Artists and Authors associated with Lake Chapala, Mexico
Tony Burton
Tony Burton's books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran"), "Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).
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A one line comment by Fernando Parra on a Facebook post with an image signed “Foto Esmeralda” caused me to stop dead in my tracks. Foto Esmeralda was one of the three or four most prolific Chapala-based postcard publishers of the twentieth century. Yet, prior to Parra’s comment, I had unquestioningly accepted a claim made elsewhere that Foto Esmeralda was the studio name for the photographer Jesús González Miranda.
Photo by José Cruz Padilla Sánchez. Date unknown. (1950s?)
However, according to Fernando Parra, the person responsible for photos signed Foto Esmeralda was his late uncle, José Cruz Padilla Sánchez. It is unclear when, or how, the mistaken claim about Jesús González originated, but Parra is absolutely correct that he has no connection to Foto Esmeralda photographs. Even so, it is not quite so simple: it turns out that only some of the photos signed Foto Esmeralda were taken by José Cruz Padilla Sánchez (1933-2005), while others were taken by José Cruz’s father, Demetrio Padilla López (1899-1989).
Demetrio Padilla López and his wife, María Guadalupe Sánchez García, were living in Guadalajara, when José Cruz was born on 3 May 1933. Demetrio, originally from Tonaya, Jalisco, later became a professional photographer, and, according to his granddaughter, one of the first photographers to ply his trade in the late 1930s in Guadalajara’s newly opened Parque Agua Azul.
Recognizing the potential tourist market for photographs at Lake Chapala, Demetrio began to make regular weekly visits to Chapala. José Cruz was eight years of age when he first accompanied his father to the lakeside town in 1941, and did so often thereafter. Demetrio made a simple camera for his son, who, after completing four years of primary education, began to help his father take and develop photographs.
Lakefront bars. Photo by Demetrio Padilla López. 1958.
In about 1950, José Cruz’s parents moved to Chapala. They lived in a rented home at Calle Juárez #599, where Demetrio established Foto Esmeralda. The photo studio, used by both Demetrio and José Cruz, remained in operation for roughly 40 years, until the early-1990s.
Not long after moving to Chapala, José Cruz married Consuelo Urzua Beltrán there on 5 July 1951. Tragically, Consuelo died suddenly only seven years later, in 1958. The couple’s two young children went to live with their maternal grandparents at Manzanillo $479 in Chapala. Four years later, in 1962, José Cruz married Mercedes Reyes Aparicio, by whom he had 13 children.
Photo by Demetrio Padilla López. Date illegible. (1958?)
In addition to studio photographic work such as formal portraits, Demetrio and José Cruz produced and sold postcards from shortly after their move to Chapala. José Cruz was helped in the studio by a sister, and later by his children, especially his daughter Luz.
From the mid-1950s on, José Cruz supplemented the family income by spending several months many years working as a seasonal laborer in Canada and the U.S. The earliest U.S. social security record of him is from January 1962; the records show that he used several slightly different variants of his name over the years, including José Cruz Padilla, Jcruz Padilla and J-Cruz Padilla. Among other temporary jobs, he picked grapes in California.
Regular trips to the U.S. did not prevent José Cruz from being active in local Chapala politics. For instance, in 1967, Padilla represented the “Sindicato Marinero” in a display advertisement supporting Luis Cuevas Pimienta as a candidate for State Diputado. By 1982, after several years of living full time in Chapala, José Cruz was named a Regidor for PRI in Chapala, and he attended the Grito the following year in that capacity.
José Cruz died in Chapala on 13 February 2005. QEPD.
Photo by Demetrio Padilla López. Date unknown.
Foto Esmeralda black and white postcards range, in terms of date, from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s; only a very small number (mainly those showing special events) include precise dates. Because Demetrio and his son both used the studio over such a long period of time, the definitive attribution of particular images to one or the other of the two photographers is fraught with difficulty.
In addition to postcard views, José Cruz also took studio portraits for birthdays and special occasions, and attended parties and events. Many of these studio portraits were taken in front of a beautiful hand-painted backdrop depicting an imaginary, idealized Mediterranean-looking landscape. With the help of family members, he did all the developing and printing out of his own dark room, and finished prints were available before guests left their party. José Cruz strongly preferred to work with the available light, and rarely, if ever, used a flash.
Postcards were displayed and sold on the pier and waterfront in Chapala by family members, with the assistance of local youngsters, who were given a commission for sales to tourists.
When color photography became more accessible, José Cruz added some full color postcards to his portfolio. Developed and printed in Guadalajara, they included several of racing yachts in action on the lake, probably taken around the time the World Flying Dutchman Championships were held at Chapala in 1971. The address given on the reverse of these cards was Manzanillo #479, Chapala (the home where his children were raised by their maternal grandparents).
“Veleros en Chapala” (Chapala sailboats). Postcard. José Cruz Padilla Sánchez. c. 1970.
The advent of relatively inexpensive color photographs initially reduced the appeal of “old-fashioned” black and white images, though, interestingly, many people subsequently reversed their preference, because they decided that monochrome prints were more characterful.
Reliance on having developing and printing done in Guadalajara inevitably led to some issues of quality control, and in some cases, the outright theft of negatives and their unauthorized reproduction. José Cruz’s eldest daughter, Luz Padilla Urzua, recalls how films were sometimes “lost” in Guadalajara, only for prints of photographs taken by her father to show up for sale in street markets and flea markets.
She also shared her belief that her grandfather, Demetrio, had been responsible for introducing Jesús González Miranda to photography, so perhaps there is a link, albeit it a very tenuous one, between González and Foto Esmeralda after all!
Note: The lengthy family tradition begun by Demetrio, and carried on by José Cruz, continues to this day. Two of José Cruz’s children—Adriana and Octavio Padilla Reyes—supplement their work in Chapala as itinerant photographers with private commissions.
Appreciation
My sincere thanks to Fernando Parra for first alerting me to the true authorship of Foto Esmeralda images, and to José Cruz Padilla’s daughter, Luz Padilla Urzua, for explaining details of her father’s life and work to my ever-reliable research assistant, Maricruz Ibarra. Thanks, too, to Dr R B Brown for his generous donation of several Esmeralda postcards.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Three additional Foto Esmeralda images are included in Lake Chapala: A Postcard History, which shares the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
El Informador: 18 Oct 1967; 19 Sep 1983.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
Among several “how to live cheaply in Mexico” books hitting the market in the 1980s was Paradise found: how to live in North America’s best climate for under $300 a month, by R. Emil Neuman, published in 1986.
Roger Emil Neuman (1941-2001), born in Detroit, Michigan, on 7 June 1941, was the son of Adolph Neuman (1916-1994), who worked as a designer for Ford Motor Company for 40 years, and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Barker (1917-1995). He graduated from Allen Park High School in 1959, gained a “BS degree” in accounting, and scored in the top 5% of all candidates in his CPA exam.
Neuman died at his home in Carlsbad, California, on 6 November 2001, and was buried alongside family members at the Glen Eden Memorial Park near Detroit, Michigan.
According to one obituary, his resumé included service in the US Army. In Paradise Found, Neuman describes having worked as a Congressional Investigator in Detroit for 12 years, before moving to San Diego in 1978.
In California, Neuman became an early self-publisher and mail order marketer, setting himself up as the president and CEO of United Research Publishers (URP) in Encinitas, California. URP issued about 25 works by 10 different authors between 1978 and 2005, mainly related to either health or self-help topics. It was a highly successful business: his Detroit Free Press obituary claims it was “the most successful mail order book publishing business in the United States” at the time. Neuman, described as kind, brilliant, philosophical and funny,” made numerous generous donations to churches in Michigan and California, and also supported children’s programs in far flung parts of the world.
Neuman’s grave marker, near Detroit
The story line of Paradise found: how to live in North America’s best climate for under $300 a month is that Neuman decides to take his retired father to visit Lake Chapala to consider moving there. The book, which includes many photos, is written in non-specialist language (a high school reading level) and was published in relatively large print. The story is told via reported interactions with a series of individuals who explain how they came to retire to the area, and why they love living there.
Neuman offers lots of sage advice along the way, with brief, and largely accurate (at the time), accounts of how house purchases, shopping, language, expenses, migration permits, can best be managed by a newcomer.
As background, he writes that:
Wealthy Americans visited Lake Chapala in the late 1880s. Many Americans built homes and spent part of each year on the Lake. For example, Albert Braniff, founder of Braniff Airlines, built a large home near the Lake is about 1885. Tennessee Williams reportedly spent a good deal of time here writing many of his famous novels.”
Even if the details of this paragraph are not quite right, the basic sentiment is accurate. Relatively wealthy foreigners (not just Americans) certainly visited Chapala in the last decade of the nineteenth century. And there is a house known as Casa Braniff in Chapala, though it has no connection to the Albert Braniff of Braniff Airlines. Casa Braniff, designed by English architect George E King, was completed in 1905 for Guadalajara historian and lawyer Luis Pérez Verdía, who sold it two years later to Mexico’s own “Alberto Braniff,” a Mexico City businessman, with no family connection to the Braniff Airline family. As for Tennessee Williams, he only spent a single summer (1945) in Chapala, while writing “The Poker Night,” the basis for A Streetcar Named Desire.
Neuman’s informants in Paradise Found include Jack (73), who rents a home for “only $150 a month. Nice place. Two beds, full cooking facilities, a courtyard, laundry area, big swimming pool out front.” and who figures that he lives here “for under $300 a month. I mean good living too.” Adjusted for US inflation, $300 in 1986 is the equivalent of about $850 today.
Another informant, Tom, a retired truck driver aged about 55, had found Hawaii and California too expensive, Florida winters too cold, and had been living in Chapala with his wife for several years. Heat and all utilities were less than $5 a month, annual taxes were $27, they had their own cook, gardener and maid, and he “lived like a king on about $600 a month.” Tom told Neuman that he was afraid too many Americans will find out about the place and turn it into a tourist area.
Neuman claims that homes ranged in price from about $15,000 ($42,000 today) for a smaller home of 700 square feet or a fixer-upper, to $350,000 ($982,261 today) for a 4,000-square-foot “mansion.”
He also sagely recommends that “Lake Chapala is not for everyone. Before buying you should rent a home for at least six months. This will give you time to check things out thoroughly before you make a commitment to buy.”
Neuman quotes some typical hotel prices. Rooms (double occupancy) at the Hotel Real de Chapala were $20 a night (more in December), the same price as the Hotel Chula Vista. Double rooms at the Hotel Montecarlo were $22 a night, while for budget travelers, the Hotel Nido charged $7 single and $10 double a night.
Posada Ajijic menu, ca. 1986. (Click to expand)
Comparing restaurant menus and prices, Neuman describes how La Viuda restaurant in Chapala, around the corner from the Hotel Nido, offers excellent food and service, and is “owned by Gus, who also owns the butcher shop next door where most American buy their meats.” Gus is Gustavo Sánchez, a direct descendant of Chapala-born photographer José Edmundo Sánchez.
Helpfully, Neuman includes menus for La Viuda, as well as the Real de Chapala hotel, El Mesón (Ajijic) and Posada Ajijic, “the main “hang out” for Americans living around the Lake… The Posada is owned by a Canadian couple who have plenty of restaurant experience. That’s why this place is so popular.” The book lists restaurant prices in pesos. At the time the book was published (1986), the exchange rate was about 900 pesos to a dollar, the following year it was 2200 pesos to a dollar. Neuman, who trained as an accountant, clearly published his book at precisely the right time for anyone thinking of moving south!
At the back of the 148-page book are a several pages of simple Spanish vocabulary, and a basic map of Lake Chapala. This map was originally surveyed and drawn in about 1816 by Spanish cartographer José María Narváez (1768-1840), and was subsequently used, with only minor changes, in many later publications, including Terry’s Mexican Handbook (1909), which is the version Neuman reproduces (without credit) in Paradise Found (1986). Few maps can boast such longevity!
Other works written by Roger Emil Neuman include Write Perfect Letters for Any Occasion (1990); You can collect $$$ from Uncle Sam (1975); How to Collect Big $$$ From Uncle Sam (1985); The Complete Handbook of Health Tips: based on the latest dietary and scientific findings and traditional remedies (1985); How You Can Achieve Financial Independence in Mail Order (1986); and The Complete Handbook of U.S. Government Benefits: How to Collect Big from Uncle Sam (1989). Many of these titles were released in more than one edition, and some had foreign language editions.
The books were promoted via nationwide advertising campaigns, which stressed the advantages of ordering direct from the publisher. For example, an advert in 1987 for Paradise Found informed readers that:“You can order direct from the publisher and save. Send only $12.95 plus $1 postage and handling to: United Research Publishers, 249 South Highway 101, Dept. UP-6, Solana Beach, CA 92075.”
The “departments” in the address presumably enabled Neuman to gauge the relative success of different market areas and ad styles.
While Paradise Found is much derided by modern readers as hopelessly out-of-date and wildly inaccurate in terms of prices quoted, the real question is whether or not these claims were valid when the book was written and first marketed. In my view, they were not as wild as often assumed. For example, the somewhat staid Frommer’s Guides to Mexico published, in 1986, one titled Mexico on $20 A Day, which equates to about $600 a month, the same figure quoted by Tom the truck driver.
On the other hand, some of the claims made by Canadian business consultant Thomas McLaughlin in The Greatest Escape, or How to Live in Paradise, in Luxury, for 250 Dollars Per Month, first published in 1983 (and reprinted in 1985), and competing in the same market sector, strike me as far more dubious. McLaughlin (who died in 1987) divided his time between Ontario and Lake Chapala for several years, marketed his book aggressively with the help of a retired business consultant in Ontario, Gerry Gailius, and organized tours to the lake.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
North County Times: 12 Nov 2001, 14; 8 Jan 2002, 32.
Detroit Free Press: 18 Nov 2001, 18.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
Among the miscellaneous, difficult-to-file, items I’ve encountered during my decades of research into the authors and artists associated with Lake Chapala is this curious one-of-a-kind drawing by Basil Merrett.
I got quite excited when I first saw this drawing (listed on eBay in 2016) because it purports to show the house rented by D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, for their three-month sojourn in Chapala in 1923, during which the English novelist wrote the first draft of The Plumed Serpent.
According to folk art collector and enthusiast Jim Linderman on his personal blog about “outsider art,” Merrett’s work is believed to date from the late 1940s or early 1950s, and is comprised of about 1000 works, mostly postcard size (6″x4″), divided into several numbered series, each relating to a different topic. The Lawrence drawing is #44 of the “Famous Authors and Poets” series.
Basil Merrett. ca 1966? The D. H. Lawrence house, Chapala, in 1923.
Linderman also says that Merrett “was institutionalized at Bethlem Royal Hospital in London as a psychiatric patient.” Bethlem Royal Hospital, which was commonly known in the UK as Bedlam, was founded in the fourteenth century and is England’s oldest hospital for the treatment of mental illness. It is unclear how long Merrett may have been a patient there but, if he was there in the 1930s and 1940s, he would have had to endure some pretty dire conditions. While it came far too late for Basil Merrett, the Bethlem Royal Hospital opened its own gallery, Bethlem Gallery, in 1997, which showcases the work of visual artists who have, or have experienced, mental distress.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The artist Basil Merrett is believed to be Richard Basil Merrett, born 23 April 1910 in Lydney, a parish on the west bank for River Severn in the English county of Gloucestershire, U.K. His parents were Richard Merrett, a tinworker, and Martha Florence Clarke. They had married in about 1903, and Basil had an elder sister, Florence, born in 1904. Basil reportedly attended the Lydney Craft School (which later became the Lydney Art School).
In 1939, according to the Register for Gloucestershire, Basil Merrett was still living with his parents; the Register lists his “occupation” as “incapacitated.” Without knowing any details of the psychological challenges faced by Basil, we can only surmise that his care allowed him ample opportunity for reading and art. Basil Merrett, illustrator extraordinaire, died in July 1969 and was buried in Lyndley.
D H Lawrence house, Chapala, ca 1950. Photo: Roy MacNicol (Moore & Roberts, 1966)
Basil Merrett’s source for his illustration of the Lawrence House in Chapala in 1923 was certainly not based on any first-hand experience of Mexico. It was apparently based on this photograph, which appears in Moore and Roberts’ book D. H. Lawrence and his world, published by Thames and Hudson in 1966, where it is credited as “Lawrence’s house at 4 Zaragoza, Chapala, Mexico. 1923. Photo R. MacNicol.” It is unknown if the photograph had been published previously, though if Merrett’s illustration actually dates from the 1950s, then clearly it must have been! (If you know of an earlier publication featuring this photo by Roy MacNicol, please get in touch!)
In any event, the date of 1923 given in Merrett’s caption cannot be correct. First, the photographer—American artist Roy MacNicol (1889-1970)—was nowhere near Lake Chapala in 1923. MacNicol first visited Chapala in the early 1950s, and bought (and added a second story to) this house in 1954. His photo presumably shows the house at about the time he purchased it. Secondly, the photograph clearly shows the house after its remodeling in about 1940 by the famous Mexican architect Luis Barragán, who, as described in a 1941 article in House and Garden, added the highly distinctive “oriental halfmoon entrance gateway” shown in the photo.
So, sadly, even though Basil Merrett thought he was drawing the D. H. Lawrence house in Chapala in 1923, he was, in fact, drawing the house as it appeared some thirty years after Lawrence’s visit.
The iconic landmark right in the heart of Chapala commonly known as Casa Braniff (Paseo Ramón Corona 18) was originally built by influential Guadalajara lawyer and historian Luis Pérez Verdía. The building has significant historical and cultural connections.
Construction of this magnificent edifice began in 1904 on the site of Chapala’s sixteenth century friary, close to the parish church. By the end of the nineteenth century, the friary buildings had fallen into disrepair and were used by the Hotel Arzapalo as stables for the teams of horses that pulled their stagecoaches.
San Francisco Church and Casa Braniff, c. 1925. Photo: Romero (?). Publisher: S. Altamirano.
To design his new home, Pérez Verdía commissioned British architect George Edward King, who had previously built Villa Tlalocan for the British consul, Lionel Carden, and who, with his son, had offices in several Mexican cities, including Guadalajara. Expected to cost $30,000, the “fine residence” was to be “a modern structure in every way.” By June, with work well underway, the estimated cost of the house had already risen to $40,000. Contrary to later conjecture, the bricks for Pérez Verdía’s house were not imported from Europe; they came from King’s own brickyards, located alongside the Central Mexican Railway on the southern outskirts of Guadalajara.
When the house was completed early in 1905, the state government agreed to exempt the property from all municipal and state taxes for a period of ten years.
Two years later, in March 1907, Pérez Verdía offered José Yves Limantour, the federal finance minister, the use of his house over the upcoming holidays. Apparently, the letter only reached Limantour after he had already arrived in Chapala. Shortly afterwards, Pérez Verdía sold the house, complete with its furnishings, for $57,000 to Alberto Braniff, a wealthy Mexico City businessman, who bought it as a gift for his widowed mother.
The quixotic design of the house, now the Restaurant Cazadores, was perfectly encapsulated in words by American poet Witter Bynner, who first saw it in 1923 while in Chapala with D. H. Lawrence: “We came by a pretentious Victorian brick villa, in the convulsive style of architecture—bay windows, turrets, cupolas, stained-glass windows.”
Casa Braniff (with church behind). Photo: Tony Burton, 2007.
Who was Luis Pérez Verdía?
Pérez Verdía, born in 1857, grew up in the intellectual milieu of Guadalajara and was a member of the Ateneo Jalisciense, Jalisco’s leading artistic-scientific society. The society, active at the very start of the twentieth century, brought together a host of distinguished writers, artists and musicians, including photographer José María Lupercio, violinist and painter Félix Bernardelli, and artist and author Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl).
In the 1880s, Pérez Verdía was the lawyer in Guadalajara who represented Ferrocarril Central Mexicano (Mexican Central Railway) as it acquired land and overcame all obstacles to build its spur line, completed in 1888, connecting the city to existing tracks at Irapuato.
Pérez Verdía was the official representative for Jalisco at the 11th International Americanistas Congress in Mexico City in 1895, an event also attended by Cora Townsend and her mother, Mary Ashley Townsend (Cora bought Villa Montecarlo as her mother’s Christmas present that year!), British consul Lioinel Carden, who had already begun building Villa Tlalocan, and anthropologist Frederick Starr.
Pérez Verdía was involved in various development projects in Chapala. In 1896, he reportedly bought Isla de Alacranes (Scorpion Island) from the federal government for “the nominal sum of twenty-one dollars.” He planned to pay a bounty to rid the island of scorpions and “convert the Isla into a pleasure resort like Coney island.” About five years later, he sold the island to Ernesto Paulsen, who intended to build a “general sporting resort” there. The island, a site revered by the indigenous Huichol people, is partially protected today.
Pérez Verdía was also a member of the group of powerful and well-connected individuals that formed the Jalisco development company in 1902, with grandiose plans to build an electric railroad from Guadalajara to Chapala, hotels, supply electric light to all settlements from Jocotepec to Chapala, and finance large scale irrigation works, and install a public potable water system in all towns.
A similarly powerful group, including Pérez Verdía, founded the Chapala Yacht Club in 1904, though it would take another six years before it finally realized its goal of constructing a lengthy pier with boathouse and clubhouse.
In 1905, the Chapala council empowered Luis Pérez Verdia to represent them in their efforts to get help from the Jalisco State government to combat the proliferation of lirio (water hyacinth) that had invaded the harbor during the rainy season. Documents in Chapala’s archives show that a contract was drawn up with Jesús Cuevas for daily cleaning of the beach, with all lirio to be removed by boat for disposal elsewhere.
Besides working as a lawyer, and later as a magistrate and state congressman, Pérez Verdía founded Jalisco’s college for teachers (Escuela Normal). He took up a diplomatic post as Minister of Mexico in 1913 in Guatemala, where he died the following year.
Pérez Verdía’s three-volume Historia Particular del Estado de Jalisco (1910) was an astonishing labor of love which remained an important source of state history for decades, prior to being superseded by the monumental four-volume multi-author Historia de Jalisco in 1982.
Pérez Verdía’s many other published works include Apuntes Históricos de la Guerra de Independencia en Jalisco (1886); Compendio de la Historia de México (1892); Biografía del Sr. Don Prisciliano Sánchez (1881) and Estudio biográfico del Sr. Lic. D. Jesús López Portillo (1908).
Pérez Verdía claimed custody of his granddaughter
Luis Pérez Verdía married Trinidad Pérez González Rubio in Guadalajara in 1877. Their daughter, Aurora Pérez Verdía, fell in love with José Ignacio Arzapalo Pacheco, the son of businessman and hotelier Ignacio Arzapalo (who had opened his eponymous hotel in Chapala in 1898) and his second wife, María Pacheco. Aurora and José married in 1900, and their only child—María Aurora—was born the following year. Tragically, Aurora died shortly after giving birth. A few years later, in 1904, the little girl also lost her father. She was then cared for by her paternal grandparents.
But tragedy struck again. Her grandfather, Ignacio Arzapalo Sr., died in 1909, only a year after he had opened his second elegant hotel in Chapala, the Hotel Palmera. According to Arzapalo’s will, both hotels plus his life insurance and some property in central Guadalajara were left to María Aurora (then aged 7), with Lic. Enrique Pazos appointed as María Aurora’s guardian to manage her affairs until she came of age. This inheritance was worth at least US$300,000 at the time (equivalent to $7.5 million today); for whatever motives, Luis Pérez Verdía, her maternal grandfather, immediately challenged the arrangement.
When the ever-impatient Pérez Verdía decided that his legal challenge was proceeding too slowly, he took matters into his own hands. He kidnapped María Aurora in broad daylight from her nurse in a public park in Guadalajara, and contested Pazos’ right to be her guardian and administer her share of the estate. Not surprisingly, this sequence of events led to sensationalist press headlines.
One version, “Wealthy Orphan Vanishes,” claimed that orphan Aurora Arzapalo, heiress to millions, had been kidnapped and that the police had arrested several suspects among her relatives, “all of whom are wealthy but would fall heir to some of the Arzapalo millions if the child were out of the way.”
The drawn-out legal case, which caused a scandalous rift between two of Guadalajara’s most distinguished families, who had at least two direct ties by marriage, eventually wound up in the Supreme Court, where Pérez Verdía finally won. But this success was short-lived. While serving as Mexican ambassador in Guatemala, Pérez Verdía died there in 1914. María Aurora, still barely a teenager, then lived in Chapala with her paternal grandmother, María Pacheco.
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The author is proud to announce that the Asociación de Cronistas Municipales del Estade de Jalisco, A.C. (Association of Municipal Chroniclers of Jalisco) recently awarded him the Luis Pérez Verdía medal for his research into the history of the Lake Chapala area.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
The most prolific photographer of Chapala of all time was Jesús González Miranda (1898-1995). Active for over half a century from 1938 until the late 1980s, González signed the bulk of his work, including hundreds of picture postcards, “FOTO. J. GONZALEZ“.
Jesús González. c 1950? Fishermen on beach.
González was in his mid-thirties when he first arrived in Chapala. Born in Cuquío, Jalisco, on 17 January 1898, the son of Florencio González and his wife, Maria Miranda, he lived much of his childhood and youth in Guadalajara where his first occupation (of many he would hold during his lifetime) was as a hairdresser, working at a shop on calle Juan Álvarez.
Life in the city led to him becoming a fan of the theater and González participated in shows at the Teatro Degollado and Teatro Principal as a dancer and member of the chorus. This gave him the opportunity to meet many of the famous artists of the time.
Jesús González. c 1940? Water supply from the lake via ‘pipones.’
In Guadalajara, on 22 September 1922, he married 21-year-old Isabel (“Chabelita”) Mireles Cruz, from Sabinas Hidalgo in the state of Nuevo León. González gave his occupation to the notary registering the marriage as “painter.” The couple, who had no children, subsequently moved to Chapala.
According to Javier Raygoza, González initially moved to Chapala to join his uncle, Dionisio Miranda, in 1926, and stayed to work in a hairdressing salon owned by Juan Enciso. González’s second wife and children told me that he first moved to Chapala a few years later, in 1932.
Jesús González. c 1940? Folk dancing on 8 December in front of parish church.
Regardless of when he first arrived, González was soon regularly providing music for dances, weddings and special events. While Raygoza suggests that González was the first person to introduce public music and movies to Chapala—when he set up speakers, a record player and other equipment on the main plaza in 1933—a fellow photographer, José Edmundo Sánchez (who died that year), had previously done something similar most Saturday afternoons.
Jesús González. c 1960? Boats on the beach.
González began taking photographs and producing postcards in about 1938, specializing in taking portraits of individuals and groups of visitors, the famous and the not-so-famous, enjoying themselves near the pier or in the Beer Garden, the iconic restaurant-bar overlooking the beach. He apparently learned photography from Demetrio Padilla López, a Guadalajara-based photographer who visited Chapala regularly in the 1930s. Business was especially brisk on weekends and holidays.
Jesús González. c 1938? #A-1 – crowded beach.
In his early years in Chapala, prior to the demolition of buildings in central Chapala to create Avenida Francisco I. Madero, the main thoroughfare leading direct to the pier, González photographed patrons of the Widow’s Bar (Cantina de la Viuda). Its proprietor was María Guadalupe Nuño, whose husband, José Edmundo Sánchez, had published numerous postcards of Chapala in the 1920s and early 1930s.
In addition to portrait photos, González also sold hundreds of different postcards featuring local buildings and views at a time when there was a clean, sandy beach in front of the Beer Garden, and when day-trippers outnumbered residents most weekends.
In captioning his postcards, González employed several different numbering systems, the meaning of which he took with him to the grave, making it close to impossible to identify specific series or dates. Very few González images can be precisely dated, though the details of individual buildings and scenes, many of which changed significantly during his lengthy photographic career, do sometimes allow us to narrow the time frame for when they must have been taken.
Jesús González. c 1967. Iconic photo of swimmers on pier. (Fig 8.19 of Lake Chapala: a postcard history)
Some months after the death of his wife, Chabelita Mireles, and following a chance encounter involving a bicycle, González married Margarita Manzo on 30 March 1966. They had three children, the eldest born in 1970.
González, whose nickname was “El Chorchas,” was accorded due recognition for his outstanding photographic endeavors in a television segment devoted to his work. Unfortunately, an attempt organized by Javier Raygoza in the early 1990s to produce a book of González’s photographs as a tribute to the great photographer ultimately came to nothing.
José de Jesús González Miranda died in Chapala on 13 December 1995.
Jesús González. c 1945. Lakefront bar (right) in front of tower of Villa Ana Victoria (demolished a few years later)
Over his fifty-plus years of photographing Chapala, an extraordinary number of subjects had stared, at one time or another, into his lens as he captured school groups, weddings, ceremonies, and all manner of public and private events.
Several years after his death, a number of González’s photographs were published in two collections relating to Lake Chapala arranged by Manuel Galindo Gaitán. According to Galindo, González “left an important collection of photos, irrefutable testimonials of life at Lake Chapala from the earliest years of the last century.” The sentiment is correct even if the time frame is not.
González has bequeathed us a treasure trove of images, a visual testimony whose cultural context and historical significance demand that they be adequately safeguarded for future generations to appreciate.
Jesús González. Date unknown. Sunset over lake.
Appreciation
My sincere thanks to Margarita Manzo viuda de González and her children for answering my questions about Don Jesús, and for their generosity in sharing examples of his postcards. My thanks, also, to Rogelio Ochoa Corona for introducing me to the family and for sharing his personal recollections of ‘El Chorchas,’ and to the late artist Sylvia Fein, who gave me several González postcards dating from the mid-1940s.
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Among the many Canadian visitors to Lake Chapala in the 1970s were Harry Furniss and his second wife, Enid. Late in life, Harry, the grandson of English artist and cartoonist Harry Furniss (1854-1925), wrote a three volume memoir, full of off-beat memories and humor, interspersed with small line drawings. It includes a chapter about visiting long-time friends Leslie and Eleanor Powell in Chapala, who first settled there in 1973.
Harry and Enid Furniss
Raised in Montreal, Harry Furniss (1920-2015) wrote radio dramas in his spare time, and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during World War 2 (when he was captured by the Germans), before being appointed Director of Public Relations (RCAF) Overseas, in London, U.K. He married his RCAF-Womens Division aide, Enid, in London, in 1947. Enid (1911-2016), of English, Spanish and French heritage, had driven ambulances in London during the blitz.
After they settled in Canada, Harry spent a decade as a journalist for the Toronto Telegram, Reuters news agency, and The Vancouver Province, and then established his own corporate public relations consultancy. After decades of building and cruising pleasure boats on the rugged coast of British Columbia, Harry and Enid lived their final years in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Married for 68 years, Harry died there on 26 November 2015, at the age of 95, and Enid the following year on 27 December 2016.
The third volume of Harry’s memoir, Family & Friends, includes a chapter about visiting friends, Leslie and Eleanore Powell, who had settled in Chapala some years earlier.
Leslie and Eleanore Powell
U.K.-born Leslie Cooke Powell (1908-1999) was working at the Montreal Gazette when the second world war erupted. He joined the RCAF public relations department during the war, and served in North Africa, Italy and Northwest Europe, before being appointed Director of RCAF Public Relations (Overseas), based in London, England, where—in 1946, a year after the war ended—he married Canadian journalist Eleanore Roberta Martin.
Back in Canada after leaving the armed services, Powell worked as the Montreal Gazette’s aviation and military editor, before starting his own public relations company. He subsequently became the national PR director of the Canadian Red Cross Society, and of Canadair.
Eleanore Powell was a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen during the Second World War. After joining the women’s division of the Royal Canadian Air Force, she worked as a public relations officer in Ottawa, Newfoundland, and later for the RCAF Overseas headquarters in London, England. In 1999, following her death, her estate established the Robert and Alyce Martin journalism scholarships (named after her parents) for students entering the Master of Journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.
What was Chapala like in the 1970s?
The Powells’ first visit to Chapala was in 1973, and they subsequently visited the lake many times (and had a house there) in many of the next 17 years. Chapter 4 of Furniss’s book includes excerpts from letters he and Enid had received from the Powells describing their time at Chapala.
Sketch by Furniss
On their first trip, in 1973, the Powells drove down and stopped for a couple of nights at the Rincón del Montero hotel in Parras de la Fuente en route to to Mexico City. A week later, they drove west along Highway 15 to Morelia and then branched off along the southern shore of Lake Chapala to Jocotepec, where they stayed at La Quinta, then run by Bob Whipple: “It took us nine hours to drive from Mexico City to our ultimate destination, Jocotepec. An excellent road, much of it toll, with beautiful scenery.”
They stayed in a two room unit at La Quinta, which cost, for two, including three meals a day, $310 Cdn a month, plus 10% for service. After two weeks, the Powells “chanced upon an idyllic little house nearby at Chapala” and signed a one-year lease. Needing help with the Spanish in the lease, they were referred to a fellow Canadian (Bill Strange) who lived nearby. He wasn’t home, so Powell asked an English-speaking lawyer to check the contract. The lawyer refused any payment when he learned that the two men shared a mutual friend: “my old hometown pal and once-Mayor of Montreal, Pax Plante, who now lives in retirement nearby!”
Pacifique Plante
French Canadian lawyer Pacifique “Pax” Plante (1907-1976) became known as “the “Elliot Ness” of Montreal, after fighting city crime in the 1940s and 1950s and organizing the prosecution of many notorious gangsters and mafia members. Plante retired to Mexico in 1958 and lived there to his death in 1976. Understandably paranoid about the need for privacy and security, Plante built his retirement home high on the hillside east of Jocotepec. It had a commanding view over the only access route which winds up from the highway, and was designed to be mistaken from a distance for a chapel, not a private dwelling.
In one of those strange coincidences in life, Bill Strange turned out to be Captain William Strange, who had been Director Public Relations (Navy) Overseas when Powell held the equivalent position in the RCAF. Strange, and his wife, architect Jean Strange, had retired to Chapala in 1965, and the coincidences did not end there. Powell later learned that Strange had married his WREN assistant, just as he had married his RCAF-WD aide.
Once they had their casa (rent $64.00, all prices in Canadian dollars), the Powells were able to slash their living expenses. Return trips to Guadalajara on the air-conditioned coach were $1.45 for two. Pork was $1.80 a kilo, a pint of strawberries 40 cents, a cleaning lady charged 40 cents (then five pesos) an hour. For relaxation, the waters at San Juan Cosalá beckoned for $1.28 a day. They estimated that two people could easily live in Chapala at that time on $200.00 a month.
When the Funisses visited the Powells in 1975, they discovered that other mutual friends—John and Lenore Clare—were already occupying the Powells’ guest quarters, so they took a room at the Hotel Nido for $6.80 a night for two, including dinner.
John and Lenore Clare
John Purvis Clare (1910-1991), who studied at the University of Saskatchewan, served as a public relations officer for the Royal Canadian Air Force in North Africa. During his lengthy journalistic career, Clare worked for The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Telegram, and was the war correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star, as well as managing editor of MacLean’s Magazine and an editor at Chatelaine and Geos. His short stories were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and many other magazines. He also wrote The Passionate Invaders, a humorous novel, published in 1965, about ‘the first armed invasion of the United States from Canada in more than a hundred years.’
Lenore Reinke Clare (1907-1991) worked for the T. Eaton Company before accepting a position with RCA Victor, with involvement in all phases of casting, writing, producing and recording. She then built and managed a recording studio for Harry E Foster, and continued to work there through the war. She married John Clare in 1945, joined the CBC in 1957 and was a supervising script editor at CBC, in charge of the script department, from 1959 to 1972. Her wide-ranging interests helped take CBC’s radio plays to a whole new level.
After a few days catching up with their friends, the Furnisses then took a self-contained casita in a U-shaped motel in Ajijic, which cost $160 a month. They stayed for a month or so, exploring Ajijic and its environs.
Later letters to the Furnisses from the Powells include references to a “bang up July 1 (Canada Day) party at the Chula Vista Motel” given by Hector Márquez (who owned the main farmacia in Chapala), a paragraph musing on the possibility of becoming the Honorary Canadian consul in Chapala, and delight following the 1976 devaluation of the peso that everything was now even cheaper than previously. In 1977, the Powells rented a different house for the winter for $75 a month.
The Powells returned to Chapala in 1984, after a gap of four or five years, and rented a two-bedroom casa with huge garden for $160 a month. The following year, they rented a place for the winter in Guadalajara. Their last trip to Mexico was over the winter of 1989-90.
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One of the more interesting formal publications relating to art in Chapala is a 44-page booklet titled A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería, published by La Galería del Lago de Chapala in 1972, and copyrighted by Arthur L. Ganung, the gallery’s then president.
A Cookbook with Color Reproductions (1972). Cover image: Eleanor Smart. Women with Green Hair.
Small full-color illustrations of original artwork are interspersed with dozens of recipes shared by members of the gallery and their friends. The recipes range from Cheese Straws – Ajijic (submitted by Neill James), Sopa de flores de calabaza (Antonio Cárdenas P.), Pork nopal (Gloria Marthai) and This is the best roasted chicken you ever ate (Russell Bayly) to Hungarian Meetatay (John R. Seybold) and Corn Flake Banana Bread (Hudson Rose).
La Galería del Lago de Chapala, often called simply Galería del Lago, was the most important and influential Ajijic art gallery in the 1970s. It was a cooperative non-profit founded on 27 November 1971 by Arthur and Virginia Ganung, assisted by Charlotte McNamara, Jack Williams and John Frost.
The gallery had about twenty founder members, and some 180 artists had purchased memberships by the time the gallery opened in the former Ajijic public market on the north side of the plaza (now the Ajijic Cultural Center), next door to what was then the village cinema.
The gallery was determined to be inclusive and appeal to the entire community, both Mexican and non-Mexican. It arranged evening lectures, a massive village fiesta on the plaza and classes in painting, craft-making and ceramics.
In August 1974 the the Ganungs departed Ajijic and the gallery moved to Colon 6, across from El Tejaban, for a couple of years, with Katie Goodridge Ingram as president. Having grown up in the village, she was particularly determined to encourage young Mexican talent and immediately established a fund to pay for materials and framing. The gallery also branched out by offering a Christmas exhibit of batiks in the garden of Quinta Johnson (then owned by Ingram’s mother, Helen Kirtland), concerts, an Art and Craft Bazaar, and a series of gourmet candlelight dinners.
In 1976 the gallery had outgrown its Calle Colón location and moved to larger premises on the north side of the highway near the gas station.
The gallery also mounted group shows in 1976 in Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta. Galería del Lago closed in 1977. After that, Ingram arranged monthly shows until 1983 at a smaller gallery inside her mother’s store, Mi México. (Ingram, later an award-winning poet, wrote a memoir about her early life in Ajijic, titled According to Soledad: memories of a Mexican childhood.)
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Source
La Galería del Lago de Chapala. 1972. A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería. 1972. (Ajijic, Mexico: La Galería del Lago de Chapala).
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
Relatively little is known about the life of Thomas L. Rogers, the American author of Mexico? Sí, señor, based on a trip to Mexico in July 1892, and published the following year by the Mexican Central Railway. The book provides an up-beat accessible account of all the places and regions that the then-expanding railway network was opening up for travelers.
At that time the Mexican Central Railway was the principal railway of the Republic, with 1846 miles of line; it was the only standard gauge line connecting Mexico City to the U.S. First class rail fares at the time were very reasonable: return fares to Mexico City were $50 (dollars) from El Paso; $88.60 from Chicago and $135 from New York or Boston.
The book covers the sights along not only the Mexico Central Railway’s main route from Ciudad Juárez to Mexico City, but also along its two major branch lines: the first to Tampico, and the second to Guadalajara via Irapuato. The completion of this latter branch in 1888 spurred a significant growth in tourism at Lake Chapala, and was the route used by many of the early visitors to Chapala, including eccentric pioneer Septimus Crowe, English writer Maud Pauncefote, British consul Lionel Carden, American writers Charles Embree and Mary Ashley Townsend, and anthropologist Frederick Starr. American photographer-hotelier Winfield Scott , who lived for many years near Ocotlán, was commissioned by the Mexican Central Railway to document the company’s network in Mexico.
Rogers’ writing style is informal and chatty. Mexico? Sí, señor is well illustrated with small sketches, photographs and several maps. Chapter XVI includes one of the earliest published photographs (untitled) of Ocotlán, as well as images of the Atequiza hacienda, the Río Lerma, and the famous Juanacatlán Falls. (Note, however, that the photograph he includes titled “On the Lake Shore’ (by A. Briquet) depicts Lake Cuitzeo, not Lake Chapala.)
Excerpts from chapter XIV of Mexico? Sí, señor
Ocotlán is situated on a plain which slopes southward a few miles into the shore of the lake. With its pretty plaza, beautiful church spires, its portales, and its two bridges (one over the Sula, south of the village, and one west over the Lerma), Ocotlán is very picturesque.
The water front of the city is on the Sula, just above the bridge. Here a novel sight is seen on the levee. No great steamers are moored there, but scores of great canoes are loading and unloading, or waiting for the spirit of their captains to move. These canoes have hitherto done all the business on Lake Chapala.
The water works of Ocotlán are not extensive, but such as they are, they can be seen at the bridge across the Lerma, over which passes the highway to Guadalajara. They consist of one large wheel and a pump. The wheel is on a frame under one of the arches of the bridge. The current of the river runs the wheel, and the wheel, of course, runs the pump. But rivers in this region rise and fall, and there are times when this wheel is six feet above the water. Whenever the current cannot reach the wheel, the people of Ocotlán get their water by carts and carriers.
The steamer “Chapala” is a flat-bottom stern-wheel boat, very like those that are common on the shallow rivers of the West; the only boats adapted to shoal-water service. Everything about the steamer appears new, but one of the things not new on the “Chapala” is Juan Perez, the pilot. He is not necessarily old, but he is a veteran in service….
The steamship Chapala. From Thomas Rogers (1893), p222.
The sail along the north shore from Mescala to the town of Chapala is delightful. We seem, at times, to be shut in, but the pilot finds a way out and duly brings us to a pretty little city which nestles at the base of a sugar loaf mountain, and which is the largest town on the lake. A fine old church is one of the attractions of the town for visitors, but the hot springs which boil up not far from the plaza have given Chapala fame as a health resort. The springs, although not numerous… have made Chapala a favorite resort of the people of Guadalajara and vicinity, and when better known will attract people from a greater distance. “Charming” is the word to describe Chapala; I doubt if there is another town in Mexico more prettily situated. A short distance from shore is a large island, which is made use of as a picnic ground. The view from the hill immediately back of the town is one of great beauty.
It is an interesting sight to see the water works of Chapala in operation. No wheels, no pumps, no fountains; only dippers. The lake is the reservoir, and women are the dippers. They wade out as far as they please, fill their jars as full as they please, shoulder them and march home. No scooping with gourds as at Zacatecas, for water is plenty, and no one has to wait for another.
Chapala is sure to become more and more a favorite watering place. Already there are some fine summer “seaside” cottages there, and in the offing you can see a yacht! With a combination of delightful climate and hot springs, with mountain climbing, boating, bathing, and fishing as recreations for visitors, why shouldn’t charming Chapala become the finest health and pleasure resort in Mexico?
The next port is Xocotopec, at the extreme western end of the lake. The town lies in a pretty valley three miles back from the lake, and is the center of an extensive rural trade. Returning along the south shore we find no towns of commercial importance, but do find a succession of beautiful views which charm by their variety. We pass San Martin, San Cristobal, Tuscueca, and see, partly hidden by groves of orange and lemon trees, the flourishing city of Tizapan which reposes on the hillside two miles from the lake, along the little Rio de la Pasion.
We sail over what is supposed to be an oil well, some signs of which appear on the surface of the lake; we touch at the fisherman’s village with the pretty name, La Palma, and thence complete our eighty mile circuit of Lake Chapala by a direct return to Ocotlán, where we resume our railroad journey.
Who was Thomas L. Rogers?
Thomas L Rogers was born at Pownal, Vermont, on 2 August 1851, and died in Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of 59 on 19 June 1901. He was survived by his wife and six children.
Rogers was a prominent Baptist minister, and publisher of The Watchman (formerly The Christian Watchman), who graduated from the Newton Theological Institution, before serving in Cleveland and Scituate. He spent the winter of 1880-81 traveling in Arizona, southwestern California and Mexico. He was appointed Vice-President of the Board of the California Southern Railroad in 1881. The President of that railroad was his father-in-law Thomas Nickerson.
Rogers’ railroad links were probably a key reason why he was offered the commission to write Mexico? Sí, señor.
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The text is an edited excerpt from chapter 36 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales which explores the history of Lake Chapala from 1530 to 1910 based on more than fifty original sources. The significance of the Mexican Central Railway in fomenting the nascent tourist industry at Lake Chapala at the end of the nineteenth century is explained, with a detailed route map, in chapter 2 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.
Sources
Thomas L. Rogers. 1893. Mexico? Sí, señor. Boston: Mexican Central Railway Co.
Boston Evening Transcript: 20 Apr 1881, 2; 20 June 1901.
Los Angeles Evening Express: 4 May 1881, 3.
Los Angeles Times: 8 Jan 1882, 1.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
José Edmundo “Pepe” Sánchez Rojas (c. 1888-1933), the son of Juan Sánchez and Ceferina Rojas, was born and raised in Chapala. His paternal grandparents were the exceptionally long-lived J. Guadalupe Sánchez (1806-1896) and María Dolores Pantoja (c 1799-1905), who died in Chapala on 22 May 1905, aged 106, according to her death registration. Jose Edmundo’s immediate family included individuals who served as mayor of Chapala (on more than one occasion) and as administrator of the local postal service, a position of some prestige at the start of the twentieth century.
We know nothing about José Edmundo Sánchez’s early life, education, or how he gained proficiency as a photographer. But he is the first professional photographer born in Chapala, and he appears never to have taken photographs anywhere else. Over a relatively short but productive career, he produced hundreds of real photo postcards, at a time when the town’s tourism attractions were gaining international attention.
He did have sidelines. In 1920, Sánchez and a friend—the renowned architect Guillermo de Alba—opened a bar named the Pavilion Monterrey in Chapala where food and drinks were served in an open-air pavilion facing the lake. The bar was just back from the beach, mid-way between the Arzapalo Hotel and the Casa Braniff (now the Cazadores restaurant). De Alba helped run the bar until 1926 when he moved to Mexico City.
José Edmundo Sánchez. Lakefront, Chapala, c. 1920.
By happy coincidence, both Sánchez and de Alba were keen and skilled photographers. Their discerning eye and considerable talent resulted in numerous sensitive and artistic images of Chapala, among the finest images of the town ever taken. While de Alba does not appear to have ever commercialized his photographic work, Sánchez certainly did. He took a large number of views of Chapala and was keen to sell them, going so far as to emblazon “tarjetas postales” in paint across the wall of his lakefront bar. Sanchez also sold photography-related items, and developed and printed films for others. In addition, he showed movies on Saturday afternoons, years before any formal cinema was established in the area, and at a time when the town only had one power plant.
José Edmundo Sánchez. Beach and boat trips, Chapala, c. 1920.
Sánchez married María Guadalupe Nuño in about 1920; the couple made their home at Calle San Miguel (now Lopez Cotilla) #18. She helped run the bar, perhaps to make sure her husband and his pals did not drink all the profits.
In addition to raising several children, María Guadalupe accidentally hit upon the recipe to ensure the family’s future financial security. By the time D. H. Lawrence and the American poet Witter Bynner arrived in Chapala in 1923, she had perfected a chaser for tequila, made of freshly-squeezed orange juice, spiced up with salt and powdered red chile peppers. Vegetable coloring was later added to heighten the chaser’s blood-red color. The chaser, christened sangrita (“little blood”), quickly became the preferred accompaniment for tequila drinking sessions, and its fame spread nationwide.
Tragically, José Edmundo Sanchez’s photographic career came to an abrupt end when he died of gunshot injuries at his home in Chapala on 15 July 1933; he was only 45 years old.
José Edmundo Sánchez. El puerto, Chapala, c. 1920.
[Aside: At about the time Sánchez died, a specially commissioned plinth was placed alongside the bar for a unique twenty-year-old sculpture of a lioness, created by master stonemason Faustino Gil, using volcanic ash collected from the streets of Chapala after the major eruption of Colima Volcano in January 1913. Later photos show only an empty plinth, and the plinth itself was destroyed when Avenida Francisco I. Madero was created in about 1950. Does the sculpture still exist somewhere in Chapala? Is the lioness prowling the streets at night?]
Sánchez’s photographs
American poet Witter Bynner, who knew a thing or two about art, described Pepe Sanchez as “an expert photographer, whose prints of Chapala are a selective and artistic record of its aspects in those years.” Another American who lived in Chapala in the 1920s, the artist Everett Gee Jackson, also knew Sr. and Sra. Sánchez at that time and was delighted to be instantly recognized by Widow Sánchez when he and his friend Lowelito paid a return visit to the town in 1950 and visited her bar for a drink: “I was surprised at the reception she gave me. She greeted me as an old friend, although I had known her but slightly, as the wife of Mr. Sánchez, the village photographer.”
José Edmundo Sánchez. Chapala, c. 1910. Postcard, courtesy of Ing. Mario González García.
Among the early photos taken by Sánchez is one of the Gran Hotel Victor Huber, which was located across the street from the Hotel Arzapalo. The hotel was only in operation under this name for a short time, from 1908-1909, before it was renamed Hotel Francés. It is likely, though, that (as is the case for several other old buildings in Chapala) the sign on the upper story remained in place for some years after the hotel had been renamed. All known Sánchez photographs were taken in, or very near, Chapala.
Most of Sánchez’s photographs, including those reproduced and sold as picture postcards, almost certainly date from the 1920s and start of the 1930s. From an historical viewpoint, noteworthy images include panoramic views from Cerro San Miguel, showing how modern villas sprawled along the lakeshore west of town, and several superb images taken under trying circumstances in October 1926 when the lake level rose so high that it flooded all the low-lying areas of the town, including the Chapala Railroad Station.
José Edmundo Sánchez. Casa Capetillo, Chapala, 1926.
Sánchez used several different photographic papers for his postcards, and added several distinct signatures, ranging from his initials J.E.S. to a flowery, elaborate cursive script spelling “Sánchez”, and, most commonly, a single “S„ alongside a distinctive initial C (with an elongated tail) for “Chapala.” Only a very small number of his cards include a date. The wide range of cards he produced begs for further research to try to establish if the various signatures were used sequentially or concurrently.
At least one Sánchez photograph—of shoreline villas as seen from the lake—was reprinted by Mexico City photographer Hugo Brehme in the late 1920s. It is unclear whether or not Brehme purchased the rights, though the reverse side of the reprint carries the typical Brehme handstamp: “Propriedad Asegurada Hugo Brehme.”
Of the postally used examples of Sánchez postcards I’ve seen, the prize for the most poignant message goes to a young girl named Hilda, who wrote on a card showing sailboats in Chapala, which she then mailed to her father in Tampico: “Dear Daddy, How are you? I am waiting for a letter from you or I won’t send another card. Love from Hilda.”
Photographs taken by Sánchez have rarely appeared in print media, but are frequently reproduced—almost invariably uncredited—in social media posts relating to Lake Chapala. The surviving work of pioneering local photographer José Edmundo Sánchez is an important part of the cultural heritage of Mexico’s first international tourist destination, and deserves our recognition and respect.
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Note. Several descendants of José Edmundo Sánchez were apparently also keen photographers, though attempts to locate examples of their work have so far been unsuccessful.
Sources
Witter Bynner. 1951. Journey with Genius. New York: The John Day Company.
Aurelio Cortés Diáz. 1988. Semblanzas tapatías, 1925-1945. Guadalajara: Gobierno de Jalisco.
Chente García. 2002. “Chapala.” Chapter in Jaime Alvarez del Castillo (coordinator). 2002. Arquitecto Guillermo de Alba. Guadalajara: Editorial Agata/Fotoglobo.
Everett Gee Jackson. 1987. It’s a long road to Comondú: Mexican adventures since 1928.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
Educated Italian traveler Adolfo Dollero (1872-1936) resided in Mexico for many years. Though not published until 1911, his book México al día relates to travels in Mexico in 1907-10. The work is a large volume (almost a thousand pages) and covers almost the entire country, with details of activities, ranches, villages, towns and cities, together with a partial listing of hotels and significant stores and services. Dollero was interested in the economic opportunities Mexico offered, and considered that improved transport routes would allow the nation’s natural wealth, mines, caves, lakes, coast and rivers to be fully exploited.
Dollero was born in Turin in November 1872. He moved to Mexico in 1895, but continued to make regular return trips to Europe. In 1898, he married Maria Luisa Paoletti, countess of Rodoretto (the daughter of the Italian vice consul to Mexico) in Mexico City. Eight years later, in 1906, the couple—now with two children, Ernastina and Lamberto, and a Mexican servant—are named on the passenger manifest of a boat back from Europe. The couple added twin boys to their family in 1912.
Towards the end of 1914, the difficult political circumstances in Mexico caused the family to relocate to Cuba, where they remained until 1921, when they returned to Mexico. The family also lived for periods of time in Colombia and Venezuela. Dollero died in Mexico City in September 1936.
In migration records, Dollero described his profession variously as “publicist”, “publisher”, “author” or “press.” A Colombian book by Rito Rueda Rueda describes Dollero as a historiographer who agreed with the opinion of the geographer Eliseo Reclus “that all the native Americans belong to the same ethnic group despite their diversity of customs and their four hundred languages.”
The title page of México al día refers to future English, French, Italian and German editions of the book; however, only the Italian edition ever saw the light of day, and not until 1914. Dollero also wrote books on Cuba (1916, 1919, 1921), Colombia (1930) and Venezuela (1933).
His account of the Lake Chapala area, which he visited in 1909, includes descriptions of the towns, climate and fertility of the lakeshore, as well as the gold and silver mines in the area, and the names of the major landowners. The only hotel listed for the “bathing resort of Chapala,” is the Hotel La Palmera, managed by Francisco Mántice, and the only store he lists is Juan Sanchez é hijos, selling ‘Ropa y Abarrotes’ at the intersection of calle Muelle (now Avenida Francisco I Madero) and calle Agua Caliente (now Avenida Hidalgo).
Dollero stayed at the Hotel Palmera—designed by Guillermo de Alba for owner Ignacio Arzapalo— which had opened in 1908 adjacent to the Hotel Arzapalo. (One section of the Hotel Palmera later became the Hotel Nido, which was acquired by the Chapala municipality in 2001 for its main municipal offices.)
José María Lupercio. Chapala, c. 1907. (Dollero p 435)
Dollero’s account of the Chapala region is illustrated with four small photographs: one (above) credited to “Jup.” (sic) (= José María Lupercio) and three—The Isla del Presidio, aka Mezcala Island; a chalet on the lakeshore (Casa Capetillo); and boats in Ocotlán—credited to Winfield Scott.
The following excerpts from México al día (translations by author) give a sense of what most interested Dollero:
Chapala is a village of no more than 3000 inhabitants, but its privileged location and truly unbeatable climate have made it the meeting place for the most important Mexican families, especially those from the Republic’s capital and Guadalajara.
On the shores of the lake, or at the foot of the hills that are reflected in its water, are magnificent chalets. The President of the Republic, General Porfirio Díaz, himself likes to spend some vacation time here at the end of Lent in the company of his close friends. Then the lake acquires a special liveliness: hundreds of steam launches and boats plow through the water in every direction; everywhere there are high society parties and lots of money is spent. It is a shame that this liveliness has been, up to now, very short lived; it has always been restricted to a few months of the year, perhaps on account of the communication difficulties.
From the station at Atequiza, we were shaken for more than two and a half hours in an uncomfortable diligence, which was certainly not very agreeable. They assured us, however, that within a short time a branch line of the railroad would be started to remove the only obstacle which up to now has prevented Chapala from being a place of happiness year round.
We were staying in the hotel La Palmera, belonging to a congenial Italian citizen Mr. Francisco Mantice. The hotel was first rate and the cooking, distinctly French and Italian, was therefore very satisfying.
Chapala has, in general, good land, especially that which is on the shores of the lake; some fields are less fertile than others. Besides dedicating themselves to agriculture, the inhabitants also fish; fine fish are abundant, as are turtles and various species of aquatic birds, some of them valued highly for their very fine feathers.
Lake Chapala measures some 100 kilometers in length and its maximum width is 24 kilometers.
There are some mines for gold and silver in Ajijic, but, judging by what has been discovered in them up to now, they are not very rich. Some traces of petroleum have been found in the lake, but tests have shown it to be insufficient for exploitation.
The sand of the lake contains lots of quartz and silica and could be used for the manufacture of glass: there was already one bottle factory, which was closed down for lack of capital. Several thermal springs also exist in Chapala: one of them is ferruginous and another one sulfurous.
After two days in Chapala, Dollero departed for Ocotlán on board the small steamship Raúl:
Our voyage lasted four hours and proved extremely interesting. Black storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, and from time to time a ray of sunshine shone through them for a few moments to fleetingly illuminate the top of this or that greenish hill before becoming hidden again behind other clouds, still blacker and heavier . . . .
We passed a short way off the island of Alacranes and afterwards very close to Presidio Island, where we could clearly distinguish the old walls, almost destroyed, of the gaol that existed there long ago… The island appeared to be abandoned. Only a very short time after we had passed Presidio Island, we saw a huge vertical column shaped like an enormous serpent appear on the horizon.
We had the opportunity to see for the first time the phenomenon of a water spout, which greatly interested us, though we would have preferred to meet it on board a large steamer rather than the extremely fragile Raúl. However, the little steamer’s owner, who had not put down the telescope, calmed us down shortly afterwards, assuring us that the wind from the North that was blowing strongly at the time would have changed the direction of the water spout or would have destroyed it. In truth, some twenty minutes later, the column of water did become less dense, becoming gradually like a bow before disappearing completely. . . .
The left bank gradually acquired an extraordinary liveliness: house followed house; then came ranches and haciendas which they told us belonged to American citizens who had changed them into poetic residences with an abundance of flowers, fruit and cattle. A more enchanting landscape could not be planned.
At last, we entered the River Zula and then clearly saw the small churches of Ocotlán and to the right the Hotel Rivera Castellanos and the haciendas of El Fuerte, also extremely pleasant places, and very popular with North Americans, great lovers, as is known, of natural beauty.
Dollero then describes Ocotlán:
Ocotlán is a small town of 5000 inhabitants with a lot of commercial activity. The products of all the lake arrive here. Given this, it attracted our attention that there was no wharf and that the small steamers and different vessels had to moor alongside the trees on the banks! We were told, however, that a Mr. Ramón Flores, a person of initiative and capital, had requested authorization from the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works to build a suitable one within a short period of time.
Ocotlán is a true granary: since all the region is fertile, canoes come here from all directions with loads of cereals, fruit, matting of tule (an aquatic plant that is very abundant in these parts). On some occasions, the dozens of warehouses belonging to the Railway Company and private owners, and the wagons of the Tram Company, which sometimes transport up to 3000 loads a day—an enormous quantity considering that Ocotlán is more a town than a city—are not sufficient.
The countryside is splendid: irrigation, already practiced on a vast scale, will soon be on an even larger one, once the magnificent project of Mr. Manuel Cuesta Gallardo, for which the Federal Government has made important concessions, has been carried out.
Dollero then describes the proposed irrigation system, noting that the irrigation company will make a ‘fairly good profit’ by selling parcels of the land ceded to it by the Government, and that Cuesta Gallardo had reached ‘extra-judicial agreements’ with the most important of those landowners who had initially opposed the scheme. Dollero also commented on the likely high agricultural productivity of the reclaimed, irrigated land, for fruit trees, grapevines, chickpeas, corn and cattle.
In a later section, Dollero turns his attention to the resources found on the southern shore of the lake, and makes some pertinent observations:
The District of Jiquilpan, to which Cotija also belongs, is very rich. A short distance from Cotija are large deposits of iron oxides, zinc sulfides, copper sulfate and carbonate: the mountains have mica, talc or anhydrous magnesium silicate, and kaolin (hydrated aluminum silicate) for the manufacture of porcelain, etc.
There are also fine construction woods, many fruit trees, a large variety of medicinal plants, and the terrible weed that causes temporary madness, that is to say marijuana (Cannabis indica).
Near La Palma, on the shores of Lake Chapala, part of which belongs to the State of Michoacán, a lot of stone suitable for blade-sharpening is also found.
Source
Dollero, Adolfo. 1911. México al día. (Impresiones y notas de viaje). Paris-Mexico: Librería de la Vda. de C. Bouret, 435-441, 456.
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Despite not being a native of Chapala, Guillermo de Alba (1874–1935) left a diverse and rich legacy in the city. De Alba was born in Mexico City. After his family moved to Guadalajara, de Alba attended the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros, from which he graduated as an Ingeniero Topógrafo (engineer-surveyor) in 1895. [At that time the school did not offer any professional qualification as an architect.]
It is evident from the accounts of de Alba’s grandson—Martín Casillas, a prominent author and novelist, who has published several works relating to his grandfather—that, after graduating, Guillermo de Alba spent some time in Chicago where he was influenced by the Chicago School of architecture. (The Chicago School was a style or movement, not an institution.) In Chicago, de Alba likely studied recently completed buildings, and perhaps met the two most famous proponents of the Chicago school: Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan (‘form follows function’), who had dissolved their own architectural partnership in 1894, a year or two before de Alba’s visit.
By 1898, de Alba, still in his early twenties, was living in Chapala and working in construction with Manuel Henríquez. De Alba married Maclovia de Cañedo y González de Hermosillo (1859-1933) in Chapala in 1900, and their only child, Guillermina, was born two years later.
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, de Alba designed and built numerous fine residences and commercial buildings in Guadalajara and Chapala, before moving to live in Mexico City in 1926.
His works in Guadalajara included the Hotel Fenix, Casa Abanicos and Villa Guillermina, but the most dramatic of all, in terms of impact on the city, was the major project to develop Colonia Moderna, a new ‘garden city’ neighborhood.
At Lake Chapala, de Alba’s earliest large project was to design a country residence, originally named Villa Cristina, at the eastern end of the lake near Hacienda Cumuato, for José G. Castellanos and his wife, Cristina, in 1903. This building was later acquired by Joaquín Cuesta Gallardo and his wife, Antonia Moreno Corcuera. After decades in ruins, efforts are now apparently underway to restore the property, commonly known as Hacienda Maltaraña.
Not long afterwards, De Alba was asked by Ignacio Arzapalo to design a major hotel in the then small settlement of Chapala. Arzapalo already owned the Hotel Arzapalo, the area’s earliest purpose-built hotel, which opened in 1898, and had realized that Chapala needed another large hotel if it was to satisfy the growing demand for rooms. The de Alba-designed Hotel Palmera was completed in 1907. De Alba’s other works in Chapala include Mi Pullman (1908), a remodeling of Villa Ave María (1919), Villa Niza (1919), and the Chapala Railroad Station (1920).
Hotel Palmera (1907)
Hotel Palmera, c. 1908. Photo: Calpini.
The 60-room Hotel Palmera, built at a cost of $100,000, was completed in 1907, and opened the following year. It was described at the time as a “modern construction, brick, iron and cement”, with “fine woodwork,” “American furnishings, electric bells” and a “dining room for 400 people.” Following a change of ownership in the 1920s, the building was divided into two independent hotels. The southern wing, purchased by Ramón Nido and his Mexican wife, Sara, reopened in 1930 as the Hotel Nido. In 2001, this wonderful old building was repurposed as the town’s Palacio Municipal. The building’s stairwell has a magnificent 240-square-meter mural by talented and energetic Ajijic artist Efrén González depicting local history.
Mi Pullman (1908)
Mi Pullman, 2019. Photo: Tony Burton
Built on an unusually narrow lot, Mi Pullman, at Aquiles Serdán #28, is one of the most distinctive private residences in Chapala. This tall, skinny building, inspired by a Pullman rail car, was built as de Alba’s family home. Its construction, which began in 1907, was completed in June 1908. The house-warming party for the completed residence was a grand formally attired affair, as was to be expected given the owner’s growing reputation as an architect.
By the 1990s (and several owners later) the building had fallen into a terrible state of repair, before its potential was recognized by English-born Rosalind Chenery. Chenery eventually purchased the building, and restored this intriguing narrow Art Nouveau townhouse to its former glory, inside and out. It retains many original fixtures and fittings, including oak wood parquet flooring, stained glass windows, tile floors and a cast iron bath tub. Chenery’s multi-part account of her extraordinary achievement can be read on MexConnect, starting with Mi Pullman: remodeling a Mexican Art Nouveau townhouse.
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Pier (1908)
In 1908, Guillermo de Alba was entrusted with adding steps to the east side of Chapala pier (which had been completed a decade earlier), and with some renovations to its surrounds.
Calle Lourdes (1909)
Guillermo de Alba was commissioned in 1909 by Aurelio González Hermosillo, the owner of Villa Montecarlo, to lay out a new street, lined with palm trees, named La Calzada de las Palmas. On the final day of that year, the street was the scene of a hill-climbing contest for automobiles. The vehicle which made it all the way to the top, and won the competition, was a German-made Protos with five passengers driven by Benjamín Hurtado. The short street is known today as Calle Lourdes.
Street plan of Chapala (1915)
Guillermo de Alba’s 1915 street plan of Chapala. (Chapala archives)
We are indebted to de Alba for the earliest known street plan of Chapala, dating from 1915. This is an immensely valuable historical document, indicating the then limits of the small but growing settlement.
Automobile road (1916)
When fund raising began in 1916 to build a new automobile road between Guadalajara and Chapala, de Alba was elected the group’s treasurer. Several prominent individuals each gave $5000 to supplement a state government grant of $23,300. The new road made it much easier for wealthy families to visit Chapala, even if only for a day, or over a weekend.
Photography and Chapala’s first tennis court (1918)
Guillermo de Alba. 1918. Tennis match, Chapala. (Aquellos tiempos en Chapala)
The lakefront restaurants immediately west of the Beer Garden in Chapala occupy property that was once used for the area’s earliest lawn tennis courts. They were laid out by Guillermo de Alba in 1918, just after the end of the first world war, and financed by Ramón Castañeda y Castañeda, whose daughter, Margarita, had learned to play tennis “at one of the best schools in England” and was one of the top players in Guadalajara.
Besides his work as an engineer-architect, de Alba was also an excellent photographer. We are indebted to him for some fine pictures of Chapala dating from the early years of the twentieth century.
In 1920, Guillermo de Alba helped a fellow photographer—José Edmundo Sánchez—open Pavilion Monterrey, a beachfront bar where food and drinks were served in an open-air pavilion, located mid-way between the Hotel Arzapalo (the Beer Garden today) and the Braniff mansion (Cazadores restaurant).
Villa Ave María (1919)
Villa Ave María, 1919. Photo: Guillermo de Alba
At Aquiles Serdán #27, across the street from Mi Pullman, is Villa Ave María. It is believed that Guillermo de Alba remodeled an existing building on this site in 1919 to create the stately villa shown in the image. Ninety years later, following many modifications, this building was registered as a three-unit condominium.
Villa Niza (1919)
Villa Niza, c. 1920. Photo: José Edmundo Sánchez
Villa Niza, at Hidalgo #250, was designed by Guillermo de Alba for Guadalajara businessman Andrés Somellera. Completed in 1919, the house makes the most of its lakeshore position with a mirador (look out) atop its central tower offering sweeping panoramic views over the gardens and lake. De Alba’s strong geometric design boasts only minimal exterior ornamentation. Villa Niza has been well maintained over the years and retains many of its original interior features.
Chapala Railroad Station (1920), now the Centro Cultural González Gallo
Centro Cultural González Gallo (former Chapala Railroad Station), 2019. Photo: Tony Burton
The crowning glory of Guillermo de Alba’s architectural career in Chapala was the elegant and imposing former Chapala Railroad Station, now the Centro Cultural González Gallo. Work on this building began in 1918, commissioned by visionary Norwegian entrepreneur Christian Schjetnan as the terminus for the La Capilla-Chapala railroad, and was completed in 1920. While Schjetnan envisioned that this grand station terminus would be a focal point for a major hotel, magnificent park and scores of beautiful residences—a breathtakingly ambitious idea—the rest of the project never made it beyond the drawing board. The railroad closed in 1926 and the station building eventually fell into disuse. Restoration of the historic building began in 1998, and it was reopened as a Cultural Center in 2006. It retains some original flooring and architectural details, though tall glass panels were added to protect the formerly open station vestibule from any adverse weather.
Cerro de San Miguel (1930s)
After moving from Chapala to Mexico City in 1926, de Alba worked as a draftsman in the Secretaría de Recursos Hidráulicos drawing designs for bridges and dams. He retained a keen interest in Chapala, and was asked in 1931 by the town’s then mayor, Basulto Limón, to design a walkway to the top of Cerro San Miguel with shelters and pergolas near the top to serve the needs of visitors who climbed the hill for the panoramic view. Sadly, this plan was apparently never carried out.
Did Guillermo de Alba design the Hotel Arzapalo (1898)?
Though the design of the Hotel Arzapalo, which opened in 1898, has sometimes been attributed to Guillermo de Alba (including in a display honoring de Alba in the Centro Cultural González Gallo), his name does not feature in any of the contemporaneous accounts of the hotel’s construction or opening celebration. For this reason—and others detailed in If Walls Could Talk—I do not believe that de Alba designed the Hotel Arzapalo, though it is possible that he helped with its construction. The claim may have arisen from a misreading of this (admittedly ambiguous) sentence on page 116 of Antonio de Alba‘s Chapala: “A los 7 años, habiendo progresado la empresa, edifice el mismo Sr. Arzapalo, bajo la dirección del Ing. Guillermo de Alba otro hotel, el ‘Hotel Palmera.'” (“After 7 years, the business having progressed, the same Mr Arzapalo built, under the direction of Engineer Guillermo de Alba another hotel, the ‘Hotel Palmera.'”)
Regardless of who designed the Hotel Arzapalo, Guillermo de Alba made an incomparable contribution to Chapala’s history and heritage, bequeathing us several superb buildings which have not only withstood the test of time but which are still worthy of our admiration more than a century after they were first built.
What was Italian Count Giuseppe Antona doing at Lake Chapala in 1895? Shooting as many teal ducks as possible! And he wrote all about it for The Detroit Free Press.
Count Alessandro Giuseppe (sometimes Guiseppe) Valerio Antona was born in Asli, Italy, on 10 May 1865 and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 27 January 1931. According to a short piece about him in The Detroit Free Press shortly after he moved to the US in 1893, he had previously worked for the Italian government, and came from an old Piedmont family.
His grandfather was “the Count of Casale and Montebello until the Austrian domination in Italy obliterated the title with many others in Piedmont.” Following the death of his elder brother in February 1894, Giuseppe theoretically succeeded to the “earldom and estates of Barraggio, including one of the largest and most valuable vineyard tracts in all Piedmont,” in the event that his family’s title was ever restored by King Umberto I, as was widely expected to happen at the time. Unfortunately for Antona, the King was assassinated in 1900.
In April 1894 a Mexican newspaper reported that “Sra Annetta Josefa Valerio-Antona and Sr Alessandro Giuseppe Valerio-Antona, Italian writers who have lived in US for some time” were staying at the Hotel Humboldt for a couple of months, with plans to write articles for US news outlets and a book about Mexico. This report was not entirely accurate. Annetta Josefa Halliday (1866-1949) was American, not Italian, and went to Mexico as a special correspondent for the Chicago Times. Giuseppe did not marry Annetta until 26 June that year; the newlyweds received a cable of congratulations from President Porfirio Díaz and his wife.
Despite being offered a post as Secretary to the Italian Royal Legation in Cairo, Egypt, Antona chose to remain in Detroit, and do some writing alongside investing in real estate, construction, a chemical business and the wine trade. Annetta continued her established career in writing and lecturing. Less than a month after their marriage, Annetta gave a presentation on “Mexico, the Egypt of the New World” at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada. Annetta also taught history and art at the Ganopel School of Musical Art. She was also reportedly working on a book about Mexico, titled The Florence of Mexico, based on her knowledge of Mexico and Mexican customs. Whether by coincidence or not, this was precisely the same title as a work by Mexican diplomat Eduardo A Gibbon published a few years earlier. She also published articles in Town Topics, Smart Set, Munsey’s, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, Outing and the New York Tribune.
The Antonas’ only child, Janice, was born in Michigan on 15 June 1901. Eleven years later, in 1912, Detroit society was shocked to the core when the “Count and Countess” were arrested in relation to the sudden death of their housekeeper, and were held behind bars for several days. According to press reports, their housekeeper, Miss Lizzie Fleming died at the age of 63 on 4 July after a short illness, and her body was cremated the following day. Suspicions were arisen because a few days prior to her death, Fleming made a will leaving virtually everything to Mrs. Antona. Her relatives in Ohio, who did not learn about her death until a few weeks later, claimed that Fleming had often expressed a horror of cremation and had already purchased a cemetery lot for her burial, and demanded an investigation.
What did Giuseppe Antona write about Chapala?
Antona opens his article with an exaggeratedly poetic description of Lake Chapala, setting the scene for the spring morning when he set off with three friends (one of them the son of the American consul) to shoot waterbirds at the lake. After taking the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza, the four gun-toting sportsmen’s plans to take the stage coach to Chapala were thwarted—”rendered impossible by the conductor’s illness”—so they “procured horses with some difficulty for ourselves and one extra for provisions and ammunition,” before riding south to the lake.
Antona’s article is illustrated by two unsigned sketches, which may well be the author’s own work: one of the village of Chapala, and the other of an unidentified tiny lakeshore village.
After riding through “Rancho del Mirador” and three small haciendas—San Nicolas, Labor and Buena Vista— the group approached Chapala, entering the village through a “rustic wood gate” designed to keep village livestock (and people) off the adjoining hacienda land. (Mexican Herald correspondent Owen Wallace Gillpatrick, who rode from Atequiza to the lake about three years later, claimed to have ridden through about a dozen ranches, separated by gates which were opened “at the rate of a centavo a gate, which is cheap as gates go.”)
In the 1890s the village of Chapala was tightly sandwiched between the Hacienda del Cuije (to the west and north) and the Hacienda de la Labor (to the east). As Antonio de Alba wrote decades later in Chapala, the northern limit of the village until some years into the twentieth century was approximately along the line followed by calle Degollado. It was several years after Antona’s visit before the local haciendas lost their territorial power, and Chapala had room to expand.
Antona’s visit predated the opening of the Hotel Arzapalo in 1898, so where did he stay? Arriving in Chapala, Antona and his friends “dismounted at the Inn of the ‘Nueva Purissima,’ [which] was more suited to be called a stable than anything else.” According to Antona, the rooms had no windows, a description which does not match the small inn where Eduardo Gibbon had stayed a few years earlier. Antona’s hostelry was the (no longer extant) building called “Mesón de la Purísima,” located where the Plaza Chapala Hotel (Avenida Madero #232) is today.
Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.
Antona and his companions walked down to the beach, where:
The view was most fascinating: with rolling hills, steep mountains, the perfect sky, and the villas scattered here and there; one called Monte Carlo was kept by an English man named Crow[e] and nestled among the rocks like a little fortress.”
Antona’s mention of “villas” (plural), the Montecarlo, and of its then owner, Septimus Crowe, all dovetail perfectly with my own view of when and how Chapala first began its courtship with tourism. Chapala’s development certainly began some years before 1895, the date often used (even today) in some Spanish-language accounts.
The beach reminded Antona of his native land: “The smooth, sandy stretch of beach touched by the fringe of the waves, recalled the lake regions of sunny Italy.” But it was not tourism that brought Antona and his friends to Chapala, it was the local wildlife, including:
the wild teal duck, which made their homes in the tangle of matted vegetation on the shores, and render Chapala a veritable paradise.”
After bathing in the lake, they:
procured a native boat and an Indian who served both as a steersman and oarsman, and embarked just before sunset well provided with ammunition and Parker guns, our zest for sport heightened by the tract of morass visible in the distance… which our greed told us could not but abound with prey.
Our craft, made from a hollowed tree trunk, had for oars and rudder a single pole, such as might be called a slender flag-staff in the states, and used for such on national holidays, and which our Indian boatman and guide, Feliciano, maneuvered much like a laundryman attempting to fill a receptacle of soiled clothes.
Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.
By moonlight, with the stars twinkling overhead, the men:
gradually and cautiously approached the feeding grounds, and leaving the smallest of wakes behind us, slid gently through the reeds and grasses and anchored behind some great logs near a mud bank.”
As hundreds and hundreds of ducks started feeding in front of them, the men opened fire:
Out of the reeds and sedge flew the terrified fowl, hundreds of wounded concealing themselves in the rushes, others half-swimming, half-wading away in their fright, the loud flapping of wings of the thousands in flight seeming like distant thunder, while dull thuds and loud splashes made known where our shots had told upon water and upon land.”
After waiting a few minutes—and as surviving ducks returned to feed—the men opened fire again… and again:
Each man emptied his barrels as quickly as possible into the black clouds, loading up again every three minutes as long as ammunition lasted.”
When the dawn light came up, the men collected “200 ducks, or 50 apiece, all blue-winged teal.” The ducks were taken to shore, and a Mexican boy hired to carry them back to the village, while the men rowed their boat back.
In addition to his article about Lake Chapala, Giuseppe Altona also published pieces about Alaska and America-Russia relations.
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Guiseppe [Giuseppe] Antona. 1895. “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.
Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
The Detroit Free Press: 10 Dec 1893, 23; 3 Jun 1894, 9.
El siglo diez y nueve: 17 April 1894, 17.
Eduardo A Gibbon. 1893. Guadalajara, (La Florencia Mexicana). El salto de Juanacatlán y El Mar Chapálico. 1992 reprint, Guadalajara: Presidencia Municipal de Guadalajara.
The Omaha Evening Bee: 26 Mar 1895, 1.
Muncie Evening Press: 31 Jul 1912, 2.
Quebec Morning Chronicle: 4 July 1894, 2.
The American: 29 Mar 1895, 1.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
Herbert Johnson (1877-1960) and his wife, Georgette (1893-1975), settled in Ajijic in December 1939. Shortly after Herbert died in Ajijic in 1960, Georgette returned to live in the UK.
These photographs come from a photo album that once belonged to Georgette. For the story of its rediscovery by historian Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi in an estate sale in New York, see
The photos in the album are in no particular order and have no captions or dates. While most of the photos in the album date from 1940-1945, some of the photos in this gallery must be a few years later.
This gallery focuses on Ajijic and its surrounding area:
Higher quality scans of the photos are available on request (Terms and conditions will apply to their usage)
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi for recognizing the importance of this photo album and for kindly entrusting it to my care.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Though E. Ernest Bilbrough (1861-1891) died tragically young, he certainly had some adventures before departing this world.
One of the three children born to Thomas Priestley Bilbrough and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth Bates, Edward Ernest Bilbrough was born in Liverpool, UK, on 6 March 1861. Details of his education are unknown, but he became a writer and photographer. He published his first book, Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees, in 1884, and the following year the UK-based periodical The Field printed Bilbrough’s account of sport and travel in Mexico. This article includes a description of his experiences at Lake Chapala. Also relating to Mexico, though as a photographer, Bilbrough was credited for some of the photos illustrating an article in The Graphic in 1886 about the Mexican National Railroad.
By 1887, Bilbrough had moved to New Zealand and been awarded a “certificate of excellence” in an Auckland Society of Arts competition for a set of six landscape photographs. At about this time, he was elected Secretary of the Athenaeum, a newly formed Auckland literary and debating society.
On 13 June 1889, Bilbrough married Mary Jane MacKellar (1865–1922), the Shanghai-born daughter of “Mrs MacKeller of The Pines, Epsom, and the late John MacKellar Esq. of London and Calcutta.”
Bilbrough’s second book, Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand., was published in 1890, only months before his untimely death in Auckland on 27 March 1891, shortly after his 30th birthday. Bilbrough was buried in the city’s Purewa Cemetery. His obituary in the New Zealand Herald explained how the well-known manager of Cook’s Tourists’ Agency in Auckland had been in failing health for several weeks, despite completing a trip to England the previous year.
Unusually, it was only after the death of his mother—Gertrude Bates Bilbrough—almost thirty years later, that his estate in the UK was settled, with probate (for effects valued at £1151) then granted to Bilbrough’s widow, Mary Jane.
Gertrude Bates Bilbrough, who died in Hong Kong, had close ties to “Wonsan Korea and Victoria Island Lower Burma.” Probate for her estate, valued at £1249, 2s, 5d, was granted to Bilbrough’s brother, Charles Francis Stanhope Bilbrough. Robert Neff has written several interesting articles about the family’s links to Korea:
What did E Ernest Bilbrough write about Mexico and Lake Chapala?
Bilbrough opens his article, published in England, by claiming that, “Of all the civilized countries, Mexico is undoubtedly the least known, especially to dwellers on this side of the Atlantic.” He then points out that Mexico has four railways already built, and several more under construction. The four existing lines were the Mexican Railway (Mexico City to Veracruz), the Mexican Central (Mexico City to the northern border and New York), the Mexican National (Mexico City north, but not yet reaching the US border), and Inter-oceanic (“so called because it approaches neither ocean.”)
The author considered Mexican roads “frightful,” and recommended overland travel by horseback, “preferably on a steed of your own, though others can be hired from place to place if desired.” Horses could be hired for one dollar a day, but it was necessary to add another dollar for the horse’s attendant. Travel by stage coach brought its own perils, and Bilbrough advised, in the event of a hold-up, not to flee, and “never carry arms unless you intend to use them.”
He also recommended that travelers forget about regular hotels—”in the interior, hotel charges may be reckoned generally at from two dollars per diem to four, in the capital and chief towns from three dollars to six dollars, according to your room, your restaurant, and your liquor”—and consider staying in haciendas:
Accommodation can almost invariably be procured at the haciendas for the night—that is to say, as a guest—even without a letter of introduction of any kind; and right good-hearted men some of the “hacendados “ are too, giving you of their best, and giving freely.”
The main purpose of his article was to describe the opportunities Mexico offered for hunting. Bilbrough thought the methods for shooting wildfowl at Lake Texcoco were unsportsmanlike because:
the sport consists in erecting batteries of guns on three different levels close to all the favourite feeding grounds. The first discharge is directed at the birds on the water, the next just as they rise, and the last sweeps about two yards from the surface, so that it is a lucky bird that gets away. These ‘sportsmen’ have a lofty contempt for the individual who allows the bird to rise before firing.
Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see “Lake Chapala Through the Ages”)
He contrasted this with the situation at Lake Chapala, where “some splendid sport is to be had, not exactly on the lake itself, but on the land which receives its overflow, and is known as ‘cienega,’ a marsh.”
These ciénegas were at the eastern end of the lake, and are marked on the map as “former wetlands.” Some of these ciénegas were drained and converted to farmland twenty years after Bilbrough’s visit.
Bilbrough was sufficiently astute to recognize that the ciénegas played an important role in the local ecosystem:
These ‘cienegas’ form the most valuable pasturage for cattle and horses when drained, partially levelled, and well ditched; but are excessively dangerous to man and beast in their natural state, being nothing less than bogs with a thin crust of treacherous, safe-looking soil. Their value, however, is really derived from the very same cause which makes them dangerous: this being the porous or penetrable state of the lower strata, which receives the overflow from the lake at a period of the year when there is no rain, and promotes the growth of the grass when nothing but surface irrigation, at immense expense, would otherwise produce such an early crop.”
Bilbrough then described in detail his visit “last winter” to an area of ciénega belonging to an hacienda some twenty miles from Lake Chapala, where he enjoyed some varied and excellent shooting:
The best—that is, the most abundant sport, was duck and geese shooting. Of the former, mallards, green teal, blue teal, redhead, wood-ducks, tree-ducks, and pintails were the most numerous varieties; while grey and white geese were in tens of thousands on some fields where the grass was sprouting. Snipe were fairly plentiful (one morning I shot eight, and three the same afternoon), hares and quail likewise. Curlews, sandsnipe, glossy ibis and white ditto, green shanks, pelicans, grey cranes (Grullas pardas), spoonbills, avocets, and stilts were numerous; water hens (which are never eaten there) and thrashers (yellow-throated and red winged) very abundant.”
Ground squirrels were plentiful in the hedges, and I believe rabbits flourish during the rains (May to October), when hares are also more prolific. There were several coyotes, but I never managed to get near enough, unfortunately, to kill one; though common owls, which hooted over my room at night, I used to shoot by moonlight, and some fine horned specimens were bagged also.”
But of all the varieties of sport, none had the same interest as the pursuit of white cranes, called also soldier cranes (Grullas blancas), which are the shyest birds and the wariest it has yet been my lot to stalk. Deer are much less difficult to approach, for a sharp cry or whistle will generally make them halt long enough to give you a chance to get your rifle to bear. Not so white cranes; the least sound, the least movement, and they are off.”
The rifles at the hacienda were not true enough for such sport, and I was obliged to use ball in my gun. Even thus handicapped, pelicans, grey cranes, greater ibis, geese, etc., were added to the bag, but not till the last days of my stay did a white crane crown the whole. It was feeding with four others (they never go alone, but seldom more than a pair of old birds and their young will be seen together, while grey crane always are in flocks) among the maize stalks about one hundred and fifty yards from the nearest hedge, and these stalks, being so numerous and thick, make shooting very difficult. This time, however, I had a fair shot, and saw the bird fall, shot through the wing and body. He was a fine specimen—5ft. 3½in from tip of beak to toe, 7ft. 1½in. across the wings, and weighed 14½lb.”
Other travelers and explorers profiled on this site who have written about hunting at Lake Chapala include:
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Illustrated by reproductions of vintage postcards, chapters 6 and 8 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History look at history of the eastern end of the lake, and the area’s environmental change.
Sources
E Ernest Bilbrough. 1884. Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees. Sampson Low and Co.
E Ernest Bilbrough. 1885. “Sport and travel in Mexico.” The Field, 24 October 1885, 585-6.
E Ernest Bilbrough (editor). 1890. Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand. Auckland: H. Brett.
The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: 24 Apr 1886, 8.
The New Zealand Herald: 25 Feb 1887, 11; 8 Apr 1887, 6; 24 April 1891, 9.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
Author and social activist Joan Frost, a resident of Jocotepec, was the leader of a group of friends who co-founded Amigos de Salud in 1974. That year, the group organized the sale of hand-colored greetings cards to raise funds for medicines for the Centro de Salud in Jocotepec, which was due to open 1 January 1975. The artwork for the first card was a black and white drawing donated by Bob Neathery; local schoolchildren helped hand color the cards to give them a special holiday flavor. A pack of ten cards (whether black and white or hand-colored) with envelopes cost 15 pesos (then about US$1.25). They were available for purchase at three main locations: Ramón’s Bar in Jocotepec, Servicios Unlimited in Ajijic, and Los Arcos supermarket in Chapala.
Carla Manger. 1982. Untitled street scene.
The cards became an annual event. Sold primarily in the months leading up to Christmas, the simple bi-fold cards, illustrated with original artwork, had no interior wording, making them perfect for any occasion. A large number of area artists, including many of the best in the region, allowed Amigos de Salud to reproduce their work to help raise funds. For some artists, it was valuable additional exposure.
The precise wording on the back of each card changed over the years in response to gradual changes in the focus of Amigos de Salud.
Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos) Jocotepec.
In Jean Caragonne‘s case, her painting of the view from her house in Chapala, titled Cerro San Miguel, was her very first painting at Lake Chapala! It was used on a 1986 card.
The youngest contributor to the Amigos de Salud cards was Adriana de Rocio Garcia Hernandez, aged 15 when her painting El pescador was used.
For about two decades, Amigos de Salud, which was also financially supported for many years by the Ajijic Mexico National Chili Cookoff (also co-founded by Joan Frost!), helped many health and educational programs, including the Lakeside School for the Deaf and the Women’s Development Clinic founded by Sylvia Flores.
Prior to Amigos de Salud, Joan Frost had helped coordinate medical consultations and surgeries for Chapala-area children via the Shriners organization. As the Lake Chapala area developed, and its needs and priorities changed, Joan Frost merged Amigos de Salud in 1993 into the newly formed Programa Pro Niños Incapacitados del Lago, whose worthy efforts continue to make a difference to this day. It is unlikely that any foreign resident will make a greater contribution to the welfare of children at Lake Chapala than the tireless and extraordinarily selfless Joan Frost.
The artists whose work appeared on Amigos de Salud cards included:
If you can add to this list, or supply images of other cards, please get in touch!
Examples of greetings cards published by Amigos de Salud.
Acknowledgment
My thanks to Joan Frost’s son, John Burdett Frost, and to writer Dale Hoyt Palfrey for supplying images and examples of many Amigos de Salud greetings cards.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
‘Larry’ Freeman (1936-2016) was born in Toronto, Canada. After gaining a degree in industrial design from the University of Toronto, Freeman moved to California in 1961 where he qualified as a lawyer in 1970. He worked in the legal field for two decades, including a spell as a deputy public defender. In retirement, Freeman lived part-time in Mexico, and worked as an archivist at Casa Na Bolom in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and as a reference librarian and tour director at The Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. “The History of Lakeside” is one of several articles he contributed to El Ojo del Lago. Freeman died in California in 2016.
My critique of Freeman’s article on lakeside history follows (quotes from the original in red):
Ajijic was originally named, in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, ‘Axixic, place where the water springs forth,’ commemorating the seven fresh-water wells that originally provided the water in this area.
There are several possible derivations of ‘Axixic.’ Whatever the derivation, water did not come from wells until relatively recently; it came from springs and the lake. There is no clear evidence for seven springs, though the idea is appealing, given the legend that the Mexica (direct ancestors of the Aztecs) were one of seven tribes occupying seven caves in a mythical place named Chicomoztoc.
Before the Spanish arrived, the indigenous Cocas were living at Cutzalán, now San Juan Cosala…. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Cocas’ burgeoning population caused them to form additional lakeside villages, including Axixic.
In the 1980s, ethnoarchaeologist Dr Carolyn Baus Czitrom showed that all the indigenous people living on the northern shore of Lake Chapala at the time of the conquest belonged to the Coca indigenous group, except for those living in San Juan Cosalá, Ajijic, San Antonio Tlayacapan and Chapala, who were Caxcan.
Ajijic was not formed in the mid-fourteenth century. It was founded in 1531 by Franciscan friar Martín de Jesús (or de la Coruña), who suggested to an indigenous group led by Xitomatl (later baptized Andrés Carlos) that they move their existing community to begin a new settlement, where water was more readily available, named Axixic [Ajijic].
The town of Chapala was founded in 1510, and Axixic followed when the Spanish under Captain Alonso de Avalos, a cousin of Hernan Cortes, arrived in 1523 and persuaded the Cocas to surrender and be baptized without a fight. He was given a royal grant and his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.
It is true that the settlement of Chapala was founded before the arrival in the area (in 1530) of the Spanish conquistadors. I am unaware of any evidence supporting a date of 1510; Chapala was almost certainly founded far earlier.
The Olid Expedition, which reached the southern shores of Lake Chapala in about 1522, involved Fernando (sometimes Hernando) de Saavedra, the older brother of Alonso de Ávalos, who arrived in New Spain a year later. The two brothers were cousins of Hernán Cortés, who granted them (and a third relative who died shortly afterwards) the encomienda (the right to collect tributes and labor from indigenous inhabitants) for a large area, which included the southern shore of Lake Chapala, and later also the northern shore. After their partner’s death, the two brothers shared tribute payments from the encomienda. After Fernando’s death in 1535, his half-share reverted to the Spanish Crown. The encomienda system did not, strictly speaking, constitute a grant of either solo or joint ownership. The tributes supplied by Ajijic every 80 days consisted of blankets and items of clothing, cotton, fish and provisions.
It is nonsense to suggest that “his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.” I know of no record of anyone named ‘Saenz’ ever owning any hacienda near Ajijic, though a Sebastian Sainz (note spelling) acquired the Hacienda El Cuije (which included land in and around Ajijic) in about 1900, following the murder of its former owner, Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks. Sainz had no known familial connection to Hernán Cortés. Both Sebastian Sainz Peña (ca 1851-1927) and his wife, María Dolores Stephenson Zambrano (1869-1958) were born in Spain. They arrived in Mexico in the 1890s and soon amassed an extensive property portfolio in Ajijic and Chapala.
The first major building, which still exists, was a mill built in the 1530s on the site of the Posada Ajijic. A monastery on the corner of Hidalgo and Cinco de Mayo was founded in 1535 …
The building that was transformed (in the late 1930s) into Posada Ajijic was a mill (and taberna) but nowhere near as old as the sixteenth century. It was part of the Hacienda El Cuije, established in the nineteenth century. A more noteworthy building from the same era was the residence known as El Tejabán, (one block north of the current plaza) which belonged to Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks, the owner of El Cuije. The ‘monastery’ was a friary, not a monastery.
By the early 1550s, the lakeside area came under the domination of the Spanish evangelists and they officially founded the city of Chapala in 1538, building the church in 1548.
As already noted, the settlement of Chapala was founded many years before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Its first church was constructed in 1548, but was burned down in 1557, and its replacement was burned down in 1581. Chapala was officially designated a town in 1824 and a city in 1970.
Lakeside remained a quiet fishing and agricultural community, but in the late 1700s was ravaged by a plague that resulted in over 50,000 deaths in Nueva España.
Ravaged? Perhaps in some regions, but at Lake Chapala the plague of viruela (smallpox) in the late 1700s peaked in 1780, when 80 lives were lost to the disease in the entire parish of Chapala.
Chapala was brought to new life by the 35-year presidency of Porfirio Diaz. It became the watering hole for the upper classes and boasted a railway and steamboat service…
Díaz’s influence played a part in—but was not responsible for—bringing ‘new life’ (tourism) to Chapala. The railway did not reach Chapala until 1920 (almost a decade after Díaz had entered exile in Europe), and it closed in 1926.
It was only in 1909 that the first motor car (named ‘Protos’) arrived in Chapala, but by 1910, a cobbled road connected Chapala to Guadalajara, and it was paved by 1937.
Many cars had been drive to Chapala before ‘Protos.’ Though ‘Protos’ was not the first motor car in Chapala, it did win a hill-climbing race there in 1909. The road between Guadalajara and Chapala was not cobbled by 1910; almost its entire length was dirt until much later.
Ajijic was discovered by European intellectuals and provided a refuge for those fleeing political prosecution [sic] after WWI.
This is a stretch. Only a handful of Europeans of any kind had ‘discovered’ Ajijic prior to the 1940s, and those who had were neither ‘intellectuals’ nor fleeing political persecution following WWI.
In 1925, D.H. Lawrence was writing “The Plumed Serpent” in Chapala.
D. H. Lawrence wrote his first draft of The Plumed Serpent in Chapala in 1923, not 1925.
… Nigel Millet was managing Posada Ajijic, and in the mid-30s, a gold rush transformed the town into a short frenzy of greed. That was soon over and Ajijic settled down again while Nigel Millet co-wrote “Village in the Sun” under the name of Dale [sic] Chandos. The other half of the team, Peter Lilley, then wrote “House in the Sun.”
There was no gold rush in the mid-1930s. Gold mining in the hills behind Ajijic began much earlier: by 1885 there were already thirty silver and gold mines in Ajijic. Production peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, with occasional short-lived revivals thereafter. The pen-name used by Nigel Millett and Peter Lilley was Dane (not Dale) Chandos. There is no doubt in my opinion that both men wrote both books, with some revisions possibly made by a third man, Anthony Stansfeld. (For more about mining in Ajijic and about Dane Chandos, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)
In the 1940s… there were 14 foreigners living here.
This number is often quoted. There were certainly fewer than 14 foreigners living in Ajijic in 1940, but many more than 14 for most of the decade.
In 1943, Neill James, a world-renowned travel writer, arrived in Ajijic to recover from serious injuries suffered while exploring a newly active volcano, Paracutín [sic], located near Pátzcuaro.
Neill James did arrive in Ajijic in 1943, to recuperate from two (not one) volcanic mishaps. She spent more time in hospital recovering from the first accident (on Mt. Popocatapetl) than she did following the incident at Paricutín.
She soon purchased the property where the Lake Chapala Society stands today, and never left until she died in 1994, just a few months short of her 100th birthday. Neill James was born in 1899 on a cotton plantation in Granada, Mississippi.
Nellie Neill James was not born in Granada, Mississippi, nor on a cotton plantation, and not in 1899. She was born in Gore Springs, Mississippi on 3 January 1895. Her family was far from wealthy; her father worked as a laborer in a saw mill.
She married and quickly divorced without children. In 1929 she left the work-a-day world to pursue a life as a pioneering adventurer, world-traveler, travel writer and novelist. Heroine of many adventures, including living among Asiatic primitives and being pursued and hounded across Asia by Japanese agents, she finally came to roost in Ajijic in 1942.
Except for her trip to Mexico (and holiday trips late in her life), her world travels as an adventurer came before her brief marriage (to Harold C. Campbell) in 1937, and not after. Neill James arrived in Ajijic in September 1943, not in 1942.
The building now housing the office, multi-cultural reading room and the reference portion of the library was built and operated as a silkworm factory and a salesroom until a freak cold snap killed the silkworms.
Of the many possible reasons suggested for the demise of her silkworm business, James herself placed the blame squarely on a single negligent employee. (See chapter 34 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)
As she settled in, Ms. James built a house for her sister on the property, and deeded several parcels to her friends to build some of the picturesque houses that can be seen on the edges of our grounds.
This is fanciful. For the history of how Neill James acquired her extensive estate in Ajijic, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic, chapter 14.
Neill James articles in Life and other U.S. magazines inspired the first wave of gringo visitations. Her book, Dust On My Heart, a personal view of early lakeside life.
Life never published anything by Neill James. Her only published article, “I live in Ajijic,” appeared in Modern Mexico, the periodical of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in New York. Dust On My Heart was not her “personal view of early lakeside life.” Of the forty short chapters in Dust on My Heart, only the final two—“Ajijic” and “Adobe Hut in Heaven”—relate to the Lake Chapala area.
Ms. James opened her first public library for Mexican children in 1945 and it has continued uninterrupted, though in different locations, since then.
Neill James’ first children’s library in Ajijic was not opened in 1945, but some years later, in about 1953.
By 1983, the Lake Chapala Society moved to the present location and in 1985, Neill James donated her property to the Society.
James had graciously allowed the Lake Chapala Society to use parts of her property from 1983. The legal transfer of her property to the society was completed in January 1990. See chapter 24 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic for details.
In 1989, all the streets were torn up to lay sewers, and the 460-year-old cobblestones were tossed to one side …
There is no evidence that Ajijic had any cobblestone streets prior to the end of the nineteenth century.
Rumors abound that Ajijic and the Guadalajara Airport were the nexus of a recent well-known ‘undercover’ CIA operation… known as the Iran-Contra connection of President Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.
Ajijic did indeed play a part in this operation. Terry Reed had an active role in the Iran-Contra affair established a machine-tool business in Guadalajara as a front for the “guns-in, drugs-out” operation in Central America. Reed, who lived in Ajijic from 1986 to 1988, coauthored Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, an international best seller.
It is clearly high time that someone writes a more realistic short history of Ajijic. My vote for this project goes to Dale Hoyt Palfrey!
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Daniel I. Becerra de la Cruz. 2021. “La viruela de 1780 y 1798 en la parroquia de Chapala.” Estudios Jaliscienses (El Colegio de Jalisco), febrero de 2021, 24-34.
Neill James. 1945. “I Live in Ajijic.” Modern Mexico (New York: Mexican Chamber of Commerce), Vol. 18 #5 (October 1945), 23-28.
Neill James. 1946. Dust on my Heart: Petticoat Vagabond in Mexico. New York: Charles Scribner’s.
Terry Reed and John Cummings. 1995. Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. Clandestine Publishing.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
Artist Daphne Aluta (1919-2017) moved to Ajijic with her then husband Mario Aluta in the late 1960s, and lived there for about twenty years. In September 1985 she was the first female artist ever to have her work featured in the Chapala area monthly El Ojo del Lago; all previous art profiles had highlighted male artists.
Daphne Aluta. Portrait. Date unknown. Courtesy of Ricardo Santana.
Born Daphne Craig on 24 June 1919 in Detroit, Michigan, she grew up in Evanston, Illinois, before studying at Cranbrook School for Girls and then graduating from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
In 1937 she married Richard Flu; the couple had a daughter, Stephanie. In 1941 Daphne married Frank L Greer and moved to Santa Barbara, California; they had two daughters and a son. Frank was an architect (he designed various public buildings in Santa Barbara) and it was only natural that Daphne, who loved sculpture as much as painting, began to help design homes.
Her marriage to Turkish painter and architect Mario Aluta, 15 years her senior, is recorded as taking place in Nevada in 1960. It is assumed that Daphne exhibited in the US before moving to Mexico, but no details of such exhibits are currently known.
During her time in Ajijic, in addition to painting and sculpting, Aluta designed and built several homes in the village. Aluta lived at various addresses in Ajijic, including Juan Alvarez 44 and, in 1971, Encarnación Rosas #20.
Daphne Aluta. Ajijic. Date unknown. Reproduced by kind permission of Ricardo Santana.
As an artist, her group exhibitions in Mexico included the Casa de la Cultura in Guadalajara (1970); the “Fiesta de Arte” held at a private home in Ajijic (15 May 1971); the ex-Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara (1980); the Club Campestre La Hacienda (1985) on the main Guadalajara-Chapala highway; and the “Help Save Lake Chapala” exhibit in Mexico City (1988).
The Lakeside artists exhibiting with Aluta at the Casa de la Cultura Jalisciense show in 1970 included Eunice Hunt; Peter Paul Huf; Mario Aluta; Chester Vincent; Bruce Sherratt and Lesley Jervis Maddock (aka Lesley Sherratt). Aluta’s acrylics were described as “strong and vibrant.”
Daphne Aluta. Undated. Nude. Photo courtesy of Tom Thompson.
Other artists in the 1988 Mexico City exhibit included Nancy Bollembach, Luisa Julian, Conrado Contreras, Rick Ledwon, Georg Rauch, Enrique Velázquez and Laura Goeglin.
Daphne’s fourth husband was Colin MacDougall. They married in Ajijic in 1974, in a small ceremony at the home of Sherm and Adele Harris, who were then managing the Posada Ajijic.
After living in Mexico for 30 years, Aluta returned to the U.S. in 2000, to make her home in Ventura, California, where she died seventeen years later on 6 July 2017.
Note
This is a revised and expanded version of a post first published 23 June 2016.
Sources
Santa Barbara News-Press, 11-15 July 2017.
Guadalajara Reporter: 13 June 1970; 27 Jun 1970; 3 April 1971; 31 August 1974.
El Informador: 5 June 1970; 4 May 1985; 26 January 1980.
El Ojo del Lago, September 1985.
Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.
In 1905 keen traveler Leland Ives published an article about Chapala in Four Track News, a periodical begun a few years earlier by the New York Central Railroad. The short article contains a memorable description of his stage coach ride from Atequiza to Chapala, and all manner of valuable nuggets of information which indicate Ives was a keen observer and listener. Ives had traveled fairly widely in Spanish-speaking countries before visiting Mexico, so (unlike most modern tourists) could readily manage the language barrier.
Ives took the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza. On stepping down from the train, he remarks that
generally it isn’t every day that the tourist can taste the joys and miseries of coach travel; but the fourteen-mile journey to Lake Chapala is the genuine article…. The roof of the huge box is piled high with baggage, freight and mail, and [three?] lucky passengers fill a seat on deck behind the driver, while inside eight others lurch around hanging to straps.”
In addition to observing closely the attire of the driver and his assistant, Ives had a keen eye for the behavior of the mules pulling the stage, summarizing their lack of discipline by commenting, “If they have ever been broken, their tuition fails to show.”
When they finally entered the village, and the stage coach driver was “urging the mules to a final gallop,” Chapala appeared to be half asleep:
The village isn’t much. There is a good hotel which is the terminus of the route; across the way a typical native inn, a remarkable stately church, and a plaza shaded by sour orange trees [while] along the lakefront in the outskirts are residences built as recreation retreats by merchants in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and one at least belongs to a foreign [family].”
At the hotel, Ives scanned the list of guests, but recognized few of the names “in the hotel register, for Chapala is yet but little known. Until within a very few years it lay nearly eight hundred miles from any railway, and while explorers and geographers have long been acquainted with it, tourists are but just finding out how attractive it is.”
Ives then turned his attention to the local fishermen and the various kinds of boats on the lake. Making regular trips between Ocotlán and Chapala was:
a gasoline launch which was brought from “the states” on a flat-car, and plies [the waters] regularly in charge of its owner, a young Canadian. Off the stone pier a little steamer rides at anchor, which was packed piecemeal over the mountains from San Blas on the Pacific, long before the advent of railroads. “
The “gasoline launch” Ives refers to is almost certainly the Carlota, brought by the Crompton brothers from Canada when they moved to Chapala in 1900. They also brought a 30-seat “electrical yacht” named Carmelita, which made regular runs two or three times a week between Chapala, Ocotlán, La Palma and Tuxcueca to support the booming Hotel Arzapalo, with pleasure trips to Mezcala Island on Sundays. The brothers sold their launches to the Lake Chapala Navigation Company (managed by Julio Lewels) in 1904. (See chapter 2 of If Walls Could Talk.)
Ives’ description of a “little steamer” appears to conflate two distinct vessels. The first steamboat on the lake, launched in 1868, was the Libertad, built in California and carried in pieces over the mountains to the lake. However, it had capsized near Ocotlán in 1889 with a heavy loss of life; it was later refloated, renamed and sent to Lake Pátzcuaro. In the interim, several other small steamships had taken its place, including the Chapala, launched in 1881 and the San Francisco.
Who was Leland Howard Ives?
Leland Howard Ives, the son of John and Wealthy Sage (Merwin) Ives, was born on 16 October 1859 in Meriden, Connecticut. Ives and his parents were active lifelong members of the First Baptist Church Society of Meriden.
Ives entered Yale in the class of 1883 but never graduated. He worked for a dry goods commission house in New York City from 1885 to 1889, before leaving for Europe, to meet friends in London and tour the UK, France and Belgium for six weeks. He later shared his talents and financial acumen with various businesses in his home town of Meriden.
Leland Howard Ives.
Ives traveled widely from a relatively young age, and submitted his accounts of his travels to his local newspaper in Meriden and to magazines such as Outside and Four Track News. Ives also gave lectures about his foreign travels in New York City and elsewhere, illustrated with his own photographs.
He had lengthy trips to the West Indies (1892), Cuba (1893), the north coast of South America (1895) and Puerto Rico (1899).
It is not entirely clear when he visited Chapala. He was definitely in Mexico City in 1901, with plans to also visit Tampico, but there is no record of his time in Chapala beyond the article he published in February 1905 in Four Track News, which was clearly a very personal account. The April 1905 issue had another piece by Ives titled “After Ducks in Mexico.”
Ives’ mother died in 1914 and his father died the following year.
On 12 May 1920, Ives married Mrs. Florence W. Fisk; the couple continued to travel regularly. Ives had no children, and after he died on 31 January 1943, his assets were held in trust for the benefit of his wife and his sister. Following the deaths of his wife in 1950 and his sister in 1951, Ives’ sizable estate was shared between various charitable organizations.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
Arthur Coon Ives. 1932. Genealogy of the Ives Family. Self-published.
Leland Howard Ives. 1905. “Round About Chapala.” Four Track News, Vol 8, #2 (Feb 1905).
This is the third in a mini series identifying some examples of photo identification errors related to the Lake Chapala area.
Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) includes this unattributed photo of ships and boats on Lake Chapala captioned as “Lago de Chapala, Jalisco, 1925-1930.” The photo was used in an internal 2004 INAH newsletter (later published online) which had numerous illustrations related to fishing.
Something isn’t quite right here. Lake Chapala did have a sizable fishing fleet during much of the twentieth century. The catch of highly prized whitefish peaked at 150 tons in 1946, and the charal catch peaked in excess of 3000 tons in 1968. But the ships and boats depicted above are very different to the various types of fishing vessels and cargo-carrying boats normally associated with the lake. Several appear to be large steamships. While Chapala did have numerous steamships plying the lake waters at one time or other between the 1860s and 1940s, it never had this many at one time—or any as large as the larger ones in the photograph.
By way of comparison, here is an image (photographer and date unknown) of the vapor Libertad on Lake Chapala. Libertad was the first iron steamship built in San Francisco, and the first steamship launched on Lake Chapala (in 1868) and was, to the best of my knowledge, the largest steamship ever to grace the lake. The Libertad capsized, with the loss of 28 lives, near Ocotlán on 14 March 1889.
Vapor Libertad. Photographer unknown. Date: c 1885?
In the absence of knowing when the National Photo Archive image was taken, or who the photographer was, it may prove impossible to give it an accurate caption, but… Chapala between 1925 and 1930? I don’t think so.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center. Chapter 8 is devoted to Fishing and Environmental Change.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome, whether via comments feature or email.
One remarkable Chapala man, Isidoro Pulido, had close links to several of the most important writers and artists ever to live and work at Lake Chapala. According to American poet Witter Bynner, Isidoro was put in jail at the behest of English novelist D. H. Lawrence, before Bynner befriended Isidoro and employed him, while American artist Everett Gee Jackson taught Isidoro how to create near-perfect replicas of ancient archaeological pieces. In addition, Isidoro was immortalized in Arthur Davison Ficke’s novel, Mrs Morton of Mexico, and was the central figure in a US newspaper column published in the 1960s, a decade after his death. How on earth did all this come about?
Though Isidoro (sometimes Ysidoro) Pulido Rentería was born in Tonalá on 17 April 1909, he spent virtually his entire life in Chapala. Isidoro, son of José Refugio Pulido and Clotilde Rentería, had just turned 14 when D H Lawrence and Witter Bynner visited Chapala in 1923, and belonged to a group of young people who hung out having fun at the Hotel Arzapalo and the main beach, hoping to receive tips in exchange for cleaning shoes and running errands. Unfortunately, they entered the hotel dining room once too often, and made more noise than Lawrence (or the Arzapalo’s then manager, photographer Winfield Scott) could tolerate. According to Bynner, Lawrence complained, and Scott arranged for Isidoro and several of his friends to spend the next couple of nights in jail. (D. H. Lawrence’s wife, Frieda, in letters to friends after the publication of Bynner’s memoir, was adamant that no such incident could ever have occurred.)
Leo Stanley. 1937. “Ysidoro and his monos.” By kind permission of California Historical Society.
Bynner, who claimed to have witnessed all this, thought that Lawrence had overreacted to the boys and failed to appreciate their youthful enthusiasm. He explained in his memoir Journey with Genius how:
Ysidoro… had come to regard himself as our special room attendant, being adept not only at shoeshining but at filling missions for us with tailor, seamstress, grocer, post office, or bar. In fact we had soon set up a small bar of our own in our front room at the hotel and taught him various skills for mixing drinks. Tequila (with lemon, orange, or grapefruit and mineral water) was the staple.”
Bynner took such a shine to Isidoro that he kept in touch with him over the years and, after buying a house in Chapala in 1940, hired Isidoro (by then married) to be his aide, and to help run the household, mix cocktails and serve meals. Bynner later even built a home for Isidoro’s family.
Another local youngster, José Orozco Aguilar, also benefited from Bynner’s generosity. José originally worked for one of Bynner’s friends, a fellow Harvard graduate named Stanley Lothrop, who had worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany before retiring to Chapala in 1942. After Lothrop’s death a couple of years later, Bynner looked after José and, according to Joe Weston, “taught him how to cook, bartend and handle formal dinner parties, in short all the skills of a majordomo.”
Back in 1923… no sooner had D H Lawrence and his entourage left Chapala than a pair of young American art students—Everett Gee Jackson and Lowell Houser—arrived in town and rented the same house. Jackson and Houser lived at Lake Chapala for several years, and Jackson amassed a collection of small figurines that he analyzed in an article in the 1940s. In his memoir It’s a Long Road to Comondú, Jackson explains how he also taught Isidoro the skills needed to make high quality reproductions of ancient artifacts. And, more than twenty years later, when he returned to Chapala, Jackson was delighted to find that,
Isidoro had become a maker of candy and a dealer in pre-Columbian art in the patio of his house on Los Niños Héroes Street. I did not teach him to make candy, but when he was just a boy I had shown him how he could reproduce those figurines he and Eileen [Jackson’s wife] used to dig up back of Chapala. Now he not only made them well, but he would also take them out into the fields and gullies, bury them, and then dig them up in the company of American tourists, who were beginning to come to Chapala in increasing numbers. Isidoro did not feel guilty when the tourists bought his works; he believed his creations were just as good as the pre-Columbian ones.”
Whether or not anyone really needed Jackson’s help to produce ‘fake’ antiquities is debatable, given that there is plenty of evidence that, by the 1920s, some people were already making—and selling—genuine-looking artifacts to unsuspecting foreign visitors.
By 1930, Isidoro had married and was living with his wife, Refugio Sotelo, on Calle de los Placeres in Chapala, next door to his parents. Calle de los Placeres is a short street that runs from Avenida Hidalgo (the highway to Ajijic) up the lower slopes of Cerro San Miguel. Two years later, Isidoro and his wife were heartbroken when their daughter Estela fell ill and died before her first birthday.
Bynner had continued to revisit Chapala periodically, and he rented a house there for several months in 1934, over the 34-35 winter, and invited close friends—poet Arthur Davison Ficke and his wife, Gladys Brown—to join him. The visit gave Ficke the subject matter for his one and only novel Mrs Morton of Mexico, in which most of the characters are closely based on real people who lived in Chapala at the time. Isidoro, described as a carpenter named “Ysidoro Juarez,” plays an important cameo role in the novel in connection with “The Holy Painting of Jocotepec.”
Leo Stanley. 1937. “His family.” Family of Isidoro Pulido. By kind permission of California Historical Society.
In 1937, Californian prison doctor Leo Stanley visited Chapala. He became sufficiently interested in ancient artifacts to seek out a local to help him find and excavate likely locations. He visited Ysidoro’s hut on the side of Cerro San Miguel, and found Ysidoro, “perhaps twenty-five years of age,” to be bright, intelligent and extremely cordial. Isidoro showed Stanley all manner of stone idols, figures, toads, even cattle, and various letters from the tourists who had visited him, including Witter Bynner and a Mrs W. F. Anderson, of Monterey, California.
Isidoro’s wife had just given birth to the couple’s fourth child, but was far from well. Stanley returned the next day to examine her, and offer advice about her care, but sadly, she died a month later.
Bynner bought a house in Chapala in 1940. Three years later, he was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and about to set out for Chapala with his partner Bob Hunt, when he received a letter from Isidoro, reporting that there had been a big earthquake, felt everywhere from Mexico City to Chapala:
“We are scared now, because this morning, early about three o’clock, we heared [sic] many thunders under the earth. It is eight and the thunders are heared yet. Yesterday about the same time we had an earthquake. Many people got up immediately and ran out of the houses. All the dogs in the town barked and the hens fled from their roosts.”
Fortunately, Bynner’s vacation home survived without any serious damage.
In the 1950s, Texas-based journalist Kenneth McCaleb lived in Chapala for several years. In a newspaper column some years later, McCaleb recalled how he had known a very good faker of antiquities in Chapala, named Isidoro, who “specialized in the familiar pre-Columbian ‘primitive’ ceramic figurines of ancient Mexico.” While the aging process was a secret, Isidoro would guide customers to “places where, after some healthful exercise, he dug up his own archaeological objects.”
McCaleb was prone to some embellishment for journalistic impact, as emerges from his account of Isidoro’s demise:
Something of a ladies’ man, Isidoro was on a trip to Manzanillo in a gay mixed company of friends, when he died. Burial is mostly on the spot in Mexico and his friends, unwilling to see him laid to rest far from home (Manzanillo is in the state of Colima), hit upon a plan. They sat him up in the back seat of his car and drove him to Chapala, where his widow, Carmen, saw to it that he was properly interred.”
In fact, the reality, based on the official registration of Isidoro’s death, is far more mundane. Isidoro may have been in Manzanillo but died in a hospital in Autlán on 29 August 1956.
It is truly remarkable that a single Chapala resident named Isidoro Pulido, whose adventurous and humble life lasted less than half a century, links together some of the most significant authors and artists ever associated with Lake Chapala.
Isidoro Pulido Rentería (1909-1956): Que en paz descansa.
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My sincere thanks to Frances Kaplan, Reference & Outreach Librarian of the California Historical Society, and to the California Historical Society for permission to reproduce the images used in this post.
Sources
Witter Bynner. 1951. Journey with Genius: Recollection and Reflections Concerning The D.H. Lawrences. New York: The John Day Company.
Arthur Davison Ficke. 1939. Mrs Morton of Mexico. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.
Everett Gee Jackson. 1987. It’s a Long Road to Comondú. Texas A&M University Press.
Kenneth McCaleb. 1965. “Conversation Piece.” Corpus Christi Times, 27 Jan 1965, 14.
Santa Fe New Mexican: 11 Mar 1943, 3.
Leo L. Stanley. 1937. “Mixing in Mexico.” (2 vols). Leo L. Stanley Papers, MS 2061, California Historical Society.
E. W. Tedlock (ed). 1961. Frieda Lawrence. The memoirs and correspondence. London: Heinemann.
Joe Weston. 1972. “Lakeside Look”, Guadalajara Reporter, 10 June 1972, 11-12, 27.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
Canadian teacher, photographer and social activist Jean (‘Jackie’) Hartley lived in Jocotepec for several years at the start of the 1980s. She is still remembered in the Lake Chapala area today because she and a friend, Roma Jones, co-founded the Lakeside School for the Deaf, now the School for Special Children, located in Jocotepec:
In the summer of 1979, Jackie and Roma, then in their late 50s, drove a camper van from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to Mexico. Arriving in the town of Jocotepec (population 9000), on the shores of beautiful Lake Chapala, they decided to spend their retirement years there, in leisurely pursuit of their artistic interests: painting, photography, crafts and woodworking. These dreams were never realized; instead, their waking hours became entirely focused on meeting the needs of disadvantaged Mexican children.”
– Gwen Chan Burton, New Worlds for the Deaf.
Within a few months of arriving, and despite no experience of deaf education, Jackie, a qualified primary school teacher, and Roma had started to teach two local deaf children. Their success was evident, and the number of deaf children seeking help grew rapidly.
When Jackie and Roma returned to Canada in 1986, the support system they had established, and the teachers they had hired, ensured that the school continued to grow, barely missing a beat. The history of this pioneering and successful project, with its many highs and some lows, is candidly related in New Worlds for the Deaf.
These photographs taken by Jackie, some of them printed as greetings cards, are the only ones known to have survived to today. Signed NEJH, they were presumably taken in Jocotepec between 1979 and 1986.
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Child in shop doorway).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Child in doorway).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Young girl).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph, damaged. (Young girls with bird).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Shoeshine boy).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Burro with load).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Fisherman and boat on shore).
Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Elderly woman).
During her life,
Jackie had taught primary school students, including many indigenous children, for several years in British Columbia before bringing up her own four children. After her pharmacist husband died, Jackie had spent six months in Europe studying art before she journeyed to Mexico.” – Guadalajara Reporter
Jackie, born in about 1921, died in Victoria, British Columbia, on 24 January 1999.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Sources
Donald Grant. 1983. “Retired Canadians open Mexican school for deaf.” Globe and Mail, 25 April 1983.
The very famous American author James Michener (1907-1997) wrote more than forty books, of varying quality, in his lengthy writing career, including Mexico, a sweeping historical novel published in 1992. He began writing Mexico in 1961, but then abandoned the idea (or the manuscript was lost, depending on who’s telling the story) for about thirty years, before deciding to complete it. Shortly after its publication, Michener also released My Lost Mexico, giving his version of why and how he wrote the book’s first draft, why he’d abandoned it, and why and how it was eventually resurrected and completed.
According to American historian John Mason Hart, in his epic tome of 600+ pages Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War, Michener visited Chapala in the 1930s:
“In the 1930s James Michener resided at Lake Chapala, where he became fast friends with D. H. Lawrence and a small group of largely American writers then living by the lake. Lawrence was working on his famous novel The Plumed Serpent. The fledgling Michener attempted his own essay at the time, which he called “Mexico,” but deemed it his worst writing effort and shelved it. Fifty years later, I argued with him that the artist should not be the critic and that he should publish it for posterity. Unfortunately, his negative view of the manuscript proved correct.” (The endnote attached to this text is “Hart interview with James Michener, July 1985, Austin, Texas.”)
I have no idea what Michener actually told Hart during the interview, but clearly the first sentence is wildly inaccurate. Lawrence only visited Lake Chapala in 1923, when Michener would have been only 16 years old. Lawrence’s first visit to Chapala lasted about ten weeks from May to July 1923, and he returned to Chapala for a single day on 21 October that year. And, given that Lawrence died in Europe in 1930, the idea that Michener met Lawrence anywhere, let alone Chapala, in the 1930s is entirely fanciful!
Elsewhere, Michener himself has written that he spent three summers in Mexico in the 1930s, from 1936 to 1938 inclusive, while teaching in Colorado. In those years, he met Mexican bullfighters, ‘traveled the bullfight circuit’ and ‘traveled widely throughout Mexico.’ He even submitted a ‘compact novel on bullfighting’ to The MacMillan Publishing Company in 1937, but they weren’t interested. When Michener and his wife returned to Mexico in late 1959, it was to spend time in Mexico City and Guanajuato to research his next major book, but shelved the project in 1961 because of doubts about its structure, and some stinging initial criticism from Bennett Cerf, the then president of Random House. The draft lay unloved in a box until reemerging thirty years later.
It is possible that Michener visited Chapala, but IF he did, his visit was only very brief and has left no known footprint. There is no mention of Chapala in My Lost Mexico, and no indication whatsoever that the lakeside area would ever have appealed to Michener as possible background, inspiration or setting for a novel.
[Sadly, equally suspect, as I’ve written elsewhere is Hart’s account of the chronology and family of the New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend, who had a genuinely close connection to Chapala in the second half of the 1890s, and was one of the first Americans to ever own a house there.]
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Why has it taken me so long to write about U.S.-born photographer C. B. Waite and his important contribution to documenting Mexico at the start of the twentieth century? The main challenge has been to unravel the discrepancies and inconsistencies in most previous accounts of his life and work. So, before examining Waite’s major contributions to documenting Mexican history, let’s get some of the more common and egregious misunderstandings out of the way once and for all.
First, C. B. Waite (who signed his work “Waite Photo”) is Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927), not Charles Burlingame Waite, as erroneously claimed in 2007 in Casanova and Konzevik’s major book about Mexican photographers, and—as recently as 2016—in an exhibition catalog published by Mexico’s National University, UNAM. (For the record, Charles Burlingame Waite (1824-1909) was an American writer and judge.)
Secondly, our Charles Waite did not marry “at age 35″ and then move to Mexico “in 1896 with wife and two daughters, Helen and Mary,” as claimed by some, including Francisco Montellano. Charles Betts Waite’s first wife was Alice A. Ironmonger; their only child was Hazel Pearl Waite, born in Los Angeles on 15 June 1885. Waite was on his own when he moved to Mexico in 1897. Three years later he married his second Alice—Alice Mary Cooley (1866–1923)—in Quincy, Illinois, and the new couple made their home in Mexico City.
Thirdly, Waite’s brother was not the “William Waite” murdered on a plantation near Veracruz in April 1912, as sometimes claimed. While C. B. Waite’s own father was, coincidentally, also named William, there is no known familial connection to the man killed in Mexico. Waite’s (only) brother was Frank Dawson Waite (1854–1927), a newspaperman associated with the San Diegan and the San Diego Sun, and considered “one of the ablest and most respected editorial writers in Southern California.”
To add to the confusion, Waite has often been credited with photographs taken by other photographers working in Mexico at the same time. I examine the background and reasons for this in a separate post: Who gets the credit? Charles Betts Waite or Winfield Scott?
Waite’s pre-Mexico life
Charles Betts Waite was born in Ohio on 19 December 1861 to an English-born couple, William and Ann (née Dawson) Waite. On passport and consular documents, he usually named his birthplace as Plymouth, Ohio, but sometimes claimed Auburn Township in Crawford County, Ohio. Either way, he was apparently raised in Plymouth. But, by June 1881, shortly before his 20th birthday, he had moved to California and was working with photographer Henry Ellis Coonley in the San Diego region. He married his first wife, Alice Aldelaid Ironmonger (1860-1948), in 1883. By his late twenties, Waite was credited for photographs published in the San Diego Union and was apparently working as a view photographer for Burdick and Company in Los Angeles.
During the 1890s, Waite’s photographs of ranches and landscapes in Southern California appeared in the Los Angeles-based magazine Land of Sunshine, and he was taking commissions from railroad companies, including the Santa Fe, Los Angeles Terminal, and Mount Lowe Railways. His 1896 voter registration in California puts him at 5’6″ tall, with blue eyes, dark hair, and living at 8 Stockton Street in Los Angeles.
C. B. Waite. Three views of Lake Chapala. Postcard published by Juan Kaiser c 1901, mailed 1902.
In May 1897, Waite left the U.S. for Mexico City, where he established his first studio at Calle de Rosales #200, intending to supply photographs primarily for American magazines. He moved several times during his thirty or so years in the city, and later addresses included San Cosme #8 and San Juan de Letrán #3 and #5.
Within months of arriving in Mexico City, Waite was advertising his professional services, which included “Developing and printing for amateurs. Views, Groups, Interiors and Haciendas; also Flash Light Photos at night.” Waite certainly traveled widely throughout Mexico, taking photographs and undertaking commissions related to archaeology, scenery, tourism, and indigenous groups. By February 1900 he had amassed “a great variety of general views comprising more than 1000 subjects from all parts of the Republic.” On a short business trip to the U.S. that month, Waite personally delivered hundreds of 20x 24-inch prints of the Mexican National Railway to investors north of the border.
During the winter of 1900-01, Waite spent several weeks in southern Mexico, on a commission from the U.S.-owned Chiapas Rubber Company to document its operations, including land clearance, planting, rubber tree cultivation and tapping; these photos were intended to stimulate further foreign investment in the company and its activities. Waite also documented the cultivation and harvesting of coffee, cacao, tobacco and sugar cane.
These photo trips were not without their dangers. The Mexican Herald informed readers in early 1901 that, a few weeks earlier (during his Chiapas trip), Waite had suffered an accident while taking his photographic equipment up the Río Michol, and barely escaped with his life. The boat capsized and Waite and his boatman were thrown into the torrent. As they struggled to the shore, they managed to salvage a can of crackers and a valise which fortuitously contained a flask of cognac.
The disaster cost Waite his ‘small’ (6 ½ x8-inch format) camera in the raging waters, and he was left with only his ‘large’ (20×24-inch format) Rochester Optical camera, which weighed 100 kg in its traveling case. Undaunted, Waite carried on. At Palenque, it took a team of 12 local helpers an entire day to carry the camera the six miles (km) from the village to the ruins, where Waite then took 24 photos of the archaeological site, but only after his 12-man crew had spent eight days hacking down enough brush and foliage to guarantee the best views. Waite’s photos of Palenque were one of the highlights on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, that year.
That boat accident was not the only calamity to befall Waite in 1901. A few months later, he had an unexpected brush with Mexican police, accused of sending “indecent” material through the mail. A note in El Imparcial reported that one shipment from Waite contained photos of “miserable hovels” and “disheveled dirty women dressed in rags and men degenerated by every vice imaginable”. It was not impounded, but postcards in a second package showing “two dirty, absolutely wretched boys wracked with disease” were, and led to Waite’s arrest. Waite paid $400 pesos and was released from Belén prison three days later. Waite’s offense was not taking risqué “portraits of pubescent children” (for which Winfield Scott had been briefly imprisoned in California) but depicting the underbelly of Mexican society, which local authorities hoped would remain invisible to tourists.
Things brightened up in July 1901 when Waite was asked to visit Iguala, Guerrero, for a seance. Waite told a reporter afterwards that his photographic plates would convert skeptics: “I never had any faith in the spiritualist doctrine, but the appearance of scenes on the plates of my camera which I knew to have been absolutely clear… has aroused the curiosity of not only myself but many others who were previously skeptical on the subject.”
Waite’s major commissions that year included several for the government: Waite was tasked with producing about 1500 large format views of archaeological ruins in the republic for displays in the national museum, the precursor of Mexico’s world famous Museo Nacional de Antropología. And he was also hired by the government to supply photographs, including a series relating to bullfighting, for use on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
Waite was back in the U.S. in 1902, “on business connected with his mining interests in Mexico. During the course of his travels through the interior as a landscape photographer, Mr Waite has secured control of a number of properties and the object of his visit to the U.S. is to place his property before American capitalists.” These mines were probably the small gold, silver and lead mines in Taxco, which he registered in his name in 1904. Not much more is known about them, so presumably they were never very successful.
C.B. Waite. c 1898? Lake Chapala from Carden Residence (Villa Tlalocan), Chapala.
A few months after purchasing the photographic view business of Cox and Carmichael in 1904, Waite visited Atequiza hacienda, then owned by the Cuesta Gallardo family. From a photographic standpoint, this was a significant event, since it was here, eight years earlier, where French cinematographer Gabriel Veyre and his partner Claude Ferdinand Von Bernard filmed eight short movie films, some of the earliest movies shot anywhere in Mexico, depicting rural life, dances, cockfights and daily activities. Atequiza hacienda was also the birthplace of Octaviano de la Mora (1841-1921), arguably the most famous of all the early photographers based in Guadalajara.
Waite has left us several very interesting photographs of the hacienda, including views of the chapel, the hacienda store and main patio, the view of the main buildings from the mill, and a panoramic view of the hacienda in its idyllic setting. A year after being the official photographer documenting U.S. Secretary of State Elhu Root’s visit to Mexico in 1907, Waite revisited Atequiza to take photographs of the “La Florida” mansion and of hacienda’s orange groves.
Though Waite certainly participated as official photographer on several academic expeditions, I do not believe they include the two in 1908—led respectively by Norwegian anthropologist Carl Lumholtz and German ornithologist Hans Gadow—claimed in the timeline offered by Fuentes Rojas and her colleagues. First, there is no record of Lumholtz (author of Unknown Mexico, based on his first four trips to Mexico, all prior to 1900) visiting Mexico in 1908. And, secondly, Waite is never mentioned in Gadow’s 1908 book “Through Southern Mexico.” The confusion in the latter case perhaps arose because Gadow dedicated his book, “To C.B.”, but this is not a reference to C.B. Waite, but to pioneering American ornithologist Charles Beebe.
By 1910, Waite was a highly respected member of Mexico City’s foreign community and master of the Freemasons’ Toltec Lodge. Though Waite’s photographic activities were greatly reduced after the downfall of President Díaz, and the start of the revolution, he is known to have photographed Mexico’s centenary celebrations in 1910 and to have taken some photos related to the Maderista conspiracy.
Despite what some websites claim (eg. Getty Research Institute), there is no evidence that Waite left Mexico for the U.S. in 1913. On the contrary, Waite and his wife continued to live in Mexico City for the next decade, as is evidenced by his passport applications in 1918 and 1920.
His 1918 passport application included a lengthy affidavit explaining why he had lived outside the U.S. since May 1897:
“My mother died of consumption when I was four years old. My health failed when I was a young man and it was believed that I would die of consumption also and I was ordered to live in a warm climate by my physicians and came to Mexico where I established a Commercial Photography business, making a specialty of wholesale views of the country on a large scale. Illustrations for books and magazines of the interesting features of the country was an important part of my business.”
In the same application, Waite listed his visits to the U.S. since moving to Mexico: September 1898, January 1899, July 1899, February 190l, May 1902, July 1903, September 1903, December 1904, December 1906 and January 1912.
It was only after Alice’s death in the American Hospital in Mexico City in June 1923 that Waite opted to return to the U.S. to be closer to his daughter. He revisited Mexico with his daughter briefly in 1925, before dying in Los Angeles at the age of 65 on 22 March 1927.
Waite’s body of work
Landscapes, markets, railway lines, towns, people going about everyday tasks, farms, tropical crops, rural areas, fiestas in danger of extinction, major cities, bull fights, official events… Waite photographed all these and more, amassing a huge collection of images, which were widely published, including in the popular periodical El Mundo (later El Mundo Ilustrado), Modern Mexico, and as postcards issued by almost all the larger postcard publishers.
As early as 1901 the Sonora News Company was advertising that it sold “Waite’s Photographic Views” of “Native Types and Scenes.” This series included costumbrista images of men, women and children going about their everyday occupations and tasks. In 1902, Granat’s Mexican Specialty Store offered “Waite’s, Carmichel’s [sic] and Other Photographers’ Views of Mexico” for $2.25 a dozen.” Waite’s photos were also published and/or sold by Ruhland & Ahlschier; Latapi y Bert; J. G. Hatton; and Jacob Kalb of the Iturbide Curio Shop (all based in Mexico City), and Juan Kaiser, based in Guadalajara.
Waite’s photos were used to illustrate numerous books, including ornithologist Charles Beebe’s Two Bird-Lovers in Mexico (1905) and Percy F. Martin’s Mexico of the twentieth century (1907).
Waite. Church at Chapala, as published in Pauncefote, 1900.
In 1905, Waite applied for, and was granted, formal registration for ten photographs related to Lake Chapala, numbered 770-779. They included two photos of “the Carden residence” (Villa Tlalocan), built by British consul Lionel Carden in 1896. Three years later, Carden sold the property and moved to Cuba, so these two photos—and most probably the other eight—must be much earlier than 1905, and were probably taken at the end of the 1890s. Waite’s other photographs of Chapala in this group of ten, some of them published as postcards, included “Street in Chapala” “Cathedral, Chapala,” and “La Playa, Chapala.” Several of the photos, including the one of San Francisco Church (above) were first published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1900 to illustrate the Hon. Maud Pauncefote’s landmark article about Lake Chapala. (An extended excerpt of the article appears in chapter 46 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages.)
Waite later also registered a large number of images acquired from other photographers such as Winfield Scott, including many additional images of Chapala, as well as images of Prison Island (#2094), Tuxcueca (2177), Tizapan River (2182), Point Fuerte, Chapala (2196), Jamay (2840), Petetan (sic, 3056), Alacran Island (3058) and Cojumatlan (3062). It is likely that some or all of these were photographs taken by Scott.Examples of Waite’s work have found their way into numerous major U.S. museum and library collections, including The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens; University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research; Princeton University Library’s Collections of Western Americana; the Latin American Library of Tulane University; the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin; the Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. Photographs, University of Oregon; the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; and at the Tomás Rivera Library at University of California, Riverside.
Despite this, there have been relatively few exhibitions featuring his work apart from “Mexican Life and Culture During the Porfiriato: The Photography of C.B. Waite, 1898-1913″ at the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, in 1991; “Mexico: From Empire to Revolution” at the Getty Institute in 2000-2001; and “Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones” at Galerías de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 2016.
Waite’s significant contribution to the history of photography in Mexico was recognized at the turn of the millennium by the nation’s postal authorities, when it issued a series of stamps and souvenir sheet to commemorate 100 years of photography in Mexico. A number of the stamps incorporated tiny versions of photographs taken by Waite into their design.
Servicio Postal Mexicano. (2000) 100 years of photography.
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Francisco Ballesteros Montellano. 1989. “C. B. Waite, profesional fotógrafo.” Tesis de Licenciatura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
___ 1994. C. B. Waite, fotógrafo. Una mirada diversa sobre el México de principios del siglo XX. Mexico: Grijalba/CNCA.
___ 1998. Charles B. Waite: la época de oro de las postales en México. Mexico: CONACULTA (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Las Artes).
Francisco Hernández. 2018. Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite (novel). USA: Almadia.
Benigno Casas. 2010. “Charles B. Waite y Winfield Scott: lo documental y lo estético en su obra fotográfica”. Dimensión antropológica, 48: 221–244.
Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas, Gabriela Prieto Soriano, Gabriela Vilches Larrea (coordinators). 2016. Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones. Mexico City: UNAM, Facultad de Artes y Diseño.
Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik. 2007. Mexico: A Photographic History. Mexico: Editorial RM.
Clarence Alan McGrew. 1922. City of San Diego and San Diego County. The Birthplace of California. The American Historical Society. Vol I, p 289.
Hon. Maud Pauncefote. 1900. “Chapala the Beautiful.” Harper’s Bazar, Volume XXXIII #52, December 29, 1900. p 2231-3.
The Mexican Herald: 29 Aug 1897; 21 Feb 1900, 5; 18 Nov 1900, 6; 10 Feb 1901, 8; 30 March 1901, 8; 14 July 1901, 17; 28 July, 1901, 17; 19 Aug 1901, 8; 17 April 1902, 8; 18 Nov 1902; 3 March 1904, 7; 1 Sep 1904, 11; 24 Apr 1908; 27 June 1910; 18 August 1914, 5.
Diario Oficial de la Federación: 19 Jan 1905, 277-278-279; 17 March 1905, 300; 6 April 1905, 663; 13 April 1905; 14 Jan 1908, 150-151; 1 June 1908, 477-8; 14 July 1908, 202-3; 5 Oct 1908, 493.
The Two Republics: 5 Jan 1898, 6.
El Imparcial: 5 June 1901.
Jalisco Times: 10 Apr 1908.
El Universal, 20 May 1925.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) combines the work of two photographers—Winfield Scott (1863-1942) and Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927)—into a single collection titled “C.B. Waite / W. Scott.” The two men did have several things in common: of similar age, both were prominent US-born photographers working in Mexico at the start of the twentieth century; both learned photography in California before working for railway companies; both married twice and had one daughter; and they both spent some time in jail on account of their chosen profession.
These two photographers were also interested in similar subject matter and traveled extensively in Mexico. The images they took, specifically tailored to an English-speaking audience, offered, in the words of photographic historian Rosa Casanova, “a ‘costumbrista’ vision of the landscape, monuments, and people of the country, producing an imagery that was also adopted in Mexico, thanks to their widespread circulation in the form of postcards.”
C.B. Waite. c 1898. View from Villa Tlalocan (the Carden residence), Chapala.
Waite’s photos, like this one of “Lake Chapala, Méx. from Carden Residence” usually have a caption and credit added along their lower edge.
Waite, based in Mexico City, traveled by train, oxcart, stagecoach, mule and on foot to visit some of the country’s remotest regions, as far south as Chiapas. Scott, meanwhile, lived initially in Guanajuato and then settled in Jalisco, where he married into a family of modest means and established a small farm near Ocotlán on the northern shore of Lake Chapala. His travels were centered on the areas served by the Mexican Central Railway.
Winfield Scott. c 1897. Chapala lakeshore, as reproduced and attributed to Waite in Diario de campo (INAH, 2004). See Fig 1.1 of Lake Chapala: a postcard history.
The photo above, definitely by Winfield Scott, is one of those sometimes mistakenly attributed to C.B. Waite. Scott’s typical markings—caption and credit in black boxes—have been almost entirely erased.
So why is their work combined into a single collection in the Fototeca Nacional? Prior to 2005, the photographs had all been thought to be the work of Waite; the collection’s name was revised in 2005 when it was recognized that many of the photos had been taken by Scott. In part, this confusion arose because many images taken by Scott had subsequently been monetized by Waite.
Casanova and Konzevik argue that “ample evidence suggests that the two had some sort of agreement under which both of them used the material without distinguishing between them who had actually taken a specific photo.” Other researchers have assumed that, since photo piracy was relatively rife in Mexico at the time, Waite simply ignored Scott’s authorship and published Scott’s work as his own. (This idea was developed by novelist Fernando Hernández into his fictional work, Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite.)
The truth, at least in my opinion, is far more prosaic. There is no solid evidence that Scott and Waite ever collaborated in the manner suggested by Casanova and Konzevik. But contemporaneous newspaper records do show how Waite expanded his catalog of photographs by purchasing the work of smaller rival firms. In 1904, for example, Waite advertised that, “Having bought the photographic view business of Cox and Carmichael, any person desiring views from their negatives can obtain them from C. B. Waite, San Juan de Letrán No. 3.” Four years later, in 1908, Waite advertised in The Mexican Herald that he had acquired Scott’s photographs:
Having purchased the photographic view negatives of Mr. Winfield Scott of Ocotlán, Jalisco, all orders for his Types and Views of Mexico must now be sent direct to me. I now have the largest assortment of views of any one country in the world.”
Immediately after acquiring Scott’s photos, Waite formally registered his rights to them with the Mexican government. When republishing these photos, Waite generally blocked or edited out any previous captions or signature, and added his own statement of ownership, as was entirely within his rights. Hence, the confusion over the original authorship of individual photographs arose from a perfectly legal and normal commercial transaction, not one involving any subterfuge or trickery.
Among the images taken by Scott that Waite acquired and registered are numerous photographs related to Lake Chapala, including views of Prison Island (#2094), Tuxcueca (2177), Tizapan River (2182), Point Fuerte, Chapala (2196), Jamay (2840), Petetan (sic, 3056), Alacran Island (3058) and Cojumatlan (3062). It may not be possible to decide which of the two expert photographers took some of the photos currently in the Waite/Scott collection of the Fototeca Nacional, but I think it is possible to do so for those photos that relate to Lake Chapala.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History with reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards tells the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
Francisco Hernández. 2018. Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite (novel). USA: Almadia.
Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik. 2007. Mexico: A Photographic History. Mexico: Editorial RM.
The Mexican Herald: 3 March 1904, 7; 24 Apr 1908.
Diario Oficial de la Federación: 14 Jan 1908, 150-151; 1 June 1908, 477-8; 14 July 1908, 202-3.
I recently came across a short, but interesting, piece describing Chapala in the mid-1940s. I currently know nothing about its author, Temple Manning, beyond the longevity of their syndicated byline, first used in the 1920s and still going strong in the 1960s.
Here are a few excerpts from Manning’s description of “Chapala — A Mexican City.”
MEXICO is certainly a tourists’ paradise, visited by people from all over the world. Yet some of the loveliest places are nearly always entirely overlooked by visitors in a frightful hurry to reach the popular tourist objectives. But those who love Mexico strive to avoid the beaten track even in memory and let their feet or their fancy wander in the direction of some of this earth’s loveliest places.
Illustration (artist uncredited) from The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.
Chapala itself is one of the most delightful spots we know in which to do nothing and thoroughly enjoy the process. It isn’t a sightseeing town, there are no ancient churches or colonial buildings ruins to be viewed, which is a very rare state of affairs for Mexico. The town is built along the shore of the lake which is about 75 miles long and from five to 25 miles wide. The lake shores for miles in either direction are lined with lovely parks and charming villas, and the lake itself is a favorite bathing spot…
One of the most delightful experiences at Chapala is a launch ride around the lake. It is the best way to see the wild bird and fowl for which the district is famous. Lake Chapala and nearby ponds are among the few remaining haunts of the snowy egret whose feathers used to adorn the hats of the smartest abroad. The lake also teems with large turtles, harmless fellows since the bathers never take any notice of them. The launch ride, too, offers a good vantage point from which to view the lovely villas and gardens.
Building goes on apace at Chapala. To prevent speculators from buying land and holding it for a rise in values, an ordinance has been passed that requires a house to be built within a year of buying a lot. And since there are strict regulations about the type of house that may be erected, the result is a colony of artistic houses set in lovely, carefully tended grounds.
Chapala is famous for fine food and also for strolling bands of singers and players, some of whom sing and play exceptionally well. To eat fine food whilst being serenaded by an impromptu orchestra that plays for you and your party alone, is one of the more pleasant experiences of life, and at Chapala it can be enjoyed for a very modest outlay.
The town is also famous for its flowers. On one hill alone two thousand bougainvilles have been planted. After you have visited Chapala, you’ll always think of it in connection with beautiful flowers.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Source
Temple Manning. 1944. “Chapala — A Mexican City.” The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.
Ajijic’s unofficial photographer in the early 1970s was free-spirited Beverly Johnson (1933-1976), one of the many people who helped make Ajijic tick in what old timers still remember as the ‘good old days.’ Beverly and her five young children moved to Mexico in the early 1960s and settled in Ajijic, where she hoped to eke out a living from singing.
Photo of Beverly Johnson in Ajijic by Helen Goodridge. Reproduced by kind permission of Jill Maldonado.
The tenuous roots that she initially put down in Ajijic grew steadily over the years, despite her premature death in 1976, and her children have maintained ties to the village that endure to this day.
As Ajijic’s unofficial village photographer, Beverly was often asked to shoot personal portraits, wedding photos, landscape shots, first communions, baptisms and even portraits of recently deceased children for their families to remember them by.
At least one exhibition of Beverly’s photos was held in Ajijic. It was in about 1971 at the Galería del Lago (now the Ajijic Cultural Center), next to the old movie house. One of Beverly’s daughters recalls that her mother’s photos were also exhibited by Laura Bateman, who held shows in her own home before opening Ajijic’s first purpose-built gallery, Rincón del Arte at Hidalgo #41.
Some of Beverly’s photographs have been published previously. Beverly’s children kindly provided all but one of the photos for an article on MexConnect — A Tour of Ajijic, Chapala, Mexico, in about 1970 — with daughter Tamara choosing the selection and providing the captions.
Beverly’s daughter Jill has rightly observed that her mother’s black and white portraits of Ajijic families are “timeless and most precious.”
It is hoped to stage an exhibition of Beverly Johnson’s photographs at the Ajijic Museo de Arte (Priv. Flores Magón 3-A, Ajijic) to celebrate her important contribution to village life in Ajijic in the 1970s.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Tamara Janúz, Jill Maldonado, Rachel Lyn Johnson and Miriam Pérez Johnson for their support in helping preserve their mother’s photographic legacy, and to Carol Shepherd McClain for graciously sharing the photographs used in this post to illustrate Beverly’s work.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy!
Visual artists
Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a Throne, the Story of a Mexican Revolt (1900), the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala. Embree, who published several novels and numerous short stories, was a genuine Mexicophile if ever there was one, but died in his early thirties.
Way back in the 1940s, painter Hari Kidd (1899-1964), who had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, lived in Chapala. This is when he first met and fell in love with fellow artist Edythe Wallach, his future wife, who was then living in Ajijic.
American artist Gerry Pierce (1900-1969), who painted several watercolors in Ajijic in the mid-1940s, began his art career in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1920s.
Canadian artist Clarence Ainslie Loomis painted Ajijic in the early 1990s. I would love to learn more about this elusive character whose paintings are very distinctive.
Loomis was following in the footsteps, so to speak, of Canadian artist Eunice Hunt and her husband Paul Huf who spent many years working in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple married in Ajijic and their two sons were both born in Mexico. The family subsequently moved to Paul’s native Germany to continue their artistic careers.
In the 1950s, a young Canadian woman, Dorothy Whelan, became the partner of artist and photographer Ernest Alexander (1921-1974) who ran the Scorpion Club in Ajijic. “Alex” led an extraordinary life but, sadly, things spiraled out of control after the couple left Ajijic and moved to San Francisco.
Swedish-American visual artist Carlo Wahlbeck (born in 1933) studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in Canada and lived in Chapala for two or three years in the mid-1970s.
Multi-talented Mexican guitarist and artist Gustavo Sendis (1941-1989) lived many years in Ajijic and had an exhibition on Vancouver Island at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., in July 1980. If anyone knows any details of this exhibit, then please get in touch!
Toronto muralist and painter John Russell Richmond (1926-2013) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. In Ajijic, he became known (and signed his work) as Juan Compo.
Margaret Van Gurp (1926-2020), a well known artist from eastern Canada, sketched and painted in Jocotepec in 1983, while living with her daughter Susan, then working at the Lakeside School for the Deaf. One of the founders of that school was Jackie Hartley, a retired Canadian teacher who had taught in Canada, and who took some excellent photographs of Jocotepec in the 1980s.
Hungarian-Canadian artist Michael Fischer (?-2018), based outside Toronto, taught illustration and composition at George Brown College, and painted at Lake Chapala several times, staying in San Juan Cosalá.
The body of work completed by Duncan de Kergommeaux during his visit of several weeks to San Juan Cosalá in 2006 was included in his solo show in Ottawa the following year.
Highly regarded painter, collage artist and violinist Leonard Brooks (1911-2011) and his wife, Reva, an award-winning photographer, made their home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. Brookes’ interesting collage acrylic on canvas titled “Chapala” was sold at auction in 2020.
Poets, authors, writers and playwrights
Several Canadian poets have been inspired by Lake Chapala. For example, Earle Birney visited Ajijic in the 1950s and Canadian performance poet Canadian performance poet Leanne Averbach visited the lake many years later. The great Al Purdy first visited Chapala on a quest to explore the haunts of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and later produced a limited edition book based on his trip. [Lawrence wrote his novel “The Plumed Serpent” while staying in Chapala in 1923.] Purdy also wrote a travel piece about Ajijic.
Prominent Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was teaching at the American School of Guadalajara when she visited and photographed Lake Chapala at about the same time as D. H. Lawrence was there.
Canadian historian and non-fiction writer Ross Parmenter (1912-1999) only ever spent a few days at Lake Chapala, in 1946, but has left us detailed descriptions of the local villages and of what life was like at the time. His accounts of the difficulties of traveling from Chapala to Ajijic, first by car, and then by boat, in the 1940s are interesting reading.
The enigmatic Maxwell Desmond Poyntz, who was born in British Columbia on 4 January 1918 and died in Canada, at the age of 81, on 29 November 1999, is known to have visited Jocotepec while working on a “proposed trilogy”. It is unclear if he ever finished this magnum opus; there is no record of its publication.
Former CBC war correspondent and author Captain William (“Bill”) Strange (1902-1983) and his wife Jean Strange, one of Canada’s earliest female architects, lived in Chapala for decades and, in the 1960s, produced several radio documentaries about Mexico.
US-born author and diplomat José de Olivares, who wrote an account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901, held a US consular position in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1915-1924.
The famous Canadian playwright and novelist George Ryga (1932-1987) had a holiday home in San Antonio Tlayacapan for many years in the 1970s and 1980s and frequently visited and wrote while staying there. His play “Portrait of Angelica” is set in Ajijic. Several literary friends and relatives of Ryga also visited or used his holiday home. They include Ryga’s daughter Tanya (a drama teacher) and her husband Larry Reece, a musician, artist and drama professor; Brian Paisley, and the multi-talented Ken Smedley and his wife, the actress, artist and model, Dorian Smedley-Kohl. Ken and Dorian Smedley were instrumental in mounting the first (and only) Ajijic Fringe Theatre – “El Fringe” – in 1988.
Canada was a safe haven for Scottish Beat novelist Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), who worked on his controversial novel Cain’s Book (1960) in Ajijic in the late 1950s. The group of friends that helped smuggle Trocchi into Canada to escape prosecution in the U.S. included American novelist Norman Mailer (who first visited Ajijic in the late-1940s).
American Buddhist author Pema Chödrön, known at the time as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, lived with her then husband, the poet and writer Jim Levy, for about a year in Ajijic from mid-1968 until May 1969. Chödrön moved to Canada in 1984 to establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the Abbey’s director in 1986 and still holds that position today.
Additional profiles of Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala are added periodically. This post was last updated on 29 June 2024.
Comments and corrections welcomed, whether via the comments function or email.
Prolific author Emily Huntington was born on 22 October 1833 in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and died on 2 November 1913. Though Wikipedia claims that she died in Mexico City, contemporaneous newspapers make it clear that she died of heart trouble at her home in St. Paul, Minnesota, a few days after her eightieth birthday.
Huntington, who graduated in 1857 from Oberlin College, Ohio, married John E Miller in 1860. Their only daughter died in infancy. One of their three sons, Harry (born in about 1862) became a mining engineer in Mexico; in 1908, he married 24-year-old, Pachuca-born Sara Smith, in the city of Guanajuato.
Emily Huntington Miller, c 1883 (Public domain)
Huntington founded or co-founded several children’s magazines, including The Little Corporal and St. Nicholas. She was also an Associate Editor of The Ladies Home Journal, and Dean of Women at Northwestern University in Illinois.
In 1860, she married John E. Miller. Of their children, three sons survived, including George A. Miller; their only daughter died in infancy.
Emily Huntington Miller’s works include The Little corporal (1874); The parish of Fair Haven (1876); Fighting the enemy (1877); The house that Johnny rented (1877); Little neighbors (1879); Uncle Dick’s Legacy (1879); A year at Riverside Farm (1879); Kathie’s experience (1886); Debt and credit: a story of Acadia (1886); Thorn-apples (1887); What happened on a Christmas eve (1888); The royal road to fortune (1889); Helps and hindrances (1892); Songs from the nest (1894); and The adventures of a small boy (1923). In addition, she composed hundreds of poems, dozens of which were subsequently set to music, and many hymns.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Lake Chapala: A Postcard History (2022) uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of the Hotel Ribera and how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
Star Tribune: 16 Nov 1913, 28.
San Francisco Examiner: 4 November 1913, 1.
The Mexican Herald: 17 Feb 1911, 7.
New York Times. 1913. “Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller” (obit). New York Times, 5 November 1913.
Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.
At the start of the twentieth century, Jacob Kalb, a Jewish immigrant of Austrian ancestry, owned and operated the Iturbide Curio Store in downtown Mexico City. The store, selling all manner of Mexican tourist souvenirs and mementoes, opened in 1903 on the ground floor of the Hotel Iturbide. The hotel occupied the historic Palacio de Iturbide (Iturbide Palace), a superb 18th century Mexican baroque building that survives to this day. It was bought and beautifully restored in 1965 by the Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) and is now the Banamex Cultural Foundation (Fomento Cultural Banamex).
The Iturbide Curio Store was one of several competing curio stores in that area at that time, including one run by Jakob Granat, one of Kalb’s nephews, across the street. (Granat also published at least one postcard of Chapala.)
No expense was spared when Kalb opened his store in 1903. Carefully selected wares were displayed in elegant showcases, all beautifully illuminated by electric lighting, a relatively recent innovation.
Iturbide Curio Store (publicity postcard image)
Soon afterwards, Kalb started to publish postcards (both monochrome and color), using various different imprints, ranging from ““Iturbide Curio Store” and “J.C.S” (typesetters of the time often used the letter J in place of the letter I) to “J.K.”
Kalb did not credit the photographer on his cards but at least one card utilizes a photograph taken by Charles Betts Waite, a noteworthy American photographer based in Mexico City at that time.
Kalb published dozens of cards of Guadalajara, some with undivided backs (and therefore pre-1906 in date). These early cards include the only known image of Lake Chapala published by Kalb. This attractive view of Casa Schnaider (Villa Josefina) with the Hotel Arzapalo in the background, was published in about 1904; a postally-used example was mailed the following year. The pretty, European-style ‘cottage’ was originally named Villa Albion, and had been built by the eccentric Norwegian-born Englishman Septimus Crowe in 1896, after he sold the Villa Montecarlo. In 1901, Crowe sold Villa Albion to the US-born Guadalajara beer magnate Joseph Maximilian Schnaider, who promptly renamed it Villa Josefina, in honor of his wife. More than a century later, the property continues to bear this name.
Photographer unknown. Lake Chapala. Iturbide Curio Store postcard #507. c. 1904.
Kalb published this image at least twice, with minor modifications. The “Iturbide Curio Store” version, numbered 228, had a wider white band along the bottom and a flag fluttering from the Villa Josefina flagpole. When Kalb reissued the photo as a “J.C.S.” edition, the image was slightly cropped and the flag removed.
Kalb produced several hundred postcards in total, covering the entire country and designed to appeal to the widest possible cross section of the rapidly increasing flow of tourists exploring Mexico.
In 1906, Kalb advertised in a Mexico City paper that he had the largest stock of picture postcards of Mexico. A collection of 100 views cost $2.00; the wholesale price was $16.00 for 1000.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.
Sources
Valentina Serrano & Ricardo Pelz. “Serie azul y roja de Jacobo Granat.” Presentation at 8th Mexican Congress on Postcards, Palacio Postal, Mexico City. 16-18 July 2015.
In the mid-1890s, New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend, born in 1832, and her husband, Gideon, became, almost certainly, the first American couple to own property in the town of Chapala—and they didn’t even have to pay for it, because it was a gift from their eldest daughter, Cora.
Mary Ashley and Gideon lived in New Orleans, where she had established a reputation as a novelist and poet. She published under several pen names, including Xariffa (or Zariffa) for her serious poetry, and two “humorously masculine names”—Crab Crossbones and Michael O’Quillo—for satirical pieces. As “Poet Laureate of New Orleans,” she was commissioned to compose and recite a special poem for the opening of the New Orleans exposition in 1884.
Mary Ashley Townsend (American Women, 1897)
Mary Ashley was widely traveled and first visited Mexico in 1875. During her extended visits in various parts of Mexico, Mary Ashley published regular columns in papers such as the New Orleans Picayune with astute and informative observations of natural history, architecture, people at work and play, fashion, society, food, etc. She was working on a book based on these columns at the time of her death. The book was only rediscovered and published many decades later, as Here and There in Mexico: The Travel Writings of Mary Ashley Townsend.
Mary Ashley’s daughter Cora Alice Townsend de Rascón (born in 1855) was the widow of wealthy hacienda owner and diplomat José Martín Rascón, the first Mexican minister to Japan, and a confidante of President Díaz. Rascón died unexpectedly in 1893 in San Francisco on his way home to Mexico. After his death, Cora inherited and administered his substantial estate, including several haciendas in San Luis Potosí.
In 1895, Cora bought the Villa Montecarlo from English eccentric Septimus Crowe and gave it to her parents as a Christmas present. A few weeks previously, Cora and her mother had both attended the 11th Congreso Internacional de Americanistas in Mexico City, as had British consul Lionel Carden, who had already started building Villa Tlalocan, his own well-appointed home in Chapala, designed by English architect George Edward King.
Cora’s parents loved Chapala and spent several months each winter there. Gideon Townsend, a financier, liked it for the sake of his health and planted dozens of coffee trees. The Townsend house—at that time the “furthest west of all the cottages”— was a prominent local landmark. According to The Mexican Herald in 1897, “On the highest peak one sees a bright red and white house with a tower which looks as if it came from the old baronial castles of the middle ages.”
Mary Ashley Townsend wrote several poems in Chapala, at least two of which are about the lake. The first, titled “On Lake Chapala” is typical of her lyrical style and offers a halcyon view of her winter home.
“On Lake Chapala”
Oh Nature! soother of the heart that bleeds
Thou, with the boundless beauty of thy skies.
And mountain shapes which improbably rise,
Dost preach thine own among a thousand creeds.
Amid conflicting ways, of words and deeds,
Bewildered man his tangled pathway plies
To clutch at truth where truth his grasp denies,
While thou, the unfailing trinity his soul unheeds!
‘Tis writ oh, Nature! on the veiled winds,
On voiceless planets that our planet nears,
In limpid brooks, in the unfathomed sea—
Writ on the pebble that the lone shore finds,
Writ on the foreheads of the flying years,
Thine was, thine is, thine man shall ever be.
+ + +
The second poem, titled simply “Lake Chapala,” is, in my opinion, far more interesting.
“Lake Chapala”
A sunken city in thy depths tis said,
Fair Lake Chapala, lieth hidden deep,
And water weeds across its casements creep,
Or bar the doors on its unburied dead.
Upon its domes and towers are never shed
The sun’s bright beams, its ancient gateways keep
Grim wardens sleeping an eternal sleep
While through its streets the marching ages tread.
But, in the night time when the moon is low,
The murmuring waves which touch thy tropic shore
The songs of Aztec maidens with them bring
And stronger voices of warriors in their woe
And lovers’ tender accents come once more
Up from the sunken city wandering.
+ + +
This poem relates directly to an idea then circling in the U.S. that an early town or city at Lake Chapala had been submerged and now lay under water. Distinguished American anthropologist Frederick Starr (1858-1933) spent the winter of 1895-1896 at Lake Chapala investigating the rumors of this submerged city, rumors based mainly on the large number of pottery fragments recovered from the lake bed whenever the water level fell. After collecting and studying 261 individual specimens of pottery, Starr concluded that they were likely to be “offerings made to the lake itself or some spirit resident there-in,” and not utilitarian household items. Starr also recognized that changes in lake level might explain why the pieces were now found at some distance from the current shoreline.
In “Lake Chapala,” Mary Ashley Townsend, looking across the waters of the lake from her stately residence, Villa Montecarlo, indulged her imagination and poetic talents.
Unfortunately, tragedy would soon befall her family. Her eldest daughter, Cora, married Bannister Smith Monro, a New Yorker living in Europe, in 1896, and moved to Paris. The Monros’ daughter (Cora Monro) was born the following year, and their son a year later. Tragically, on 28 March 1898, Cora died within days of giving birth to their son, who died only a few weeks later. As if this wasn’t enough ill-luck, Bannister died on 15 August 1899. Young Cora Monro, orphaned before she was three years old, inherited the massive land holdings in Mexico, and was taken in by her maternal aunt, Mrs George Lee, in Galveston, Texas. Mary Ashley’s husband, Gideon, also died in 1899, meaning that Mary Ashley had lost her eldest child, as well as a grandson, a son-in-law and her own husband within two years. The run of bad luck did not end there. Mary Ashley was severely injured in a train crash in Texas, and suffered months of ill health prior to her own death on 7 June 1901.
The Montecarlo property was eventually acquired—the conflicting versions of how this occurred are impossible to reconcile and leave several unanswered questions—by Aurelio González Hermosillo (1862–1927), a wealthy lawyer and financier who owned the Hacienda Santa Cruz del Valle near Guadalajara.
Note that American historian John Mason Hart’s account of Cora’s life in Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War, is error-strewn. His claim, for example, that Rascón died in 1896 and that Cora Townsend then continued to run the hacienda, very successfully, for another decade, until her own death in 1906, is clearly wrong since Rascón died in 1893 and Cora in 1898.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My sincere thanks to Michael Olivas for investigating the Stanton-Townsend Papers in the Special Collections Division of the Howard-Tilton Library at Tulane University, New Orleans.
Sources
James Mason Hart. 2002. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War. University of California Press, page 398.
Mary Ashley Townsend. 2001. Here and There in Mexico: The Travel Writings of Mary Ashley Townsend. (edited by Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr.) University of Alabama Press.
The Salt Lake Herald: 16 November 1895.
Starr, Frederick. 1897. “The Little Pottery Objects of Lake Chapala, Mexico.” Department of Anthropology Bulletin II. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
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John Purvis Clare (1910-1991), who studied at the University of Saskatchewan, served as a public relations officer for the Royal Canadian Air Force in North Africa. During his lengthy journalistic career, Clare worked for The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Telegram, and was the war correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star, as well as managing editor of MacLean’s Magazine and an editor at Chatelaine and Geos. His short stories were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and many other magazines. He also wrote The Passionate Invaders, a humorous novel, published in 1965, about ‘the first armed invasion of the United States from Canada in more than a hundred years.’
Dollero was born in Turin in November 1872. He moved to Mexico in 1895, but continued to make regular return trips to Europe. In 1898, he married Maria Luisa Paoletti, countess of Rodoretto (the daughter of the Italian vice consul to Mexico) in Mexico City. Eight years later, in 1906, the couple—now with two children, Ernastina and Lamberto, and a Mexican servant—are named on the passenger manifest of a boat back from Europe. The couple added twin boys to their family in 1912.
In “Lake Chapala,” Mary Ashley Townsend, looking across the waters of the lake from her stately residence, Villa Montecarlo, indulged her imagination and poetic talents.