens, and on occasion an egg will smell like a good fart, or almost as bad as the smell of Baluts (dead embryonic duck eggs) favored by many in South East Asia. But I have learned to appreciate my Popoluca teaching me to never crack eggs directly into a pan.

My dependable local quality egg provider was unfortunately put out of business by a snake feasting on his hens, and since then my soft boiled and eggs over easy consumption has dropped drastically, especially after considering that Mexico is a haven for salmonella induced diarreah, and wondering how much of it stems from eggs.

Photo: BioSciencia

Today is Torta day in Catemaco

Ever since the French invasions of Mexico, tortas have been making inroads on tacos. Tortas are sandwiches of the submarine genre, served on small sizes of French bread, often called "bolillos". Lately foreign fast food joints are competing with them and to protect the Mexican tradition there are now several state torta festivals to celebrate and promote the second best fast food group in Mexico.

Tortas are served both hot and cold and ingredients range from beef tongues to stuffed chiles, fried fish, chunks of pork and the staple of sliced ham. Usually sold in mom'n pop stands, the owners name their tortas after whatevever suits them, so don't expect a  "Tejano" torta to taste the same in Xalapa and Acayucan.

Today only, beautiful downtown Catemaco along with the rest of Mexico serves a unique version of a so called torta. It is an imaginary bread roll stuffed with a 500 peso bill and swallowed by zillions of impoverished peasants and workers ready to sell their vote to the torta giver. Of course the process is illegal, but election officials nationwide are deaf, dumb and blind to the entrenched custom.

The rest of July is a great month to be in Los Tuxtlas. Giant parties, street festivals, dances, lots of beer and loud music roil  the three major cities.

July 9-12
Verafest 2009
San Andres Tuxtla

July 12-9
Celebration of the Virgin del Carmen and county fair
Catemaco

July 18 & 19
Climbing around Volcano San Martin Tuxtla
reserved for 200 by DEMATAC

July 18-26
Celebration of Saint James
Patron Saint of Santiago Tuxtla

Photo of Torta - El Asador

Catemaco License

I'm becoming more Mexican every day. A friendly officer at a recent police stop away from beautiful downtown Catemaco reminded me that my license was about to expire. So one day I set off to battle the fiercesome Mexican bureaucrcy.

Surprise! 30 minutes later, not including 90 minutes of playing musical chairs at Hacienda (the Federal cash register), I walked out  with a 3 year permit for 746 pesos. That's a lot of pesos!

Other requirements were originals plus copies of passport, FM2 visa, proof of residency. The doctor was not around, so no eye test was administered, which I would have flunked.

The written exam was 12 or so computerized questions  about traffic signs and general driving, which I often guessed at, especially the one about which side should you drive on in a narrow street with cars parked on both sides? The driving test was administered by a traffic police officer in his  half ton pickup truck and involved driving around the block once.

Mexico 1934

.. Mexican worker doesn't live like a tourist and he wouldn't want to. In Mexican products, which provide him with all he needs, a peso has the buying power of a pre-inflation dollar. Oranges cost three centavos (less than one penny). Avocado pears cost the same. The staples, black beans and pink rice, cost usually 20 centavos a kilo, which is more than two pounds. That's 2½¢ a pound. And if you've eaten black bean paste with chili sauce and Mexican pink rice, you know you don't have to feel sorry for anyone who makes it his daily fare...

A Time magazine quetch from 1934

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan should have sung that in Spanish 75 years ago

Historic Time magazine articles mentioning Veracruz

Catemaco Call Home

Today beautiful  downtown Catemaco received new phone books. Actually it is the phone book for 83 cities in Veracruz, including Veracruz City.

It is a shame that no entrepreneur in Los Tuxtlas has the desire to produce a Los Tuxtlas directory with both white and yellow pages. Considering the junky advertising sheets and magazines that are constantly published here, this could be a profitable business for someone.

The phone book delivery man said they would distribute about 1600 books in Catemaco. My page count of numbers shows about 1700 (I counted one row and mulitplied it by 16).

I did  the same count last year, and it looks like there is a little growth in Catemaco. (La Victoria and Sontecomapan were split off the Catemaco phone book this year, about 100 combined)

Of  those 1800 I would guess no more than 15% (270) have internet access at home, plus a 100 or more machines in internet cafes primarily devoted to hotmail and pornography.

Catemaco Noticias (not Catemaco News) averages a measly 600 returning readers per month,  plus another 20,000 fly bys and I would guess most everyone in Catemaco reads the Noticias at least twice before upchucking.

The local monopoly of TELMEX which delivered the book against a 10 peso propina, considers its white pages a military secret. Idiotically, only Telmex subscribers have access to the pages.

The yellow pages, also of course, have no listing for Catemaco, until you figure out that the section listings are ordered by by cities.

And also "off" course the current and previous mayor have no listing, and the roll of last names sounds like any small town in southern Spain, with a focus on Dominguez, Hernandez and Perez, the equivalents of Smith and Brown.

TELMEX (owned by the second richest man in the world, depending on the dollar exchange) has some of the highest rates in the world, but I have no complaints about either its quality or service.

Catemaco info made a very small effort to list some of the basic phone numbers in the soon to be finished (2015):
Los Tuxtlas Directory