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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When I first wrote about Salomón Zepeda several years ago, I confessed that my research had failed to unearth anything of substance about him, despite the fact that he published a Spanish-language novel set at Lake Chapala in 1951.
Salomón Zepeda was the author of La Ondina de Chapala (“The Water Nymph of Chapala”), a 149-page Spanish-language novel published by Imprenta Ruíz in Mexico City. The cover art appears to be by “Magallón.”
Several subsequent attempts to find out more about the author met with equally dispiriting results. Knowing nothing beyond the cover of the novel, I had always assumed, based on the cover art, that it was almost certainly a pocket romance of relatively limited artistic merit.
However, I was forced to revise my opinion after my able and indefatigable research assistant in Mexico, Sra. Maricruz Ibarra, managed to acquire scans of the entire book. Realizing that the novel was not simply a throw-away romance prompted me to try once again to seek more details of its elusive author.
I can finally offer a few tantalizing clues about the author’s life and work. Salomón Zepeda was born in Tala, Jalisco, on 5 May 1917. His parents were Juan Zepeda Lara (then aged 32) and Gregoria Mariscal (29). He apparently had at least two brothers: Feliciano and Jorge. A close reading of his novel strongly suggests that he had a privileged upbringing. He was certainly familiar with European literature, art and history.
Zepeda appears to have lived most of his life in Mexico City, where he died on 26 May 1985. His death certificate lists him as “single” and gives his occupation as “writer.” His home was at Privada Avena 7, Granjas Esmeralda, Tlalpan.
If you are interested in reading La Ondina de Chapala, you may be able to borrow, via inter-library loan, one of the copies held in a number of academic libraries in the U.S. These libraries include the “Southern Regional Library Facility” of the University of California Los Angeles.
While I have yet to find any evidence that he published a second book, the back page of La Ondina de Chapala refers to two works in progress: a collection of stories entitled Los Rostros Alucinados (“The Hallucinating Faces”) and a novel titled La Ciudad Doliente (“The Suffering City”). If you know anything about either of these works, please get in touch!
Note: This is an updated version of a post first published 12 December 2016.
Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Tink Strother (1919-2007) was, an acclaimed portrait painter who lived in Ajijic from 1961 to 1963. As Peggy Kelly wrote in her obituary of Strother for the Santa Paula News, Strother’s portraits reflect “not only the physical likeness of the subject but also their personality and soul.”
In Ajijic, Tink Strother met Colombian artist Carlos López Ruíz (1912-1972). They subsequently moved to California, where they opened a joint studio and gallery, first in Pico Rivera and then in Whittier.
The owner of this striking portrait contacted us in the hope that someone could identify the individual so deftly painted by Strother.
Tink Strother. c1962. Untitled portrait. Reproduced courtesy of Eliot Roberts
By an extraordinary coincidence, this painting is remarkably similar to the one immediately behind her in this image of the artist in her studio in 1962, previously published in our profile of her:
Tink Strother in her Ajijic studio, ca 1962
The two paintings appear to be portraits, from slightly different angles, of the same individual. Please get in touch if you recognize this individual who was the subject of such a superb portrait.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Sandra Scofield’s first novel, Gringa, was based on the author’s extensive travels in Mexico in the 1960s. The novel is set in the violent turbulence of 1968 when, a few weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games in Mexico City, hundreds of students protesting in Tlatelolco Plaza were massacred by soldiers.
The “gringa” of the book’s title is Abilene “Abby” Painter, a 25-year-old Texan who is trapped in “an abusive, torrid relationship” with Antonio Velez, a famous Mexican bullfighter. In the words of Publishers Weekly, “her self-esteem is so paltry that she serves as a sexual doormat for her swaggering lover” whose “pride in his animal trophies points up the obvious analogy between his mistresses and these slain creatures.” The student protests and their aftermath finally open Abby’s eyes to what she really wants, but can she escape without losing her life? In addition to sex, violence and death, the book explores the full range of animal instincts and the dichotomy between chance and choice in individuals’ lives.
Several acclaimed novels later, Scofield’s A Chance to See Egyptis (despite its title) also set in Mexico, and was written following a trip to Lake Chapala in the early 1990s. Events in A Chance to See Egypt take place against a backdrop of two villages (Lago de Luz and Tecatitlán) on a fictionalized Lake Chapala. The novel, which won the Best Fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 1996, will be considered in more detail in a separate post.
Though she spent most of her adult life in Oregon and Montana, Sandra Scofield was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1943. She attended Our Lady of Victory Academy in Fort Worth before graduating from Odessa High School in 1960. She then studied at Odessa Junior College and the University of Texas, where she completed a B.A. in Speech in 1964. She first visited Mexico shortly before graduation.
After studying theatre at Northern Illinois University (1967-68), Scofield had a one-year acting fellowship at Cornell University the following year. After divorcing her first husband in 1974, Scofield remarried and moved to Oregon, where she returned to academic life to gain a masters degree related to language education (1977) and a doctorate (1979) from the University of Oregon.
Scofield taught in high schools and colleges before deciding to write full time in 1983. After establishing her writing career, she occasionally gave classes at writers festivals (such as the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in 1993) and as a visiting lecturer in MFA programs. Scofield later joined the faculty of the Solstice MFA low residency program at Pine Manor College in Maryland.
Her literary awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1991); the Texas Institute of Letters Fiction Award; the American Book Award; and nominations for a National Book Award (1991); the Oregon Book Award and the First Fiction Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters.
Scofield’s novels are Gringa (1989), Beyond Deserving (1991), Walking Dunes (1992), More Than Allies (1993), Opal on Dry Ground (1994), A Chance to See Egypt (1996) and Plain Seeing (1997).
More recently, Scofield published three long stories as Swim: Stories of the Sixties (2017). One of these stories, “An Easy Pass,” is set in Mexico and relates (in the author’s own words) to “an almost hysterical fascination with bullfighters (especially the young beginning ones).”
Scofield’s non-fiction works include Occasions of Sin: a Memoir (2004); The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer (2007); and The Last Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision (2017). She has also written numerous book reviews for major regional publications such as the Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and The Boston Globe.
I am grateful to J. Weston Marshall, Archival Associate of the Special Collections Library of Texas Tech University, for kindly supplying me with a copy of Sandra Scofield’s notes describing the genesis of A Chance to See Egypt.
Sandra Scofield. 1996. A Chance to See Egypt. Cliff Street Books (Harper Collins).
Sandra Scofield. 2005. “A Chance to See Egypt; writing history explained by Scofield,” typescript, 2005, Item 53 in Sandra Scofield Papers, 1958-2005 and undated, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Several photographs of Ajijic by Jacques Van Belle (ca 1924-2012) are captioned “Hotel Laguna.” They are believed to date from the late 1950s.
Jacques Van Belle. ca. 1960. Hotel Laguna, Ajijic.
The main hotels in Ajijic at about the time of the photos were:
Casa Heuer, a rustic lakefront property run by siblings Paul and Liesel Heuer west of the pier in Ajijic. ‘Pablo’ Heuer died in 1957. The architectural style of Casa Heuer does not match the photographs.
Posada Ajijic, the centrally-located hotel, had its main entrance on Calle 16 de Septiembre and extended to the lakeshore. It had been operating an an hotel for more than thirty years before the Eager family ran it from 1976 to 1990. The Eagers closed Posada Ajijic in 1990 and immediately opened their own new hotel, La Nueva Posada, a few blocks further east.
Quinta Mi Retiro (aka Hotel del General). This hotel was most active in the 1950s and 1960s.
Hotel Anita. This small hotel was on Calle Juárez, and is the “Hotel Laguna” shown in these photographs. In 1967 it was renamed Hotel Villa del Lago.
Jacques Van Belle. ca. 1960. Hotel Laguna, Ajijic.
The Hotel Villa del Lago (Hotel Laguna) was originally owned by Anita Chávez de Basulto; the business was later owned by Luis de Alba and his wife, Margaret.
Please get in touch if you can tell me any more about “Hotel Laguna” / Hotel Anita.
Sources
Guadalajara Reporter, 24 June 1967; 8 July 1967.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Despite its title, Sandra Scofield’s novel A Chance to See Egypt is set at Lake Chapala in Mexico. Scofield wrote the novel—awarded the Best Fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 1996—following a trip to the lake area a few years earlier.
That the setting for A Chance to See Egypt is a fictionalized Lake Chapala is evident within the first few pages of the novel:
“Lago de Luz, on the altiplano far from the sea, where it is neither hot nor cold, boasts no buildings higher than two stories, and no slick discos. It is rather a sleepy place, swollen on weekends when musicians and vendors make the plaza festive for the tourists in from the nearby city. Resident Americans and Canadians make their own social life in their suburban enclaves and trailer parks, their apartments and houses, halls and meeting rooms. The Lakeside Society is the hub of activity, the place where everyone crosses, but there are many diversions: Elk Clubs, Rotarians, Veterans Clubs, Red Cross and all the interest groups, for cards and dominoes and self-improvement.” [5-6]
Two paragraphs later:
“They went on to tell tales that went with the town and the hotel, in the manner of village pundits. As if there was wisdom in remembering the bandits of another era, the old sailing boats and canoes, the movie stars, the whitefish, splendid when the lake was clean.” [6]
There are also several references in the book to a “residential school for deaf children.” The only school in Mexico with a boarding program for deaf children was the Lakeside School for the Deaf in Jocotepec (which later joined the State Education system as the Centro de Atención Multiple Gallaudet).
The New York Times called A Chance to See Egypt “A stirring and evocative new novel in which a middle-aged man discovers a world of possibilities” and “an absorbing story that allows us to delight in Tom Riley’s elation.”
The novel is centered on events in the town of Lago de Luz and the smaller nearby lakeshore village of Tecatitlán. The central character is recently widowed Thomas Riley, a pet store owner from Chicago in his mid-forties. Riley and his late wife, Eva, a tour guide, had honeymooned in Lago de Luz about eight years earlier. Eva loved traveling and the couple had planned to visit Egypt for their tenth anniversary, but never did. After losing Eva, Riley decides to revisit the lake where they had been so happy and work out what he should do next.
Riley’s return visit brings back lots of memories as he reflects on the past while pondering his future. Seeking to assuage his loss, he immerses himself in local life, quickly coming to realize that, even though Eva is no longer with him, he still loves the lake area.
Seeking activities to keep himself occupied, Riley joins a writing class at the Lakeside Society Library being given by Charlotte Amory (the narrator in A Chance to See Egypt). After publishing a novel, Amory, originally from Texas, left her husband and child three years ago to live in Mexico and write travel articles about places off the beaten track. Having previously studied art in Philadelphia, Amory has also started to paint again and has persuaded the memorably named Divina Arispe, a beautiful young girl who works at the Posada Celestial, the town’s main hotel, to sit as her model. Divina’s mother, Consolata, who also has a central role in the novel, is the owner of a small restaurant.
Amory and Riley soon strike up a friendship and Amory helps Riley wind his way through his doubts and uncertainties towards a new and different life. She tells him that if he wants to start over he must ‘change the plot’ of his life and ‘introduce new characters’.
Seemingly inevitably, Riley becomes a regular at Consolata’s restaurant and falls in love with Divina. But he needs ample time, and the help of others, to come to terms with his loss of Eva while navigating the uncharted waters of a cross-cultural relationship.
Shortly after arriving in Lago de Luz, Riley purchased a guidebook to the region in the Posada Celestial:
“In the lobby, a long table has been set up in preparation for the tour buses. At one end, a woman tidies a pile of flyers: SHOULD YOU LIVE IN LAGO? FACTS ABOUT REAL ESTATE. At the other end, a man Riley recognizes from the Lakeside Society Library is selling a guidebook to the region. A Traveler’s Treasury, it is called. Riley looks one over, then buys it.”
“Canadian fellow wrote it,” the man tells him. “He knows his stuff. He’s lived here nearly twenty years.”
“Great,” Riley says. Just flipping the pages, he can tell the book is full of information about places he’d never have heard about. “I’d like to see some villages.” He thinks of them as mysterious places, with secrets he will never know.” [52]
Not long afterwards when Riley is relaxing by a thermal pool, he thumbs through the book and reads how, in one village, “The arches support an ancient aqueduct. A few steps away is the hacienda chapel, in good condition… Near here, the scenery changes, giving way to fertile fields…”
Lake Chapala map; all rights reserved
To familiarize himself with the area, Riley “traces the highways with his finger“ on a “foldout map of the lake region.” [55] This close study of the map allows him to comment a few days later—when Divina’s mother, Consolata, tells him that she hails from a village called Saint Mary of Tears near the town of Tapalpa— that:
“I did see that on the map.” He taps the place. “Here is the village. Here is the town. The book says there is a small museum there, with rock carvings, and an old sail-canoe. Do you know the town?”
“I was in the church a few times as a girl. I saw the earthquake paintings. Sometimes we went in for market. I was born in the village, I grew up there. I have been here a long time now.” [57]
(Note that the real Tapalpa is a mountain settlement many kilometers west of Lake Chapala; the descriptions of this fictional Tapalpa match the town of Ocotlán, near the eastern end of Lake Chapala.)
Having learned about Consolata’s home village, Riley decides to see it for himself. After taking a bus to Tapalpa, he reads up about the town while waiting for a local bus to nearby Saint Mary of Tears:
“There had been an earthquake 150 years earlier. The chapel was spared damage, and the next day, as the townspeople celebrated in the plaza, a cloud appeared in the sky a vision of Christ on the cross. All of this was captured in paintings on the walls of the newer church next door.”
Riley’s trip to Tapalpa and Saint Mary of Tears is a pivotal part of the novel, causing Riley to think back to his life with Eva and ponder what she would have thought about the local miracle.
“He found a shaded bench in the square and sat down to rest.
He could not help addressing Eva; it was a habit he had never really abandoned. He leaned back against the bench and closed his eyes. “I liked the paintings. They are very fine. Do you believe there was a real vision in the sky? Or was it all an accident of condensation? You would know such a thing where you are. So tell me, Eva, do you believe in miracles now?” [65]
The miracle in this story is the miracle of love.
The basic plot of A Chance to See Egypt is quite straightforward, to some extent even predictable, but Scofield tells the story well, with keenly-observed descriptions of village life and with dialogue that flows naturally.
According to the author, “I wrote this fanciful tale of love at a time when I needed to believe that there was light at the end of the dark night. So I used that very metaphor to construct a story of a good man who thinks he is too timid to make a new life after his wife’s death. I wove spirituality, passion, affection for village life into a story in which, like a folk tale, everyone plays out fate and finds happiness.” [Quote from Amazon]
I concur with the review in Publisher’s Weekly that “Scofield draws her romantic principals together with a graceful, wry sense of humor, converting Riley’s indecision into a warm, wise exploration of the mysteries of love, and she turns an ending that could have been cliched into a genuinely profound revelation,” which only makes it all the more surprising that A Chance to See Egypt has never been optioned for an upbeat Hallmark movie.
One of the interesting aspects of A Chance to See Egypt is that it delves deeper into the cultural differences and resulting tensions between the local Mexican townsfolk and their American visitors than almost any other twentieth century novel set at Lake Chapala. The depictions of the lives and characters of local villagers and foreigners in A Chance to See Egypt are far more balanced than those in Eileen Bassing’s Where’s Annie? or Willard Marsh’s Week with No Friday, both published in the mid-1960s, which focus far more on the expat community to the near-exclusion of their Mexican hosts.
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Note
Scofield acknowledges that her writing was helped by two “wonderful books,” both published in 1945: Mexican Village, by Josephina Niggli, and Village in the Sun, by Dane Chandos. She was clearly also influenced by my Western Mexico: A Traveler’s Treasury. In A Chance to See Egypt, there are several thinly veiled but complimentary references to me and my guidebook to the region, first published in 1993 and now in its 4th edition. In the novel, the book inspired Riley to explore the local villages and the descriptions of Tapalpa in the novel lean heavily on my chapter about Ocotlán. Naturally I am sincerely flattered that Scofield sees my book in such a favorable light!
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to J. Weston Marshall, Archival Associate of the Special Collections Library of Texas Tech University, for kindly supplying me with a copy of Sandra Scofield’s notes describing the genesis of A Chance to See Egypt.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Of all the extraordinary individuals and groups visiting Ajijic during “hippie times”, one of the most curious was the group called The Illuminated Elephants (Los elefantes iluminados).
The Illuminated Elephants visited Ajijic in 1982. The group, a traveling theatre “family” that had once been known as The Hathi Babas, adopted elements of the hippie movement, and had about twenty members at the time it visited Lake Chapala. The group’s co-founders included Mexican activist Alberto Ruz Buenfil.
The group lived in “old, converted school buses and vans,” and shared group expenses and some communal spaces, such as an office and show preparation area. They had roved the world for more than thirteen years prior to visiting Ajijic, hoping to find “a place to settle.”
John Frost. 1982. Elefantes iluminados visit Ajijic.
Jocotepec photographer John Frost took this photo of the group during their relatively short stay in Ajijic, “camping” by the lake.
John Frost. 1982. Elefantes iluminados visit Ajijic. (detail)
Among those traveling with this “traveling gypsy theatre group” in 1982 was Nicolas Morris, who was making a return trip to the area. As a child, Morris had lived with his artist-potter parents David and Helen Morris in Chapala in the early 1950s before the family moved back to California. Nicolas recalls that the Elefantes iluminados camped at the “old gold mill of so much legend and fame.” That property, close to the lakeshore on Calle Flores Magón, was owned at the time by “La Rusa” (Zara Alexeyewa).
John Frost. 1982. Elefantes iluminados visit Ajijic. (detail)
Apparently, Ajijic did not offer exactly what they were looking for as a place to settle. From Lake Chapala, The Illuminated Elephants continued on to Tepotzlán in the central Mexico state of Morelos, which proved to be their chosen destination. There they began building La Ecoaldea Huehuecoyotl, or “Huehue,” a village that embraces sustainability and now has more than a dozen homes. Residents include a wide variety of artists, poets, craftsmen, actors and musicians who offer courses and bilingual performances for schools and adult audiences while actively supporting their local communities. Huehue is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network and visitors are welcomed.
There are several interesting connections between Lake Chapala and Tepotzlán. For example, German poet Gustav Regler established his home on a Tepoztlán farm in the 1950s and lived there to his death in 1963. Several other artists who had lived in Ajijic on Lake Chapala moved to Tepoztlán in the 1970s and 1980s. They included sculptor and painter Adolfo Riestra; photographer Toni Beatty and her husband, Larry Walsh (who all moved there in 1976); and painter and guitarist Gustavo Sendis.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to Richard Tingen for sharing John Frost’s photo with me, and to Nicolas Morris for sharing memories of his time with Los elefantes iluminados.
Please feel free to comment or suggest corrections or additional material related to any post, via our comments feature or via email.
Was George Seaton the first author to include mention of Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos in an English-language guidebook to Mexico?
When I was recently re-reading George Seaton’s What to See and Do in Mexico, first published in 1939, a one-line mention of Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos jumped off the page. I can’t recall any earlier mention of Ixtlahuacán in any regular travel guide to Mexico.
Seaton wrote that, “In the little Indian town of Ixtlahuacan [de los Membrillos], they make a famous quince wine. It is good, if you like it, but rather sweet, and more like a cordial.”
Just who was Seaton and how did he come to write about Mexico in general and the Lake Chapala area in particular? George Whiting Seaton was a New York-based author who was born in New York City on 13 January 1888 and died in his native city in August 1944. Seaton was educated in Europe, spending time in Paris, France, (1906-1907) and in Heidelberg, Germany (1909-1910) as well as some time in the UK (1911).
When the US entered the first world war, Seaton enlisted as a private in the US Army. He received rapid promotion and, after being sent back to France in 1918 with the American Expeditionary Forces, was appointed aide to Brigadier-General F LeJ. Parker, Chief of G-2-E of the General Staff. Seaton was made responsible for arranging “tours of the battlefields for correspondents, distinguished visitors, and officials of the American and Allied governments.” After his discharge from military service in 1919, Seaton returned once more to Paris, working on behalf of the American Express Travel Department. Seaton is credited as having led the first party of American tourists to Europe after the war ended.
He remained in Paris for several years, and spent several months traveling all over Russia in the summer of 1922 as a guest of that country’s Tourist Trust to offer them some suggestions about how to establish future tourist traffic.
When Seaton returned to live in the US, he became a tour manager with Raymond and Whitcomb Co., the prestigious travel company based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Seaton occasionally lectured on his experiences in Europe. In 1935, for example, he gave an illustrated lecture on his time in Russia to an audience at the International Relations Club of Colby College in Maine. The newspaper announcement of his lecture said that he would “report only what he saw” and was not a propagandist, and stressed that, in Russia, “He disliked some things he expected to admire and admired others he expected to dislike.” He would, however, try to convince attendees that, “whether one likes it or dislikes it, Russia is the most interesting country in the world today.”
By that time, Seaton was living in an apartment on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York, and starting to focus on his writing career.
Seaton traveled widely and authored a series of travel books, including Let’s Go to the West Indies (1938); What to see and do in Mexico: How to Get the Most Out of Your Trip (1939); What to see and do in Scandinavia (1939); Cue’s Guide to what to See and Do in Florida (1940); What to see and do in the South (1941); and What to See and Do in Washington (1941). He also wrote Letters to a Soldier (1942), in which he offered his encouragement as a veteran of the first world war to his adopted son, newly inducted into the army.
When the second world war broke out in Europe, Seaton was hired to work at the US Office of War Information.
J. G. Hatton. c 1905, Juanacatlán Falls.
Seaton’s one-liner about Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos in What to See and Do in Mexico is preceded by a detailed description of the Juanacatlán Falls, which “are about 70 feet high and measure 524 feet from end to end.”
From Ixtlahuacán, Seaton continued on to Chapala:
“Chapala is a charming town, the sort of place where you want to linger indefinitely, doing nothing…. The lake shores for miles in either direction at Chapala are lined with villas, parks, and, in the fashionable season, bathers. The best time for bathing is in the wintertime…. Since there are no outstanding churches to see in Chapala and nothing in particular of local interest to buy there, you can devote all your energies to having a good time. Begin by tasting some of the delicious foods they prepare in Chapala. I think the best hotel in town is the Nido….”
Sources
The Coast Artillery Journal, vol 85 (July-August 1942).
Colby Echo (Waterville, Maine), 16 Jan 1935, 1.
George W. Seaton. 1939. What to see and do in Mexico: How to Get the Most Out of Your Trip. Prentice-Hall.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Esther Henderson and her husband, Chuck Abbott, spent six weeks in Mexico taking photographs for Arizona Highways magazine in the early 1940s. They were major contributors to the magazine for decades.
They published at least three photographs related to Lake Chapala in Arizona Highways. The first two were black and white images in the September 1942 issue of a farming family’s home and a landscape view of adjoining peasant smallholdings on the lakeshore. This color Kodachrome photograph, taken from almost exactly the same vantage point as that landscape view, was included in the October 1945 issue of Arizona Highways.
Esther Henderson / Chuck Abbott. c. 1942. Lake Chapala.
The original caption for the following photo (from the September 1942 issue of Arizona Highways) read “A farmer’s house and his family on the shores of Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara. These farming folk are unusually industrious and self-reliant.”
Esther Henderson / Chuck Abbott. c. 1942. Lake Chapala.
The precise location of these smallholdings is undetermined, but appears to be somewhere on the southern shore of the lake, perhaps close to San Luis Soyatlán or Tuxcueca.
Charles “Chuck” Abbott was born in Michigan in 1894 and died in Santa Cruz, California in 1973. After high school, he joined his brother in Hawaii to work on a pineapple plantation. During the first world war, he served with the 23rd Army Engineers in Europe, where “he photographed the war-torn landscape.” On his return to the U.S., he established Chas. H. Abbott Photography business in New York to market his photographs. With the proceeds, he opened (with a German partner) a shop on Fifth Avenue selling exotic birds. Abbot married the daughter of a wealthy rug merchant and the couple moved to Florida to run a dance hall and casino, “Abbot’s Joint.” After that business was destroyed in a hurricane in 1928, his wife returned to New York.
Abbott, however, moved to California and ran a coffee shop in Carmel before relocating to Palm Springs, where he became known as the “Cowboy Host,” arranging breakfast rides and events for the wealthy patrons at the Desert Inn. He first met his second wife, Esther, when he was hired by the Tucson Sunshine Club as the “Cowboy Photographer” to take photos of all the various important celebrities visiting Tucson.
Esther Henderson was born in Illinois on 24 July 1911 and died on 22 August 2008. She was a professional dancer in New York City for several years before taking up photography. After studying at the New York Institute of Photography, she moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1935 to start her photography career. Esther specialized in landscape photography and was a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways from the 1930s onward.
Chuck and Esther met in early 1941. Esther was the chairwoman of a group of local Tucson photographers who were outraged that the Sunshine Club had chosen Chuck Abbott, an outsider, as their “Cowboy Photographer.” Chuck tried to visit her in an effort to smooth the ruffled feathers. After first refusing to meet him, Esther later agreed to join him for a drink, which led to a picnic, and then a joint camera shoot. They were married within months.
The couple, who had two sons, traveled and worked regularly together to capture images and write copy for several travel publications. During the 1950s, Esther published “Way Out West”, a weekly photographic feature column every Saturday in the Tucson Citizen.
Esther and Chuck opened The Photocenter photography studio and gallery in Tucson, where they also later established Color Classics, the first color laboratory in Arizona.
The January 1968 issue of Arizona Highways was a special edition devoted to three decades of Esther’s photography.
The couple moved to Santa Cruz, California, in 1963 where they were actively involved in community affairs. They restored a number of houses in the town and spearheaded an initiative to improve the downtown area; the name Abbott Square honors their achievements. They also replaced the town’s lighthouse as a memorial to their son, Mark, who drowned while bodysurfing at the age of 18.
Chuck died in 1973. Esther continued to live in the family home in Santa Cruz until her death in 2003.
The University of Santa Cruz is the custodian of an extensive archive of the couple’s color transparencies.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Chester (“Chet”) P. Hewitt (1923-1980) lived in Ajijic for a time in the early to middle 1950s, according to Michael Hargraves in his 1992 booklet, Lake Chapala: A Literary Survey. Hewitt wrote The Gilded Hideaway, a novel set in Mexico (though not at Lakeside) published in New York by Ace Books in 1955, under the pseudonym of Peter Twist. The novel appears to be Hewitt’s only published work.
The front cover of the book proclaims that “He sought solace in the arms of a murderess!” A publicity quote says that the protagonist “longed for easy money, beautiful women and lush living. All he needed was one big haul.” The cover art is thought to be by Robert Maguire.
Chester Peter Hewitt was born in New York City on 4 November 1923 and grew up in Manhattan. After graduating from Lawrence High School, he completed only one year of college, and was still unmarried when he enlisted in the U.S. Air Corps on 18 March 1943.
It seems likely that Hewitt was only in Ajijic for a relatively short time, before relocating to the US Virgin Islands. By 1967, according to a Waco-Times article, Hewitt was a “slender, mustachioed”, 43-year-old, “retired civil engineer”, who had saved enough money from working in construction in St. Thomas for many years to move to Mexico City. After nine months there, he and his wife, Lucy, moved to Acapulco, where they “took over a four bedroom house overlooking the ocean, with a swimming pool in the front yard.”
The focus of the Waco-Times article was Hewitt’s humanitarian role in assisting American and Canadian prisoners locked up in the Acapulco jail. Apparently, Hewitt had been detained overnight following a vehicle accident outside a prominent hotel, and while there compiled a list of foreign prisoners, the charges they faced, and contact details for their families. On his release, he set about contacting families and trying to arrange for some of the prisoners to have fines or other debts paid and thereby gain their release. In many cases, his efforts proved successful. Hewitt visited the prisoners regularly, twice a week, with “books, food and hope”.
Even though The Gilded Hideaway is not set at Lake Chapala, it was almost certainly written in Ajijic. Hewitt’s links to Ajijic were strengthened by his marriage to Jane Twist (1914-2011) in the early 1950s, shortly after she divorced her second husband, the “9-fingered” violinist John Langley, who also had close ties to Ajijic.
“Peter Twist”—the pseudonym used for his only novel—combined Hewitt’s middle name with his wife’s maiden name.
After Hewitt’s marriage to Jane Twist also ended in divorce, she reportedly moved to Florida.
In 1961, Hewitt married Lucy Hamilton Prendergast (1923-1980); that marriage lasted until 1974. Chester Hewitt died in the U.S. Virgin Islands on 15 December 1980 at the age of 57.
Please contact us if you are able to add any more details about the life and work of this noble novelist.
[Note: This is an updated version of a post first published 2 May 2016]
Sources
Kevin M. Kelleghan. 1967. “Brings Them Hope: He may not be a “do-gooder” but those in Acapulco jail think so.” Waco-Times, 20 July 1967, 11.
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.
Xavier Pérez Aguilar became well known in Ajijic in the 1980s and 1990s for his fine watercolor landscapes and portraits. Pérez was a very talented and versatile artist who was also known for his fine oil paintings, sculptures and woodworking.
According to a “Profile of the Artist” in El Ojo del Lago, Javier Pérez Aguilar (his birth name) was born in Ocotlán (near the eastern end of Lake Chapala) on 26 October 1942, but was raised and educated in Tijuana and Southern California. After attending a seminary, he worked in industrial design before studying a liberal arts program at Los Angeles City College. He then attended the Art Center College of Design, and studied painting under Leon Franks, Sergei Bongart and Constance Marlow.
Xavier Pérez Aguilar. Untitled, undated. Reproduced courtesy of Ricardo Santana.
With Marlow, he started the Valley Branch of the Art League of Los Angeles in 1968, under whose auspices he taught and gave painting demonstrations for 15 years. In August 1968 he exhibited “Pico Adobe” in an invitational group show at the San Fernando Mission in Los Angeles. Both Sergei Bongart and Constance Marlow also had works in that show.
At the Art League, Pérez gave life and drawing classes. Elsewhere, he gave a demonstration of palette knife techniques at an art society meeting in Los Angeles, in September 1968, and conducted flower painting classes in Chino. In January 1975, Pérez, billed as a “renowned artist and sculptor,” gave a demonstration in sculpting at the San Fernando Valley Art Club. By that time, Pérez had founded the Xavier Pérez Studio in Hollywood.
According to the biographical profile in El Ojo, “Xavier’s works brought on a degree of notoriety and an accumulation of awards which ultimately led to personality conflicts within the League. He stopped showing his paintings in public.”
After this Pérez moved back into the design business and combined the restoration of antiques with designing and making reproduction furniture.
Xavier Pérez Aguilar. 1989. Lake Chapala. Reproduced courtesy of Richard Tingen.
Pérez visited Lake Chapala in 1979 and returned to live at Lake Chapala in 1984, establishing his home in Ajijic, close to family members in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos. He opened the Galeria P. Bonnard, at Calle 16 de Septiembre #7 in Ajijic, the building where Enrique and Belva Velázquez have their joint studio today.
Xavier Pérez was one of the large group of “Pintores de la Ribera” who held a group exhibit in May 1985 at the Club Campestre La Hacienda (km 30, Guadalajara-Chapala highway). Other artists represented in that show included Daphne Aluta, Eugenia Bolduc, Jean Caragonne, Donald Demerest, Laura Goeglein, Hubert Harmon, B. R. Kline, Jo Kreig, Carla W. Manger, Emily Meeker, Sydney Moehlman, Tiu Pessa, De Nyse Turner Pinkerton and Eleanor Smart.
Xavier Perez. Untitled. Courtesy of Stephanie Shelton.
In 1986, Pérez was elected the first president of the Ajijic Society of the Arts (ASA). He saw his mission as forging greater unity among all the local artists. In addition, he began a project to restore and maintain the collection of archaeological finds started by the late Dr. Betty Bell. Pérez had his eccentricities; he loved reading the Tarot and told his niece that he talked to the ghosts in his house, and that Angels spoke to him in his dreams. In Ajijic he gave private art classes, and was also a co-founder (with Tod Jonson, Ektor Carranza, Florence Pritikin and Pat Tanaka) in 1986 of the Culinary Arts Society of Ajijic (CASA).
This highly intelligent and multi-talented artist died in hospital in Guadalajara in February 1999.
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My sincere thanks to Ricardo Santana for first bringing this artist to my attention; to Richard Tingen and Judy Eager for sharing their memories of the artist; and to Stephanie Shelton (see comments) for supplying many photos and details of her uncle’s life and work.
Sources
El Ojo del Lago, September 1986
Valley News (Van Nuys, California): 1 February 1968, 74; 27 Aug 1968, 14; 24 Sep 1968, 24; 14 June 1973, 77; 14 January 1975, 26.
Comments, corrections or additional material are welcomed, whether via comments feature or email.
La Ondina de Chapala (“The Water Nymph of Chapala”) is a 149-page Spanish-language novel, set in the 1940s, by Salomón Zepeda. It was published in Mexico City by Imprenta Ruíz in 1951. Very little is known about the author.
Until I had the chance to read this novel, I had always assumed—based on the cover art—that it was a pocket romance of relatively limited artistic merit. I was wrong. La Ondina de Chapala is a skillfully-constructed and well-written story which, while it has romance as a central theme, reflects on such timeless considerations in relationships as trust, fidelity, communication, sacrifice and betrayal.
The author was clearly a very well-educated individual, as evidenced by the many literary and artistic references in this book to the likes of Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Rousseau, Gauguin, Edgar Allen Poe, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Arnold Böcklin, as well as to a number of Hindi poets.
Charles Betts Waite. ca. 1900. Hotel Arzapalo. – By coincidence, “La Ondina” is the name of the boat in the foreground of this very early image of the Hotel Arzapalo in Chapala.
The title turns out to be particularly apt. An Ondine (also spelled Undine) is a mythological water-spirit or water-nymph that can obtain a human soul when she falls in a love with a man. However, the man is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her.
The protagonist in Zepeda’s novel is 27-year-old Erasmo Sada, a tall, muscular, college-educated author who has borrowed a car from a friend to drive out from Mexico City (where he is a newspaper editor) to Lake Chapala for a respite from his job and the city.
Erasmo took a room at the “Hotel de Oriente” and planned to work on his first novel, “Marfil de Luna.”
— “The resort was overflowing with Yanqui tourists of both sexes…. Towards the top of a hill, one could see the country houses, the chalets, the castles, the rustic cabins, the recreational villas and the palatial residences of the nouveaux riches, summering all year round…. Erasmo was content in that tourist emporium of yesteryear, where the rancid aristocracy of the age of General Porfirio Díaz whiled away their prolonged leisure time.”
Like all good authors, Erasmo always has his notebook to hand to record random thoughts, feelings, impressions and ideas.
The morning after his arrival, he is relaxing in a deckchair on the beach amidst the multi-colored sunshades and watching the world go by, when a group of four girls arrives. They stake a place on the beach and then race into the water to swim. He cannot help but overhear their shouts as they cavort in the water and learns their names: Vera, Susana, Angelina and Adelaida.
He is instantly smitten with Adelaida who seems somehow different and more self-confident than the others. He sneaks glimpses of the stunning and shapely dark-haired girl until, at one point, she not only notices him but calmly returns his gaze.
After the girls dry off, change and leave the beach, Erasmo enjoys a lunch of whitefish at the Beer Garden and makes a journal entry—equal parts lust and curiosity—about “the Ondine of Chapala who had swum in the lake.”
The following morning, the girls are back; Erasmo watches Adelaida but does not approach her. That evening, when he goes for dinner to “Salon Chapala,” he finds that Adelaida is already there, drinking and dancing with friends, one of whom, an older-looking man, has a proprietorial air about him. After they’ve left, the bartender explains to Erasmo that the man is a Guadalajara lawyer and is Adelaida’s husband. The couple regularly visit his family’s villa in Chapala and are friends of the local mayor (presidente municipal).
In the course of the novel, as Erasmo ponders the meaning of what he feels and how he should act, his inner musings often veer off into topics that are quintessentially Mexican. For example, after sitting in a rocky field looking out over the lake, he suddenly realizes that he is uncomfortably close to a group of rattlesnakes making love. They trigger thoughts of the serpent cult in ancient Mexico, of Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent), and of the founding of Mexico City. As his mind wanders to the conflict between snakes and eagles, good versus bad, he recalls the archaeological evidence related to snakes and mythology elsewhere in the world, before snapping back to Lake Chapala as the weather worsens and a culebra (“water snake” – the local word for a waterspout) forms over the lake.
Cover art by “Magallón”
Safely back in his hotel, he watches the rain from his balcony. When the storm has subsided, the fresh earthy smell emanating from the ground prompts Erasmo to take a nighttime stroll through the village. He sees someone headed in his direction. The vaguely-defined distant shape gradually becomes more feminine and as the woman draws closer he recognizes Adelaida.
In the conversation that ensues, Adelaida makes it clear that she is fully prepared to accompany him back to his hotel room, but only on condition that he asks no questions and promises to have no further contact with her thereafter.
Erasmo can’t quite believe what is happening but agrees. They have a passionate one-night stand in his hotel room. Before she leaves in the early morning, she shares some of her life story with him to explain why she was wandering the streets at night… Long story short, she had barely left university when she married a much older man, Conrado Rubiera, who turned out to be an impotent alcoholic. Her husband became abusive and on one occasion attacked her with a knife. When Adelaida asked for a divorce, Conrado threatened to kill her.
In an effort to reconcile their differences they were spending several weeks in Chapala at his parents’ villa, Villa Solariega (“Ancestral Home”). However, their first attempt in months to make love ended in abject failure. Conrado had called her a whore and thrown her out; frustrated in more ways than one, she had stormed off and was wandering the streets in anguish prior to meeting Erasmo.
As Adelaida is about to leave the hotel, Erasmo suggests she leave her husband once and for all and that they drive away together back to Mexico City. She refuses, reminds him of his promise, and walks back to Villa Solariega.
Erasmo, as he tries to make sense of events, ponders the “fragility of human destiny” and begins to reread his journal entries for the trip. The first entry, dated 15 May 1943, reflects on his feelings when he stopped at the viewpoint known as Mil Cumbres to look out over the forest towards the distant mountains.
“My life is a dream in pursuit of your footprint …”
Snapping back to the present, Erasmo composes a lengthy poem to Adelaida in which he expresses his eternal love. He fantasizes about what he calls the “Lake of Love,” which “will tell your heart of my insane anxiety until once again, in a distant world, we love each other in Eternity.”
On her way home, Adelaida’s interior monologue revolves around her feelings of guilt and remorse. She decides that she will ignore her husband’s threats and seek a divorce. However, when she arrives home, she discovers her husband dead in bed, pistol in hand. She screams for help and moves the pistol to the nightstand. After the local judge arrives, reports are filled out and Adelaida is placed in temporary custody at the house of the mayor, Ramiro Requena, while further investigations are carried out.
Adelaida’s fingerprints on the pistol, her ready admission of having had a serious argument with her husband only hours before his death, and her unexplained walk into the village at night, as well as the absence of any suicide note, all suggest she may have been implicated in her husband’s death.
Fortunately for Adelaida, her father-in-law arrives from Guadalajara. Confident that Adelaida must be completely innocent, he looks round the house and discovers a suicide note signed by his son. The note completely vindicates Adelaida who is released. Conrado’s body is taken by ambulance to Guadalajara for burial in the family crypt.
In the meantime, Erasmo Sada has arrived in Guadalajara, not knowing any of this, to stay overnight before driving back to Mexico City. At the downtown Hotel Metrópoli he is idly leafing through the newspapers lying on the table in the hotel lobby when he reads about the suicide and the funeral. His heart skips a beat. The article even includes Adelaida’s address.
For the next couple of days, unsure what he should do, he tries to distract himself by wandering the city streets to visit tourist sites such as the Museo del Estado, Los Colomos and Tlaquepaque. In the process, he muses about the origin and importance of Jalisco’s many contributions to Mexico such as mariachi music and tequila.
Eventually, he comes to a decision and enters a silver shop to purchase some earrings as a suitable gift for Adelaida. When he knocks on her door, there is no answer. Erasmo turns away dejected, wondering about love and destiny. Then, by chance, her maid arrives and explains that Adelaida is staying with her aunt Elisa in the colonial Agua Azul.
At the aunt’s house, Erasmo talks with Adelaida and they go for a walk. She loves the earrings but makes it clear that she is sticking to the “no more contact or explanation” agreement and is going to stay with a cousin in Chicago and start a new life. She agrees that Erasmo can see her off at the airport the following Saturday.
Erasmo paces the city streets trying to clear his head, desperate to work out how to convince her to change her mind and come to live with him in Mexico City. At the airport, Adelaida arrives alone, having made excuses as to why none of her friends or her aunt should see her off. She and Erasmo meet in the departure hall and start chatting. They hug and share a passionate kiss.
And… will she go to Chicago or will she marry Erasmo?…
Apology:
Sorry, but if you want to know the ending, you’ll either have to find and read a copy of this interesting book or email me a link to a rating, comment or review you have made on Goodreads, Amazon or elsewhere of any of my books.
Copies of La Ondina de Chapala are held in several libraries in Mexico City and the U.S., including the University of California Los Angeles and Southern Illinois University. Depending where you live, they may be available via inter-library loan.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Herb McLaughlin was a prolific commercial photographer who began his career in Illinois before moving to Arizona. These images of the church and waterfront in Chapala were published in Arizona Highways in November 1950.
Herbert (“Herb”) McLaughlin was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 30 July 1918 and died in Phoenix on 19 February 1991. He first became fascinated by photography after receiving a gift as a teenager of a Voightlander folding camera. McLaughlin studied safety engineering at Purdue University and then completed a double major at Indiana University in business administration and journalism. Even before graduating, he had established his own business, Mercury Pictures, in Hammond, Indiana. On graduating in 1940, McLaughlin married Barbara Cartwright (1920-1996); the couple had two children, but divorced in about 1949.
While running Mercury Pictures, McLaughlin undertook commissions for several newspapers as well as for wartime factories and other companies. In 1945 he sold this company and, following medical advice, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in the hope that his asthma would improve. The new company he began, McLaughlin and Co. did well and in 1947 he bought a rival company, McCulloch Brothers Inc., together with their extensive photographic collection.
It is unclear whether his photographs of Chapala were taken on commission for Arizona Highways, or whether the lake was where he chose to spend his honeymoon following his second marriage – to Dorothy Ann “Dot” (Jensen) Jolley (1912-2005) – in the summer of 1950. Or perhaps both reasons were true?
Herb McLaughlin. c. 1950. Chapala.
The photo above shows the Chapala waterfront as seen from the end of the pier. At the time of McLaughlin’s visit, the large-scale remodeling of the town center to create Avenida Francisco I. Madero and Paseo Ramón Corona was almost complete. Villa Tlalocan (built in the 1890s by George Edward King for British consul Lionel Carden) and Villa Ferrara are visible on the right hand side of the photo.
The image below, of the San Francisco church in Chapala, shows what the church looked like prior to a major (and never fully completed) renovation of its facade and bell towers (or spires) in the 1960s, which left the towers at different heights.
The clock visible above the main entrance dates from about 1897 and was a gift of Eduard Collignon, owner of the nearby Villa Ana Victoria (which was demolished during the updating of the town center). This imposing parroquia (parish church) gets several mentions in D. H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent, and is only a short stroll from the house Lawrence rented in Chapala in 1923 while composing the first draft of his famous novel. That house, greatly expanded since Lawrence’s visit, is now a boutique hotel known as the Hotel Villa QQ.
Herb McLaughlin. c. 1950. Church at Chapala.
McLaughlin’s second wife, Dot, had previously been married to Marion Doval Jolley, with whom she co-owned Jolley Turkey Company in Mt. Pleasant, Utah. After her first husband died, and she remarried, Jolley sold that company to become co-owner of McLaughlin & Co. She organized the company’s photographic library and began her own photographic career, specializing in portraits of children. The ownership structure of the firm was changed in 1955 in order to grant their staff a stake in the company, now relaunched as Arizona Photographic Associates.
The McLaughlins published two books of photographs: Phoenix 1870-1970 in Photographs (1972) and Arizona the Beautiful (with Don Dedera, 1974). They donated an extensive collection of their photographs to Arizona State University.
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.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
It’s not often that obstetrics makes it into my random musings about the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala. But there’s a first time for everything! Starting in the 1960s, Carol Shepherd McClain, a young California researcher, visited Ajijic several times in order to investigate “traditional” birthing practices in the village.
McClain’s supervisor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), suggested she undertake research in Guadalajara and/or Lake Chapala. When McClain visited Ajijic in 1965, she knew she had found an ideal place for her work.
In September 1965 the Guadalajara Reporter noted that McClain was visiting Ajijic to gather material for a PhD. Accompanying her during that first visit to Ajijic was her older brother, Spencer Owen Shepherd, who was said to be “adding the finishing touches to a book he wrote in Spain.”
A follow-up in the Guadalajara Reporter in November reminded readers that McClain still hoped that more questionnaires would be returned. Failing to collect sufficient data, McClain was forced to abandon her initial idea of a community study. Instead, on an extended return visit to Ajijic (January 1967 to June 1968) she gathered information for her PhD in Cultural Anthropology (awarded in 1975), which was entitled “Systems of medical beliefs and practices in a West Mexican community.” One of her major findings was that “Ajijicans were more than willing to incorporate modern medical practices as they could easily see that many were effective (e.g. surgery, antibiotics) but that they retained very traditional beliefs about the causes of illness (e.g. witchcraft, fright).”
McClain spent another two months of field work at Lake Chapala from August to September 1973, collecting additional data for an academic article focused specifically on childbirth and midwifery. Published in 1975, when McClain was working at Oregon State University, her ethno-obstetrics research paper looked at the indigenous or “traditional” forms of “obstetrical perceptions” and “the intersection of traditional and modern obstetrical practices,” including the roles played by mothers, grandmothers, curanderas (native healers), parteras (midwives) and espiritistas (spiritualists).
In addition to informal conversations, Carol McClain interviewed 41 mothers at some length about their beliefs and practices, and spent time getting to know four of the local parteras. Doña Carmen was “a popular curandera” who had studied under a hierbero (herbalist) for five years and had “traveled as far as Mexico City to bring patients back to Ajijic for extended treatment.” Her daughter, Josefina, had first become a partera at the age of 25. Doña Josefa, born in Ajijic in 1904, worked both as a partera and as a curandera; she had retired by the time of Shepherd’s second field visit. Doña Petra, born in San Juan Cosalá in 1900, had begun practicing as a partera in 1920 and had spent nine months working under a doctor in Guadalajara; she was the most “modern” (and expensive) of the four.
And what did McClain find out during her research into ethno-obstetrics in Ajijic?
Among other things, that local women believed that four “external factors” affected the fetus: food taboos, sibling jealousy, eclipses of the sun and the moon, and a father who drinks to excess. In the case of food taboos, it was widely believed that “cold” foods might cause illness in the newborn child. McClain quite rightly traced the belief in the potential impact of eclipses back to pre-Conquest times. In Ajijic, it was believed that, “a lunar eclipse will cause an excess of parts, such as fingers or toes, while a solar eclipse will cause incomplete development, and parts of the body which may be affected, such as the nose or the ears, are “eaten by the sun”…. Women who are pregnant will wear a metal object such as a safety pin beneath their clothing to absorb the effects of an eclipse. For protection at night a metal object will be placed beneath the bed.”
McClain’s conclusion was that “Whatever advantages traditional obstetrical care offers women and their children in Ajijic (and these may be considerable), they will be lost if it is completely displaced by modern hospital services. A partial compromise may be the alternative method of home delivery under the care of a physician.”
In 1986, McClain completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She then worked for almost twenty years in the President’s Office at the University of California, becoming the university’s administrative director of multicampus research. McClain retired from this position in 2003.
Other academic papers authored by Carol Shepherd McClain include “Adaptation in health behavior in a west Mexican pueblo,” published in Social Science and Medicine (1977); “Women’s choice of home or hospital birth” in Journal of Family Practice (1981); “Traditional midwives and family planning” in Medical Anthropology (1981); “Social network differences between women choosing home and hospital birth” in Human Organization (1987); “A new look at an old disease: smallpox and biotechnology” in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1995); and “Family Stories: Black/White Marriage During the 1960s,” published in the Journal of Black Studies (2011). Shepherd was also the editor of the book Women as Healers: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, published by Rutgers University Press in 1989.
McClain has returned to Ajijic several times in the past twenty years and has conducted additional, less formally structured, research into folk medicine beliefs and practices. This was the basis for a paper she presented at the 2012 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco entitled “The Persistence of Traditional Medicine: A Mexican Case Study.”
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Dr. Carol Shepherd McClain for sharing details of her visits to Mexico and her research findings.
Sources
Guadalajara Reporter: 30 Sep 1965; 25 Nov 1965
Carol Shepherd McClain. 1975. “Ethno-obstetrics in Ajijic,” in Anthropological Quarterly, 40: 38-56.
San Francisco Examiner: 16 January 1965
Other artists and authors who connect Berkeley/Oakland to Lake Chapala include:
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
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 talented and versatile artist Alfredo Navarro España was a photographer and painter who first exhibited in Chapala in 1948 and was most active during the 1950s. One of his photographs of fishing nets at Lake Chapala was published by Arizona Highways in 1950, along with several of his drawings and paintings related to Mexican places and themes.
Alfredo Navarro España. c 1950. Photograph of fishing nets at Lake Chapala.
Guillermo Alfredo Navarro España was born on 27 June 1921 into a socially-prominent family in Guadalajara. His mother was Sara España Araujo. His father, Alfredo Navarro Branca, was a well-known architect who, among other things, designed and built the family home at Vallarta 1581, as well as the El Banco Industrial building, La Casa del Estudiante, and several schools in Guadalajara.
It is unclear how Alfredo acquired his artistic education but he became proficient in several media. Relatively little is known about his life beyond the details of some of the group exhibitions that featured his work.
The earliest of these is the “Third Annual Painting Exhibition” held at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala from 21 August to 1 September 1948. Others exhibiting on that occasion included Rubén Mora Gálvez, Tom[ás] Coffeen, José [María de] Servín, F. Martínez Lois [? Lols?], Dolores de la Mora, Sterling Poindexter, E. Linares [Ernesto Butterlin] and Ruth Dunn.]
In March the following year, five artists held a joint exhibition at the Museo del Estado in Guadalajara. Alfredo showed his “abstract-surrealist” works alongside four artists of “the Ajijic group”: Louise Gauthiers, Ernesto Linares [Butterlin], Nicolás Muzenic and Tobias [Toby] Schneebaum.
Alfredo was also part of the “Fourth Annual Painting Exhibition” at the Villa Montecarlo in August 1949. Other exhibitors on that occasion included Nicolás Muzenic, Tobias Schneebaum, Shirley Wurtzel, Ann Woolfolk and Mel Schuler.
The November 1950 issue of Arizona Highways included various of his photos and paintings of Mexico. Perhaps in celebration, Alfredo took a flight from Guadalajara to Manzanillo that month in the company of Dorothea Wharton, Ernesto Butterlin, Nicolás Muzenic and John Garrell. The following images are a sample of those published by Arizona Highways.
Alfredo Navarro España. c 1950. Untitled. (Fishing nets at beach)
Also included in the Arizona Highways magazine are several much simpler, but equally striking, paintings showing typical Mexican scenes (which may or may not be directly related to Jalisco or Lake Chapala).
Alfredo Navarro España. c 1950. Untitled. (Street decorations)
The strong, geometric, composition of these works is very effective in conveying the essence of these festive occasions.
Alfredo Navarro España. c 1950. Untitled. (Fería mexicana)
In December 1950, Alfredo was accorded the honor of a solo show at the Galeria de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. On display were 23 paintings, several of them on loan from the private collections of Sigi Weissenberg (a famous Bulgarian pianist), Daniel K. Davis and Ernesto Javelly. The paintings included one entitled “Chapala,” as well as others that may be related to the lake, such as “La pesca.”
Alfredo was sufficiently close to the painters teaching at the Ajijic Art Workshop that he is mentioned in Zoe Kernick‘s 1951 article about Ajijic, as one of the options for those looking for a lively social scene: – “Or one goes into Guadalajara for a party at the gay penthouse studio of surrealist painter, Alfredo Navarro.”
A critique of his work by Alfredo Leal appeared that year in Ariel, a literary broadsheet published in Guadalajara by Emmanuel Carballo, alongside monochrome reproductions of two of his paintings: “La Pesca” and “La Catedral Sumergida.”
Alfredo Navarro held a second one-man show in Mexico City in July 1957, at the Galeria Proteo in the Zona Rosa.
Almost exactly a decade later, at least two of his abstract works were included in a group show of contemporary Jaliscan artists at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, alongside paintings by Xavier Guerrero, J. Jesus Serna, Gabriel Flores and Guillermo Chavez Vega.
Alfredo Navarro España died in Guadalajara on 18 November 2003.
Sources
Arizona Highways, Nov 1950.
Arizona Republic, 14 May 1967, 154.
Boletín de música y artes visuales, Issues 11-12; Issues 14-22, Departamento de Asuntos Culturales, Unión Panamericana, 1951.
El Informador: 27 Nov 1926, 22 Aug 1948, 13 Aug 1949, 24 Oct 1950, 3 Nov 1950, 19 Nov 2003.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
John Upton, the translator of poets such as Pablo Neruda and Miguel de Unamuno, and of several seminal works of Spanish literature, lived (off and on) in Ajijic from 1949 to the early 1990s.
In the early 1950s, Upton submitted several colorful pieces about Ajijic and Mexico for the San Francisco Chronicle, including one about the seasonal summer influx of art students:
I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with Upton at his home in Ajijic in 1990. He was a most gracious host and very supportive of my efforts to document the life of “Zara”— “La Rusa”—the famous ballerina, a longtime resident of Ajijic, who had died in the village a few months earlier.
A couple of years ago, after I’d written a profile of Upton for this blog, I was visiting with journalist and good friend Dale Hoyt Palfrey. I don’t recall how the topic of Upton came up. But she suddenly broke off the conversation and left the room for a few minutes. She returned clutching a small blue notebook which she handed to me. To my surprise it was one of Upton’s notebooks, written and illustrated in his own hand. She insisted on me taking the notebook (I consider myself its custodian rather than its owner) so that I could see what gems it contained.
The pages offer a sneak peek into Upton’s many interests. Scattered notes suggest that it accompanied him on a trip to Mexico City and the Maya region of the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala. Page after page contains notes—usually illustrated with informal sketches—regarding the reading of Maya glyphs and numbers.
Extract from p 23 of John Upton’s notebook; all rights reserved.
Other pages of the notebook record vocabulary that Upton, for one reason or another, found interesting. Upton, a highly skilled translator, was considered an expert in the idiomatic and colloquial usage and translation of Spanish, with all its regional differences. These pages shed some insight into how Upton acquired his extraordinary linguistic proficiency.
Extract from p 37 of John Upton’s notebook; all rights reserved.
Upton was a keen observer as he traveled. The notebook includes this short piece of prose, headed “Extraneous page,” apparently written to share later with a writing colleague:
Could you make a story of this scene in Mexico City?
Couple at the next table: woman of about 45, too much make up, clothes too loud, obviously a whore, sitting with a very shy young man. He is wolfing food as fast as she can order it (she eats nothing – just sits and watches him eat) and as fast as the waitress can bring it: soup, sandwich, order of enchiladas, milk, coffee, large piece of cake – all these are on the table and she orders something else when it occurs to her. She smokes a cigarette and never takes her eyes from his face. (On second look, there are TWO glasses of milk.)
“But, chico! Why didn’t you tell me? Sure you needed a woman, but you can’t spend your last twenty pesos that way. You have to eat, niño!”
He looks up at her from his soup and smiles, shyly; whereupon her battered face lights up and she seems quite pretty. — [pages 71-72 of notebook]
I would love to know whether this scene was ever incorporated into a short story or book.
Even at the best of times, traveling is sometimes stressful. One evening in San Miguel de Allende, Upton used his notebook (pages 81-82) to vent his frustration at events earlier that day.
Mexicans at their most maddening:
Upon getting off the train at San Miguel A., we were met by two porters who latched on to the suitcases. The women wanted to buy return tickets before leaving the station, as it is some distance from town.
—“Where is the ticket office?”
—“This way.” Men pick up suitcases and we follow them for 300 yards to the far end of the station building. We reach the door and he puts down the bags. “Only it isn’t open right now.”
—“Well, when does it open?”
—“In the morning.”
—“At what time?”
—“In the morning – about noon.”
This information didn’t satisfy me. I walked around the grounds until I found a man who looked knowing. —“When does the ticket office open, please?”
—“The ticket agent just left a couple of minutes ago. It’s closed now.”
—“Yes, I know it’s closed. What I want to know is when it opens.”
—“It’s closed for the rest of the day. The man just left. He went to Celaya.”
—“Well, what about tomorrow? When will he be here?”
—“He won’t open tomorrow, because it is Sunday. Not until Monday.”
—“And when will he open Monday?”
—“Oh! His office hours? From 8:30 a.m. to 4:.00 p.m. every day except Sunday.”
Upton’s deep love of Mexico—enhanced by his study of its people, language and cultures—led to an understanding of the country, and an appreciation for its history and achievements, that is surely a model for all of us.
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Dale Hoyt Palfrey for so generously allowing me custody of John Upton’s notebook.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
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
Jesus Acal Ilisaliturri (sometimes “Ilizaliturri”) was born in Guadalajara on 16 August 1856 and died in the city on 25 September 1902. Acal’s parents were Ignacio Acal Ilizaliturri and Josefa Ilizaliturri. Acal left school after secundaria and was a founding member of two literary circles: “La Aurora Literaria” and “La Bohemia Jalisciense.”
Acal, who married Magdalena Mejia, became a renowned poet, narrator, journalist and playwright. According to Gabriel Agraz García de Alba, Acal reached the summit of the bohemian poetry world of his time and was the peak exponent of that literary form.
Acal’s most significant link to Lake Chapala is a poem dated 5 August 1889 entitled “El Chapala.” Dedicated to Catalina Villaseñor y Peredo, the poem was published in La República Literaria. The owner-editors of La República Literaria were Esther Tapia de Castellanos, Manuel Puga y Acal, Antonio Zaragoza and José López Portillo y Rojas.
This lengthy poem is more than 150 lines long in total. Some idea of its style is provided by this loose translation of an early section:
I come to seek your laughing beaches.
A roving pariah of no fixed abode, I walk
Without direction or path;
My only encouragement: a divine ideal,
And the starry vault, my awning.
A sanctuary on your beaches I guess
In the midst of severe storms;
In sympathy you will give me calm;
Because we are the two immensities:
You create immense loneliness. … and my soul
It also has immense solitude.
A play of Acal’s authorship, entitled “¿Qué quiere decir cristiano?” (“What does Christian mean?”) was performed at the Teatro Alarcón (now known as the Teatro Degollado) in Guadalajara on 31 August 1882.
Acal was a professional poet, accepting paid commissions to write poetry on any topic and for any occasion. By 1894, after the demise of La República Literaria, Acal directed La Mariposa, a publication where all the contents, even including advertisements and letters to the editor, were in verse.
In 1895, Acal, a liberal, was the secretary for the inaugural meeting of “Grupo Reformista y Constitucional Jalisciense,” a group of like-minded residents of Guadalajara. The provisional president at the meeting, held in the Hotel Humboldt, was Ing. Salvador Pérez Arce, who also had close connections to Chapala.
Works authored by Jesús Acal Ilizaliturri, all published in Guadalajara, included: El ángel de la caridad (1892), Corona de Guadalupe (1892), El segundo Fray Antonio (1899), Romancero de Jalisco (1901), and Recitaciones escolares (1908). In El Romancero de Jalisco, Acal recounted the history of his native state, Jalisco, in verse.
Acknowledgment
My thanks to Jorge Varela Martínez Negrete for sharing scans of the poem as it was originally published.
Sources
Jesús Acal Ilisaliturri. 1889. “El Chapala.” (Poem). La República Literaria, Año 4, Vol 5 (Marzo 89- Marzo 90), 428-432.
Ángel Muñoz Fernández. 1995. Fichero bio-bibliográfico de la literatura mexicana del siglo XIX. Mexico: Factoría Ediciones.
Celia del Palacio. 2019. “Las publicaciones satíricas y literarias de Guadalajara (siglo xix)” Estudios jaliscienses 116, Mayo de 2019.
El hijo del Ahuizote: August, 1895, Volume 10 (Issues 454-504).
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
English visual artist Eleanor Mason, a cousin of the British writer E. A. W. Mason, was born in the U.K. in about 1895 and studied art in France, Germany and Italy. Eleanor, variously known as Eleanore, Leonore, Evylin or Evelyn, lived in Ajijic after she became the wife of German cellist Alex von Mauch, one of the earliest long-term foreign residents of Ajijic.
Eleanor von Mauch, 1935
Prior to this marriage, Mason had lived in Pasadena, California, from 1917 to 1931, where she ran an art school for a time. She was a co-founder of the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1918 and belonged to the Pasadena Society of Women Painters & Sculptors, serving as its president in 1928. Her work was exhibited at the Laguna Beach Art Association (1921, 1924), West Coast Arts, Incorporated (1923), the Pasadena Women Painters & Sculptors (1928) and the Santa Cruz Art League (1929). She was also a member of the British Water Color Society.
The precise circumstances surrounding her decision to move to Mexico and marry Alex von Mauch are murky. American authoress Neill James, who moved to Ajijic in the mid-1940s, never met von Mauch or his bride but later wrote that the gossip in the village was that Alex’s marriage had been arranged by correspondence. According to James, von Mauch was:
“poor and very peculiar, always consulting the stars. He badly needed a rich wife, to share his proud old family crest and supply a background of house furnishings in keeping with his beautiful silver service. Naturally he consulted the stars and ordered one from the States, according to astral specifications. She came. After a trial marriage, they conformed with a legal ceremony. Each hoped the other possessed wealth, so the marriage ended in failure.”
The couple settled in Ajijic but the marriage was short-lived. Only a few months into the marriage, Alex took his own life. After her husband’s death, Eleanor appears to have divided her time between Pasadena and Mexico. In January 1937, for example, her participation in the Pasadena New Year’s Day parade was noted in the Los Angeles Times because she was dressed as a giant butterfly, alongside a giant 20-foot rose, on the “Roses of Romance” float. The “body of the butterfly was Eleanor Mason of Pasadena, dressed in green and gold brocade, gold coronet on her head and a floral train.”
Romance must certainly have been in the air since later that year, in Guadalajara, Eleanor married Leif Clausen, a Danish-born and educated artist and writer based in New York. The notice of her marriage in the Los Angeles Times described her as “Mme Eleanor Mason von Mauch” of Laguna [Beach], and said that the widow of Baron Alexander von Mauch was a member of both the Laguna Beach Art Association and the British Water Color Society.
After her marriage to Clausen, Eleanor’s trail goes cold and nothing further has come to light about her life and legacy.
If you have any works, or photos of works, by this artist, please share!
Sources:
Edan Hughes. 1989. Artists in California, 1786-1940. Hughes Pub. Co.
El Informador, 3 May 1936, 4; 8 May 1936, 4.
Neill James. 1946. Dust on my Heart: Petticoat Vagabond in Mexico. New York: Charles Scribner’s.
Los Angeles Times, 25 Dec 1921, 36; 31 July 1935, 30; 26 Sep 1937, 66.
Santa Ana Register, 10 Mar 1923, 14; 12 January 1924, 5.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Educator, writer and musician Joseph (“Joe”) Cottler and his wife, Betty, first drove south from Philadelphia to Ajijic in about 1957. They returned to the village several times. About 20 years later, following Betty’s death, Joe brought his second wife, Harriet Linton Barr, to Lake Chapala.
Cottler, a high school teacher, mostly wrote biographies of several scientists, inventors and other famous individuals, designed to appeal to his youthful audience. Cottler wrote, or co-wrote, Heroes of Civilization (1932); Map-Makers (1936); The Arch Rebel, Thomas Jefferson (1936); Champions Of Democracy (1936); Heroes of Science (1940); Careers ahead (1941); Ten years, a study in progress (Philadelphia Waist and Dressmakers’ Union, 1943); Man with Wings: The Story of Leonardo da Vinci (1945); Real People: Roger Williams (1950); Real People: Marconi (1953); The printer and the riddle : the story of Henry George (1955); Alfred Wallace Explorer-Naturalist (1966); and More Heroes of Civilization (1969).
Several of these books were translated into other languages. Translations into Spanish included El hombre con alas : la vida de Leonardo da Vinci (Buenos Aires, 1945), Héroes de la civilización (Mexico, 1956), and 34 biografías de científicos y exploradores (Mexico, 1981).
Cottler, an accomplished guitarist and violinist, was also co-credited (with Nicola A. Montani) for a musical score entitled “Lovely babe : Christmas carol for three-part chorus of women’s voices with piano or organ accompaniment” (1946).
Joseph Cottler was born in Kiev, Russia, on 26 October 1899. The family emigrated to the U.S. when Joseph was an infant and became naturalized American citizens in 1915, by which time they were living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Joe was a student at the University of Pennsylvania in 1921 when he applied for a passport to study in France and travel in Europe. He returned to the U.S. nine months later, in March 1922. By the time he next visited Europe to study in Germany, Austria and France during the summer of 1923, he was a qualified teacher. During one or more of these trips to Europe, Joe played violin with a musical combo called the American Jazz Babies in cafes in Paris and elsewhere.
Joe’s first wife, Elizabeth, was born on 4 November 1898 and was also a teacher. The couple traveled to Italy together on a joint passport in 1929. Both Joe and Betty were still teaching (and working as high school counselors) in Philadelphia into the mid-1950s.
While Joe and Betty had no children of their own, they took in a young Harold Weisberg and made him one of the family. Weisberg, who spent much of his life investigating the most notorious assassinations of the twentieth century, paid handsome tribute to the Cottlers in chapter 3 of his final (unpublished) book, Inside the Assassination Industry. Volume 1.
Joe’s second wife, Dr. Harriet Linton Barr, was co-author, with Robert Langs, of LSD: Personality and Experience (1972).
Joe Cottler, educator, author and musician, died on 23 June 1996, having done everything he could to make the world a better place.
Acknowledgment
My thanks to Joe Cottler’s nephew Jerry Forman (a jazz musician who lived in Ajijic 2008-2011) for bringing his uncle’s visits to Lake Chapala to my attention, and for supplying valuable biographical details. Click here for samples of Jerry’s music.
Please feel free to comment or suggest corrections or additional material related to any post, via our 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
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
One of the delights of writing this blog has been the number of readers who have reached out to me with further information about the artists and writers I’ve written about. This has greatly improved the blog and resulted in some valuable virtual friendships.
A case in point. A year ago, a chance find at an estate sale by Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi, an adjunct instructor of history at Siena College in New York, and author of Remembering World War I in America(University of Nebraska Press, 2018), led to her contacting me to ask if I knew anything about “Georgette and Herbert Johnson” of Ajijic.
I was barely able to contain my excitement. The Johnsons were an English couple who settled in Ajijic in 1939, and I’ve been researching them for a chapter in a forthcoming book. Kimberly had rescued a photo album containing more than 250 photographs which fortuitously included a copy of a greetings card sent by the Johnsons. Long story short, Kimberly has entrusted me with the album’s future.
The album almost certainly belonged to Georgette Johnson. Apart from a copy of their own greetings card, it also includes several postcards sent to the Johnsons and one or two photos with inscriptions on the back that make it clear they were gifts to the couple. The fact that the photos are in no particular order and have no captions or dates makes me confident that the album was Georgette’s rather than Herbert’s. (Herbert’s hardcover “weather log,” given to me many years ago by Jocotepec author Joan Frost, has meticulous notes and weather records from the 1940s, making me confident that Herbert would have added neat captions and dates if the album had been his.)
Herbert Johnson was an engineer and loved his gadgets, including his camera. He is depicted in a few of the photographs (presumably taken by someone else), but both subject matter and style make me confident that he was the photographer responsible for the vast majority of the photos in the album. Almost all the photos date from 1940-1945; a few loose photos are slightly later.
A small number of Herbert Johnson’s photos were included as illustrations in June Summers’ Villages in the Sun. In that slim volume the photos were misleadingly captioned and poorly reproduced. The original of one of those photos is in the photo album; the quality of the original clearly reveals the technical skills of Herbert Johnson as a photographer.
Apart from the Johnsons’ photo album, very few photos of Ajijic in the early 1940s (or earlier) are currently known. This makes the photo album particularly valuable in documenting the village’s history.
The following posts are photo galleries revealing the scope and quality of Johnson’s work:
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François de Brouillette was an accomplished artist, art restorer and poet. Born in Vermont on 22 April 1906, de Brouillette died in Santa Barbara, California, on 12 February 1972.
De Brouillette was especially well known during his lifetime for his sensitive and striking portraits.
This painting was shared with us by a reader who found it among the effects of her grandfather, Arthur D. Dahl, after he died earlier this year at the age of 102. It is a classic de Brouilette portrait (16″ x 20″ on canvas). The date is indistinct but could perhaps be either 1935 or 1955?
Dahl, who took an art class at Pacific Union College, was born in Alberta, Canada, but lived much of his life in California, residing in Lodi, Stockton and Delano from the early 1940s through the early 1960s.
The portrait is unlikely to have any direct connection to Lake Chapala but if any reader recognizes the young man in the painting, please get in touch!
De Brouillete is known to have visited Lake Chapala numerous times over a period spanning more than forty years, and definitely painted the lake, probably on numerous occasions:
My thanks to Dana Jordan for sharing images of this painting, found in the collection of her grandfather.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our mini-bios are welcomed, via email or via the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.
Josefa, the fashion designer credited with showcasing Mexican styles on the world haute couture stage, lived and worked for many years at Lake Chapala. She successfully melded indigenous Mexican colors and elements with functional design to produce elegant and original dresses and blouses. Josefa designs were never mass-produced but made by local women in small villages near Guadalajara.
Josefa Ibarra and her business partner, Ana Villa, built up a brand known as El Aguila Descalza (The Barefoot Eagle). Based in Tlaquepaque, The Barefoot Eagle opened retail stores in several major Mexican cities and one in Boston, while simultaneously supplying numerous high-end department and fashion stores in the USA and elsewhere.
Design by Josefa
Josefa followed her own intuition as regards fashion and her success resulted from a series of serendipitous encounters. Her first lucky break came while she was living in Puerto Vallarta in the late 1950s. Josefa and her husband, Jim Heltzel, lived near the beach in a thatched hut, from where Josefa sold jewelry made of coconuts and seashells. The couple’s hippie lifestyle extended to Josefa designing and making her own dresses and beachwear.
Walking along the beach one day in 1959, Josefa struck up a conversation with Chris and Lois Portilla. They were far more interested in the clothes she was wearing than her jewelry and suggested that they help her market her dress designs. Lois, who remained friends with Josefa for decades, ran the ‘Latin Imports’ store at the Disneyland Hotel in California, and Josefa’s designs were soon being sold there.
Josefa began to make more designs and sell her creations to visiting tourists. Her second big break, in 1963, involved American superstar Elizabeth Taylor, who was visiting Puerto Vallarta, then only a small village, while Richard Burton was filming The Night of the Iguana, directed by John Huston and co-starring Ava Gardner.
One afternoon, in a break from filming, Taylor was with the cast and crew exploring the village when they came across a selection of beautiful dresses hanging from the branches of a tree outside a typical small hut. The visitors bought every last one of Josefa’s dresses and the famous American movie star subsequently added numerous additional Josefa designs to her wardrobe during her repeat visits to Puerto Vallarta over the next decade.
Even with Taylor’s support, it is unlikely that Josefa would have become as famous as she did had it not been for a third lucky break. This came when she was introduced by a friend, Lou Foote, to Boston-born Ana Konstandin Villa, who worked in Tlaquepaque alongside her husband, Edmondo Villa, for Arthur Kent, owner of El Palomar, the famous stoneware factory. Ana and her husband wanted to open their own retail store. Ana, a graduate of the Academy Moderne of Fashion in Boston, had an eye for style and was a buyer for the city’s Filene’s Department Store. Ana loved Josefa’s designs and realized that they presented a unique business opportunity. The two ladies got on famously together and their complementary skill sets ensured the success of The Barefoot Eagle, the Villas’ store in Tlaquepaque.
Journalist Sheryl Kornman who interviewed Josefa in 1970 found her just “as exciting, as articulate, as vivid as the costumes she designs.” Kornman described Josefa as casually dressed, wearing a “flimsy blue and red short shift” with her “long brown hair in a braid tossed forward over one shoulder,” and sandals on her feet. The designer said she had started by making jewelry in Puerto Vallarta a little more than a decade earlier before beginning to sew her own clothes and making some for friends. She then taught her “house girl” and others how to sew, and began to produce designs inspired by indigenous Huichol and Oaxacan handicrafts and art. At the time of Kornman’s interview, Josefa and her husband were living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from where Josefa returned to Guadalajara at least twice a year, timing the visits to prepare for a summer line released in April and a fall/winter line released a few months later.
The Barefoot Eagle grew rapidly and became Mexico’s leading producer of internationally famous high fashion women’s apparel. Chris Adams (Ana Villa’s brother-in-law) provides a detailed case study of The Barefoot Eagle in his book, Up Your Sales in Any Economy. At its peak, the company employed several hundred women in three outlying villages near Guadalajara to undertake all the embroidery and decoration, with everything done by hand to maintain the artesanal quality. Most of the cotton fabric used came from Mexico City; the steadfast dyes were imported.
The Barefoot Eagle opened retail stores in several major Mexican cities: Acapulco, Cancún, Manzanillo, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Monterrey, San Miguel de Allende, Tijuana, and Zihuatanejo. It also opened one in Boston’s famed Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Overseas stores that stocked Josefa designs included Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor and Macy’s, in addition to specialist boutiques in Denmark, England, the Netherlands and France.
The celebrity effect was contagious. Besides Elizabeth Taylor, those photographed wearing Josefa dresses or blouses included Lady Bird Johnson (who wore a Josefa dress for the cover of McCall’s magazine in August 1974), Glenda Jackson (in the movie A Touch of Class), Sophia Loren, Diana Ross, Loretta Young, Princess Grace of Monaco, Nancy Reagan, Deborah Kerr and Farah Diba, the wife of the former Shah of Iran. A Josefa-designed shirt was worn by Bo Derek’s onscreen husband in the Movie 10, which was filmed at Las Hadas in Manzanillo.
Josefa was, according to various sources, the first Mexican dress designer to have her work grace the cover of Vogue Paris. Interestingly, not long afterwards, another designer—Gail Michel de Guzmán—who lived at Lake Chapala at the same time as Josefa, had her own work featured in Vogue Paris.
According to Adams, Josefa considered it a compliment that she was the most copied designer in Mexico. Adams played a part in the commercialization of The Barefoot Eagle brand, producing a factsheet and sales pointers for all the salespeople in the various retail stores. Among other things, salespeople were instructed to ensure that prospective clients understood that even if they thought the items were pricey, they were definitely worth every centavo because they were hand-embroidered designer creations and works of art.
The Barefoot Eagle and Josefa’s brand continued to grow. Josefa was one of the first designers in Mexico to export on a large-scale. The extraordinary export success of Josefa was recognized by Mexico’s federal government which awarded her company a National Export Prize seven years in a row. With the sponsorship and support of the Mexican Embassy in the US, Josefa held a special Mexican fashion show in 1974 in Washington D.C. for all the ambassadors stationed there.
2004 exhibition of Mexican textiles and designs by Josefa
The extraordinary quality of Josefa’s designs and workmanship led to her work being the focus of a major exhibition in Mexico City at the Museo de la Indumentaria Luis Marquez Romay in 2004. A stunning display (250 designs in all) showcased Josefa’s manta kaftans in their distinctive Mexican textures and colors (turquoise, green, fuchsia, rose and yellow). Decorated with embroidered flowers, designs influenced by Mexico’s indigenous peoples, butterflies and geometric patterns, the exhibit was a kaleidoscope of color. Josefa had cemented her reputation as “an icon of national fashion design.”
Josefa’s designs were also included in 2009 in a second major Mexico City exhibition at the Mexico City Popular Art Museum (Museo de Arte Popular de la Ciudad de México). Curated by Mario Méndez, “México de autor, historia en color” juxtaposed Josefa’s “modern” designs alongside indigenous textile items from the Mapelli collection, emphasizing what they had in common and how one influenced the other. Josefa’s “Mexicanized” designs, celebrating bright colors, owed much to, and simultaneously increased the appeal of, indigenous textile patterns and clothing.
Josefa retired from designing clothing in the late 1980s.
While several earlier designers, such as Jim and Rita Tillet, had successfully established smaller operations and exported Mexican fashions, they had never succeeded in scaling up production to the levels reached by The Barefoot Eagle. Others, such as American Charmin Schlossman, who lived in Ajijic in the 1940s, took their creativity back home and established successful firms north of the border.
Mysterious early life
Relatively little is known for sure about her life story outside fashion. Adams described Josefa as Mexican born and residing in Tlaquepaque and the state of Oregon. According to a 2004 news piece, Josefa claimed to have been born in Chihuahua more than 80 years ago, while friends claimed she had arrived in Puerto Vallarta 30 years ago from the state of Oregon.
Label in Josefa blouse
According to the registration of her birth, Josefa Ibarra García was born on 12 April 1919 in Ciudad Sabinas Hidalgo in the state of Nuevo León. However, her birth was only registered in that city on 10 March 1928 when she was 9 years old! Her parents were Rafael Ibarra Valle (Rafael Ybarra-Valle in the USA) and Isidra García. The plaque on the grave of Josefa’s parents in a Fort Worth, Texas, cemetery, reads “Rafael Ybarra-Valle (1883-1968) / Isidra (1889-1981).” Both of Josefa’s parents were born in Mexico. The couple had at least four children: three girls and a boy. Even before the arrival of Josefa, the family had apparently been living on-and-off in Fort Worth, where their only son, Ray, was born in 1915.
According to Rubén Díaz, a friend of Josefa’s and now the editor of Mexico City-based Fashion News, Josefa returned to Mexico at age 18 (ie in about 1937) and traveled all over the country as a flight attendant with Mexicana de Aviación. After meeting and marrying Jim Heltzel (previously married to Eleanor Reed), the newly weds lived among the indigenous communities of various states in Mexico, including Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz and Guerrero, before settling in Puerto Vallarta.
During the 1980s and 1990s, The Barefoot Eagle’s prime years, Josefa lived at Lake Chapala. Her home (with one room devoted to a working studio) was designed by her good friend Jorge Wilmot, the famous potter. Wilmot added many personal touches to the home, located in El Limón, just west of San Juan Cosalá, including a special hand-made foot bath in the ensuite since Josefa, as her company name suggested, was accustomed to going barefoot most of the day.
Josefa’s success enabled her to travel more widely and she was particularly inspired by a trip to China. Unfortunately, in retirement, she experienced both health and financial problems. She came out of retirement to work for a while, offering designs for others to produce and market. Eventually, though, her declining health meant she could no longer focus on her passion. In a letter to a friend in May 2002, Josefa complained about three terrible months of ill health while waiting to have cataract surgery on the IMSS (Mexican Social Security) and admitted she was “getting fed up at waiting and not knowing a date.” Meanwhile, she wrote, she had accepted a job with
“a couple who will make up dresses from my designs…. I never thought I’d go back to those working days EVER – they were great days (while it lasted) but egods this is not the time to try and start up ANYTHING – it’s insane, that’s what it is but the peso isn’t worth a damn and with the bottom having fallen to NADA – things couldn’t be worse. (At least here in Chapala).”
Exhibition of Mexican textiles and designs by Josefa
In about 2006, as her health and finances continued to decline, Josefa sold her house and moved into a nursing home. When she abandoned her home, she left behind a decorated trunk full of personal photos, documents and design memorabilia. The new owner, a Canadian woman, kept the trunk in the house for years in homage to Josefa. When the house was eventually resold, she offered me the trunk for safe keeping to prevent it from being destroyed. If you can suggest a suitable permanent home for the trunk and contents, where it will be readily accessible to future researchers, please let me know.
Among Josefa’s effects in the trunk was a clearly-treasured, much folded and faded handwritten extract from Witter Bynner’s translation of Lao Tzu “The Way of Life.” It is unclear how well Josefa knew Bynner, who had a house in Chapala from 1940 to his death in 1968.
Before it move, hold it,
Before it go wrong, mould it,
Drain off water in winter before it freeze,
Before weeds grow, sow them to the breeze.
You can deal with what has not happened, can foresee
Harmful events and not allow them to be.
Though– as naturally as a seed becomes a tree of arm-wide girth-
There can rise a nine-tiered tower from a man’s handful of earth
Or here at your feet a thousand-mile journey have birth,
Quick action bruises,
Quick grasping loses.
Therefore a sane man’s care is not to exert
One move that can miss, one move that can hurt.
Most people who miss, after almost winning,
Should have ‘known the end from the beginning.’
A sane man is sane in knowing what things he can spare,
In not wishing what most people wish,
In not reaching for things that seem rare.
The cultured might call him heathenish,
This man of few words, because his one care
Is not to interfere but to let nature renew
The sense of direction men undo.
By 2008, Josefa was confined to a wheelchair while waiting for a hip replacement operation. A fashion fund raiser was held that year in Ajijic to help pay for her medical treatment.
Josefa Ibarra, artist, entrepreneur and mother of Mexican fashion, died in Ajijic on 30 June 2011. Her decision to develop designs incorporating folkloric motifs and her insistence on incorporating artisanal workmanship prodded Mexican fashion design into a direction still evident today.
Her continued influence on young Mexican designers was highlighted by an exhibit in Guadalajara in 2016. Examples of Josefa’s work formed the backdrop to an end of course display of work by young students graduating from UTEG (Universidad Tecnológica Empresarial de Guadalajara).
Several Josefa designs were chosen for inclusion in “El Arte de la Indumentaria y la Moda en México (1940-2015),” a Mexico City show held in 2016 at the Palacio de Cultura Banamex (Palacio de Iturbide) to commemorate 75 years of Mexican fashion design.
International interest in Josefa’s designs has also continued unabated. For example, her work was showcased north of the border in a December 2016 exhibit, “La Familia”, at Friends of Georgetown History (6206 Carleton Ave S) in Seattle, Washington. The show was of selected pieces from the collection of Allan Phillips, a grandson of Josefa’s sister, Olivia.
In 2017, Mexico was the featured country at the VII Congreso Bienal Latinoamericano de Moda in Cartagena, Colombia. An accompanying exhibit—“México Mágico”— took a retrospective look at the history of Mexico’s fashion industry, and how Josefa had set what had been only a nascent industry on the path to global success. The exhibit included contemporary work by students from the Universidad de Guadalajara that echoed the path laid down by Josefa.
Josefa exhibit at Museo de Arte Popular de Yucatán, Merida. Photo: Marjorie Skouras.
In 2022, designer Marjorie Skouras sponsored an exhibit featuring her extensive collection of famed designers, including Josefa, at the Museo de Arte Popular de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico. Josefa’s trunk and contents (see comments) were included. The trunk and contents are also part of the major show of Josefa’s career in fashion organized by Linda Mireles at the Costumes of the Americas Museum in Brownsville, Texas. This exhibit, which includes more than thirty dresses from Mireles’ private collection, opens 19 November 2024 and closes 16 May 2025.
Josefa’s legacy lives on. Her story has been shared with succeeding generations of fashion students in Mexico and she is justly referred to as “the mother of Mexican fashion” or as “Mexico’s Coco Chanel”. Students are taught that it is perfectly possible—indeed fashionably current and profitable—to bring elements of indigenous, local design to the global fashion scene.
Note: This is an expanded (and corrected) version of a post first published on 12 September 2018.
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Sherry Hudson for her assistance with compiling this profile, and to Marjorie Skouras and Linda Mireles for including Josefa memorabilia in exhibitions in Mérida and Brownsville, respectively. And heartfelt thanks, too, to Sra. Maricruz Ibarra (no relation to Josefa) for arranging to collect and store the trunk and contents following the house sale.
Sources
Chris Adams. 2005. La Gran Josefa: Designer Emeritus International. First edition (2005) printed Guadalajara: Ocho Columnas, 2008; Xlibris edition has US copyright of 2010.
Chris Adams. 2009. Up Your Sales in Any Economy: A Salesman’s Success Story @ Boston’s Historic Faneuil Hall Market Place. Xlibris Corporation.
Educator, translator and all-round good guy John Upton had been living in Ajijic for about a year when he submitted an article about the village in 1950 to the San Francisco Chronicle. The article focuses especially on the impact of the summer Ajijic Art Workshop, marketed in US colleges and universities.
Upton opens by describing Ajijic as “a peaceful Mexican fishing village where life goes on much as it did before the time of Cortes-for 46 weeks of the year.” The bulk of his article is about the remaining six weeks, when — during the rainy season in this “stone and adobe pueblo… almost untouched by the twentieth century” — “Modern Art comes to Ajijic- along with portable radios and falsies.”
Buses from Guadalajara lumber through the burro-clogged streets and discharge members of the Mexican Art Workshop, blinking in the hard, white sunshine.” These art students stay in “La Posada, Ajijic’s only hotel,” which “echoes with the harsh accents of Los Angeles and Chicago.
On the broken brick sidewalks, in the corner store, and under the flame trees in the square, there are little knots of Americans in plaid shirts and blue jeans, carrying paints and canvas and smelling of Dior.”
The workshop was organized by Irma Jonas; its art teachers, headed by Ernesto Linares, included Carlos Mérida, Nicolas Muzenic and Tobias [Toby] Schneebaum. The workshop’s social secretary was Zoe Kernick. The students, mostly women, paid “$275 for a summer of art, inspiration and small adventures.”
Classes are held in one of the town’s largest houses, a sprawling pink adobe with doors eight feet high that open with a key about as large and portable as a pipe wrench. Easels are set up in the luxuriant garden of banana and mango trees until 4.15 in the afternoon, when the daily rainstorm promptly begins. Its downpour lasts little more than half an hour, but after brushes are cleaned and canvases stacked there’s barely time for a rum and water before dinner.
Extra-curricular entertainment is continued largely in gatherings at the inn or in Linares’ cool, high-ceilinged sala, since townspeople frown on women who smoke or drink in public. The cantina has no “table for ladies,” and discourages their attendance-mostly because the showpiece of the establishment is a large, white urinal installed just inside the door.
Music for these evenings is provided by mariachis, local minstrels whose ragged esprit de corps is nicely balanced by their willingness to play anything…. A single evening’s repertoire may include “Quizas” (Number One on the Ajijic hit parade), “Night and Day,” and “Los Blues de San Luis.””
The parties were suitably rowdy, fueled by local tequila, which was “35 cents a liter if you bring your own bottle.”
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Katie Goodridge Ingram for bringing this Upton article to my attention.
Source
John Upton. 1950. “Ah-hee-heek: A Place to Loaf in Mexico.” San Francisco Chronicle, 7 May 1950.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
Roy Vincent MacNicol (1889-1970), “Paintbrush Ambassador of Goodwill”, had an extraordinary artistic career, even if his personal life was sometimes confrontational.
The American painter, designer, writer and lecturer had close ties to Chapala for many years: in 1954, he bought and remodeled the house in Chapala that had been rented in 1923 by English author D. H. Lawrence, and then, according to artist Everett Gee Jackson, by himself and Lowell Houser.
After MacNicol and his fourth wife Mary Blanche Starr bought the house, they divided their time between Chapala and New York, with occasional trips elsewhere, including Europe. Their New York home, from 1956 (possibly earlier) was at 100 Sullivan Street.
Roy MacNicol was a prolific painter and numerous MacNicol paintings of Lake Chapala are known. Romantically and artistically, he lived an especially colorful life and was involved in several high profile scandals and lawsuits.
Born in New York City on 27 November 1889, his mother was Spanish-Scandinavian (her father was Gustav Gerle, a noted Swedish artist who had graduated from the Royal Academy) and a Scottish military man, who died when MacNicol was an infant. His mother remarried and moved to Urbana, Illinois.
Partly on account of an abusive stepfather, MacNicol left home as a teenager. After taking night classes at the Paul Gearson Dramatic School, MacNicol took traveling repertory roles with the William Owen Company, before joining the Edna May Spooner Company in New York.
MacNicol married fellow cast member Mildred Barker (“Connie” in his autobiography) in 1914; their son Roy Vincent Jr. was born the following year in Michigan.
MacNicol continued his acting career and appeared in 1919 at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., in the farces Twin Beds and Where’s Your Wife? on Broadway at the Punch and Judy Theatre.
At the time of the 1920 US Census, the family was apparently still living together in New York. However, Mildred then left, taking Roy Jr. with her, to move in with another man, while MacNicol fell in love with, and married (later that same year) vaudeville singer and performer Fay Courtney. MacNicol composed several original songs, such as “Indian Night” for his wife’s shows.
Tragically, Roy Jr. died at the age of 5 of diphtheria in Pennsylvania (not Ohio as MacNicol claims in his autobiography) in January 1921.
With the full backing of his new wife, MacNicol left the stage behind him and began to concentrate on his painting. Best known for his watercolors and elaborate decorative screens, MacNicol’s work embraced a number of different styles over the years before he developed (in the 1940s) a unique style he termed “geo-segmatic.” Many of his geo-segmatic paintings are justly prized.
MacNicol’s first solo exhibit was in November 1921 at the Anderson Galleries, New York. His bird and animal motifs on large screens were admired on opening night by more than 800 guests. This style led to a serious professional clash with a fellow artist, Robert W. Chanler. MacNicol was outraged when Chanler called him a “copyist” who had stolen his designs and took Chanler to court, asking $50,000 for the alleged libel.
His second solo show was in Palm Beach, Florida, by invitation of a wealthy patron. This was the start of the artist’s long connection with the Palm Beach area.
After visiting France and Spain in 1925-26, MacNicol held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in April 1926. Entitled “Recent Works of Roy MacNicol,” it included many abstract paintings of fauna such as cranes, herons, Australian squirrels and penguins. In the program notes, A. G. Warshawsky praised the abstract compositions that “still hold a human and essentially humorous effect, which adds both to the charm and naiveté of the subject.”
Roy MacNicol: Untitled (1961)
His wife’s singing career took the couple to London, England, and Berlin, Germany during the Great Depression, and to China and Japan for eight months over the winter of 1933-34.
Between these trips MacNicol held many more solo shows, including one at the Everglades Club in Palm Beach (1931)—MacNicol later opened (briefly) his own Salon of Fine Arts in that community in 1933— and at the A Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago (1933–34).
In about 1937, the MacNicols, on an impulse, decided to drive down to Mexico to seek more of the “Spanish flavor” that had inspired some of MacNicol’s best work to date. Between bullfights and an earthquake, Fay gave a successful concert, and Thomas Gore, the owner-manager of the Hotel Geneve in the Zona Rosa, commissioned Roy to paint two murals for the dining room, in which the artist depicted Xochimico.
The couple were enjoying a cruise around the Caribbean and South America, with Fay performing, and Roy taking color motion pictures for a series entitled “Through the Eyes of an American Painter” when Fay was taken ill. Fay Courtney MacNicol died in New York in February 1941.
Despite the heartbreak, MacNicol continued to paint, and, in October 1941 took a large “world collection of watercolors,” which had previously been shown in New York, Long Island and Trinidad, to Cuba, where the press dubbed him the “Good-will Ambassador,” a moniker which stuck.
On his return to the U.S., MacNicol revisited his old home town and donated eleven of his paintings to the university in Urbana, where he had once worked as an office boy. When he learned, years later, that they had never been put on display, he asked for them back.
His frequent travels had given MacNicol the inspiration to compile a “good-neighbor” show of Mexican-inspired works as a means of improving the ties between Mexico and the U.S. MacNicol took a studio on Rio Elba in Mexico City and devoted nine months to painting a series of large (22 x 30″) watercolors. These were the basis of the “Good Neighbor Exhibit” that was subsequently shown in galleries across Mexico and the U.S. and received coast-to-coast television coverage.
MacNicol was dismissive of critics who argues his work was influenced by Diego Rivera, though he admitted that perhaps he had been influenced by the “entire Mexican school of art.” In particular, he admired the work of Siqueiros and of Rufino Tamayo, “the most charming, imaginative, and amusing painter in Mexico.”
The artist’s 33rd solo show opened on 4 March 1943 at the Pan American Union in Washington, D.C. It was greatly appreciated by Eleanor Roosevelt, who eagerly recommended the show:
“On leaving the club, I went to the Pan American Building to see an exhibition of paintings done in Mexico by Mr. Roy MacNicol. They were perfectly charming, and I was particularly interested in the Indian types. Some showed the hardships of the life they and their forefathers had lived. Others had a gentleness and sweetness which seemed to draw you to them through the canvas. The color in every picture was fascinating and I feel sure that this is the predominant note in Mexico which attracts everyone in this country who goes there.” (Eleanor Roosevelt, 5 March 1943)
The show then moved to venues in Chicago and Detroit. Mrs. Roosevelt sponsored some subsequent “Good Neighbor” exhibits, as did several prominent Mexican officials, including Mexican president Miguel Alemán.
MacNicol divided his time over the next few years between Mexico and the U.S. In October 1943, he exhibited more than 20 paintings in a solo show at the Galería de Arte Decoración in Mexico City. The titles of the works included references to Xochimilco, Jacala, Tamazunchale, Veracruz, Pátzcuaro and Amecameca.
Then, after a successful solo show in Los Angeles, he opened a “Good Neighbor” exhibit of 22 paintings in April 1945 in the Foyer of the Fine Arts Palace (Palacio de Bellas Artes), also in Mexico City. In MacNicol’s own words, “It is considered one of the greatest honors in the world for a painter to be invited to exhibit there.” The sponsorship of this show by the Mexican government led to great consternation and protests in local art circles who could not understand why their government would sponsor a foreign painter.
Roy MacNicol: Untitled (1961)
A few months later, back in the U.S. for shows in Oklahoma and Urbana, MacNicol had what he entitles in his autobiography “My great folly.” On 9 September 1945, he married Mrs. Helen Stevick, the “wealthy publisher of the Champaign, Illinois, News Gazette” in Chicago. MacNicol claims he had known the attractive widow for some time, didn’t love her, but wanted to “settle down.” Newly-married, the couple went to Mexico City for their honeymoon, where Stevick’s daughter – a 34-year-old “ravenous widow on a manhunt,” who wanted MacNicol to find her a new husband – joined them.
MacNicol’s marriage to Helen Stevick quickly became a complete disaster, leading to ample fodder for the newspapers of the time, who had a field day describing the plight (and possible motives) of the prominent painter. The Steviks accused MacNicol of fraud and had him (briefly) imprisoned in a Mexican jail. In retaliation, MacNicol sued the daughter for $500,000 for her part in wrecking his marriage.
Irving Johnson, for the San Antonio Light, wrote that:
“Roy V. MacNicol is a painter of Mexican scenes. The critics praise his work. Prominent Americans and the Mexican cabinet have sponsored his exhibitions. He has been called America’s paintbrush ambassador.
Now he’s laid down his brush temporarily to picture another kind of Mexican scene – his own unhappy honeymoon south of the border. His price is a half million – the amount of his recent alienation of affections suit against his own stepdaughter…”
MacNicol may have wanted $500,000, but he certainly did not get it; the case was dismissed on technical grounds. According to the divorce case the following May (1946), Mrs. MacNicol agreed with her daughter that he had married her only to get “large sums of money for his personal aggrandizement and the satisfaction of his idea of grandeur.” Ironically, that very month, Roy MacNicol held a successful show of Mexican watercolors in Chicago. The divorce was finalized on 29 July 1946.
Roy MacNicol. The Lily Vendor. c. 1946.
MacNicol celebrated by heading for Sweden in September for a few weeks to explore his family roots and show his Good Neighbor exhibit at the AETA gallery.
Returning from Sweden, MacNicol decided to revisit Palm Beach for the first time in 15 years, and made arrangements to hold his 50th solo show there in the State Suite of the Biltmore Hotel. When Mrs Bassett Mitchell (the former Mary Blanche Starr) walked in the room he was instantly smitten. It turned out that Mary was the widow of a Florida financier and was equally enthralled. She bought “The Lily Vendor”—“a dark-skinned Mexican girl selling sheafs of white lilies in a glow of sunlight”—and then they had dinner together. (The painting was later used for the cover of Mexican Life magazine.) Within weeks they announced their engagement and they married at her home in Palm Beach on 27 March 1947, before spending their honeymoon in Nassau. Their love for each other never diminished.
Later in 1947, a trip to Jamaica and Haiti proved to be the source of inspiration for MacNicol to devise what he terms his “geo-segmatic” style of painting. The first major exhibition of these works was held in Paris, France, (solo show number 53) in May 1948, where he met the famous Mexican singer and actor Jorge Negrete.
The following year, after a successful show at Penthouse Galleries in New York City, the MacNicols decided to move from Palm Beach to Mexico City. They drove down there in their Lincoln convertible (with four truck loads of furniture following behind) and bought a 3,000-square-meter property in Coyoacan. They spent the next two years adapting it into a house, studio and gallery.
Health issues led them to sell their Mexico City home and start driving around Mexico in search of a new home at a lower elevation:
“We took three months motoring around before we discovered the enchanting little fishing village of Chapala, tucked on the banks of a sparkling lake, set among emerald mountains and violet haze. There was a blessed tranquillity in the low rooftops and the plaza overshadowed by giant laurel trees. But it also had the advantage of a modem four-lane highway leading through rolling green hills from Guadalajara, the second largest, and the cleanest, city in Mexico, a drive of only thirty-five minutes. (Paintbrush Ambassador, 226-7)
They drove into Chapala in January 1954 and, within days, bought a property that MacNicol later claimed hadn’t been lived in for a decade – the very same house, at Zaragoza #307, which British novelist D. H. Lawrence had rented in 1923.
The MacNicols restored the house and added a swimming pool. They also added a memorial plaque on the street wall to Lawrence: “In this house D. H. Lawrence lived and wrote ‘The Plumed Serpent’ in the year 1923.” A second wall plaque had a quote from another of MacNicol’s boyhood heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson.
– “That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much. Who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children. Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task. Who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul. Who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it. Who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.”
A “list of foreign residents in Chapala” from June 1955, and now in the archive of the Lake Chapala Society (LCS), includes Roy and Mary MacNicol among the 55 total foreign residents in the town at that time, though they were not LCS members. According to MacNicol, “Chapala has its retired American naval and military brass, business men, delightful English, some good writers and myself as the only painter.”
Roy MacNicol. 1956. Poolroom, Chapala, Mexico. B/W photo of oil in tones of red and green. (Plate 11 of Paintbrush Ambassador)
In 1956, MacNicol was persuaded to hold an exhibit in Copenhagen, Denmark. He and Mary flew from Mexico City to New York, carrying 52 paintings and then sailed on the MS Kungsholm across the Atlantic. The show was an unmitigated disaster, largely owing (according to MacNicol) to the complete absence of any help or support from the local U.S. Embassy. The MacNicols returned home to Chapala in November.
It is unclear precisely when the MacNicols sold their house in Chapala, but according to columnist Kenneth McCaleb, MacNicol was disposing of the contents of his Chapala home in the early 1960s, prior to selling it and moving to New York.
The exhibition catalog dating from late 1968 or early 1969 for MacNicol’s “Faces and Places of Nations” exhibit says it was the artist’s 59th (and last) solo exhibit. The catalog describes the “Paintbrush Ambassador of Goodwill”:
“He believes in the universal diplomacy of art as a means to world understanding. His “Faces and Places of Nations” series was begun in 1943. The exhibit has been shown in Mexico City, Spain, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, British West Indies, Cuba, South America, as well as in key cities in U.S.A. The 1949 exhibition was televised coast-to-coast by NBC.”
Of the sixteen works listed in the catalog, six are from Mexico, including two directly linked to Lake Chapala: “Old Fisherman & Boy (Lake Chapala)” and “Mary & Duke, Casa MacNicol (Lake Chapala).” Duke was MacNicol’s Dalmation.
In addition to painting, MacNicol frequently lectured on art and his formal jobs as a young man included a spell as associate editor at the American Historical Company in New York City. He was a contributor to several newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Journal, The Times Herald, Mexico City News and The Havana Post.
His autobiography—Paintbrush Ambassador—mentions dozens of notable personalities including the likes of Ernest Hemingway, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jack Warner, Danny Kaye, Gloria Swanson and Mr. and Mrs. Nelson D. Rockefeller.
MacNicol died in New York in November 1970.
Examples of his artwork are in the permanent collections of the University of Illinois; Randolph-Macon Woman’s College; University of Havana, Cuba, and the Reporter’s Club, Havana.
Despite enjoying considerable success (and some notoriety) during his lifetime, Roy MacNicol is among the many larger-than-life artists to have lived and worked at Lake Chapala whose artistic contributions to the area’s cultural heritage have, sadly, been largely forgotten.
Sources
Irving Johnson. 1946. “Honeymoon for Three.” San Antonio Light, 24 November 1946, 59.
Roy MacNicol. 1957. Paintbrush Ambassador. New York: Vantage Press.
Kenneth McCaleb. 1968. “Conversation Piece: How To Be an Art Collector,” The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 15 February 1968, 17.
New York Times, 26 May 1925.
The Palm Beach Post, 20 March 1947.
Eleanor Roosevelt. “My Day,” Kansas City Star, 5 March 1943, 23.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
A lakefront home in Ajijic was the setting in 1949 for the marriage of a Canadian author and an English nurse. The story of how they met and fell in love is one of the most endearing tales to emerge from my research into the authors and artists associated with Lake Chapala.
The venue for the wedding was Quinta Johnson, the home built by Herbert and Georgette Johnson, a British couple who had left France just as the second world war broke out and who first arrived in Mexico in 1939. The magnificent garden they created separating their residence from the lake was sufficiently famous that it featured, years later, in Elizabeth Schuler’s Gardens of the World (1962).
The groom at the ceremony in Ajijic was Harold Walter Masson, who was born in St. Raphael’s in South Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada, on 29 June 1915 and died in Hawaii at age 95 on 26 March 2011.
Prior to joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in October 1939 at the outbreak of the second world war, Masson had lived in Toronto and worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 1945, at the end of the war, “Hal” Masson, as he was known, joined the staff of Maclean’s magazine as the magazine’s assignments editor, with special responsibility for short fiction.
Over the next eighteen months the magazine published several of his short stories, starting with “These thy gifts” in November 1945 which has the memorable opening, “Black Joe and Little Joe sat at the worn kitchen table, elbows resting on the scrubbed pine boards, their faces shining in the uncertain light of the flickering kerosene lamp.”
By 1947, tired of the extreme winters in Ontario, Masson decided to emigrate to sunnier climes in the US. He crossed the border at Niagara Falls in June 1947 and, after a brief stay in California in September that year, continued driving south in pursuit of a warm winter.
Masson eventually landed in Ajijic where, in 1949, he rented the guest bungalow at Quinta Johnson and continued to write. A short story entitled “He knew what was wrong with her, and how to cure it” appeared in Collier’s Weekly in 1948, and another story—”The Worm’s Eye View”—was published in Argosy.
+ + +
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Herbert Johnson’s 29-year-old niece was making plans to visit her uncle in Ajijic. Helen Eunice Riggall (pronounced “Regal”), born in Langton, Spilsby, Lincolnshire, on 24 April 1919, was the daughter of Herbert’s younger sister. During the war, Helen studied for three years at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where she passed her exams to become a registered nurse in 1942. By the time the war ended, like many of her contemporaries, she longed to forget the worst of her war-time nursing experiences and begin a new chapter in her life in new surroundings.
She left Southampton for New York on 20 January 1949 aboard the SS America of the United States Lines. According to her US immigration form, Helen was unaccompanied and named the US as her country of “intended future permanent residence,” indicating that she had little or no intention of returning to the UK. However, before settling in the US, she wanted to visit her uncle and his wife in Ajijic.
While some details remain unclear, it appears most likely that from New York she traveled first by train across to California and then took a steamer south, to disembark in Mexico at either Manzanillo or (less likely) Mazatlán.
At this point, it is best if Helen’s daughter takes up her mother’s story:
Her uncle and his chiropractic friend met her… and planned to drive her to Lake Chapala. Unfortunately, the sun was setting and uncle Herbert was not able to see the road well and ended up driving over a cliff. My mother’s back was broken to the point the doctors fused it. Poor thing, she spoke no Spanish [and] was in a Mexican hospital [presumably in Guadalajara] sharing a room with a woman bullfighter! It was there that my father met her and began spending time with her while she recovered. As he had been there awhile he had picked up some Spanish, while she had none. The day she was released from the hospital, he proposed.”
Ann Medalie. c. 1945. Ajijic Landscape (oil). The Quinta Johnson garden.
Harold Walter Masson and Helen Eunice Riggall were married in the Quinta Johnson garden on 31 August 1949. Guests at their wedding included the Langley, Riggall, Masson, Butterlin, Johnson, Bauer and Stephens families, as well as Mrs Grace Wilcox, Miss Neill James and Miss Madeline Miedema. The witnesses to their union were Herbert B. Johnson and Guillermo González Hermosillo (owner of the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala) for the bride and, for the groom, German businessman Kurt Weinmann and Peter Lilley, the English writer behind the “Dane Chandos” books.
Interestingly, the formal registration of the wedding states that Hal was in Mexico as a tourist (normally valid for no longer than six months) while Helen was in possession of a “tarjeta especial para turistas forma 5B.” Never having heard of this category previously, I assume that her regular tourist card had expired while she was in hospital and that this was an “exceptional case” extension for a period of time—perhaps three months—which would have been about to expire by the time the newlyweds left Mexico for California in November.
When the couple crossed the border at Laredo, Helen stated her intention to become a permanent resident. Her entry paper lists a large scar on her left palm as a distinguishing feature.
The Massons revisited Mexico briefly in 1951.
While residing in Laguna Beach, Masson joined the staff of the Indian Valley Record in Greenville. When he contributed “The Sea Raiders” to that paper in 1951, it reported proudly that their new contributor had “recently crashed the American “big time” with a story in the Saturday Evening Post.” That story was entitled “Trouble Below the Border.”
Masson published several more short stories over the next few years, including “Fat Man’s Doom” in Cavalier (June 1953), “Señor, It Is a Pump”, in Bluebook Magazine (November 1953), which appeared alongside stories by John D. MacDonald, Leslie Charteris, Philip Ketchum and similarly famous writers; “The Last Quarrel” in Cosmopolitan, and “The Love Trap” in Canadian magazine Liberty.
Harold became a naturalized US citizen in April 1953; a few years later, Helen also took US citizenship. In 1958, they visited relatives in the UK to show off their young daughter. The family subsequently settled in Hawaii, where Helen died in May 1986 and Hal in 2011.
The Masson-Riggall wedding was not the first marriage between two foreign tourists in Ajijic, and certainly not the last. That between David Holbrook Kennedy and Sarah Shearer—who had married in Ajijic in 1941—sadly ended in tragedy within months.
The stars were better aligned for the union of Hal and Helen, who shared their lives and their happiness for more than 36 years. The romance of Lake Chapala and “The Love Trap” of Ajijic had struck again.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to Colette Hirata for helping me piece together this profile of her parents, and to Katie Goodridge Ingram for an email sharing her memories of Hal and Helen, and of the Johnsons.
Sources
El Informador, 9 September 1949.
The Glengarry News. 1939. “Other Enlistments”, The Glengarry News, 6 October 1939, 1.
The Glengarry News. 1945. “On Editorial Staff of Maclean’s”, reprinted in The Glengarry News, 23 November 1955, 1.
Indian Valley Record (Greenville, California), 30 August 1951, 10.
Hal Masson, 1951. “For Sale Cheap – One Snow Shovel” Oakdale Leader (Oakdale, California), 27 September 1951, 21.
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.
In researching the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala, I now have a long list of enigmatic references to lesser known artists, whose life and work remain very much a mystery.
One of the more intriguing is a “Miss Trude Neuhaus,” a German artist, who, according to the New York Times of 1 Nov 1925, brought “an exhibition of paintings, water colors and drawings of Mexican types and scenery” to the Anderson Galleries in New York. The show at the Anderson Galleries ran from 3-14 November 1925. The pieces had previously been exhibited at the National Art Gallery in Mexico City, and the exhibition also included “Aztec figurines and pottery recently excavated by the artist in Chapala, Mexico”. (Note that collecting ancient artifacts as souvenirs and removing them from the country was a common practice at the time, albeit one that is now subject to legal provisions and generally frowned upon.)
The only background offered about Miss Neuhaus is that she had “studied under Burmester in Munich” (possibly Georg Burmester, 1864–1936) and was a portrait painter in Germany. According to the short piece in the New York Times, she planned to return to Germany “after exhibiting her work in the large cities of the United States”, in order “to make several portraits, for which she has commissions.”
This Trude Neuhaus painting dates from 1919, before she visited Mexico.
Trude Neuhaus. 1919. Untitled, Credit: Willem Eppink.
A few more details have surfaced over the past few years about Trude Neuhaus, but none that explains why she visited Chapala.
According to U.S. immigration records, Neuhaus was born in early 1899 in Gottingen, Germany, and was 26 years and 7 months of age when she entered the U.S. for the exhibition in New York. The exhibit followed a stay of 14 months in Mexico from summer 1924 to September 1925, which means she was in Chapala shortly after D. H. Lawrence was there, and at exactly the same time as artist Everett Gee Jackson was living in the lakeside village.
Trude Neuhaus. c. 1925 “Florista Mexicana.”
No details have yet emerged of her exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Mexico City. However, after New York, “the young and already renowned artist” returned to Germany and showed her drawings, paintings and collection of artifacts at the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Berlin in February 1925. A reviewer of the show described Miss Neuhaus as “an enthusiastic admirer” of Mexico, who “has dedicated her brush to reproducing popular types and customs of that country,” ranging from beggars and young people on the street to “a little Indian girl with a sad expression,” potters in their workshops and florists from Xochimilco.
Trude Neuhaus. c. 1925 “Remero de Xochimilco.”
The watercolors in the show that attracted attention included paintings of “the picturesque streets of Aguascalientes and Zacatlán and a sunset by the sea.” The mention of Zacatlán (in the state of Puebla), which is rarely visited even today by tourists, is especially interesting and suggests that Trude Neuhaus was a very adventurous young lady.
In addition to her artwork, the Berlin exhibit included the objects Neuhaus had found at Chapala and elsewhere as well as “some samples of the artistic industries that currently exist in Mexico, such as yarns, fabrics and ceramics made by Galán [sic], the famous potter from Tlaquepaque.” This is likely to refer to Armando Galván Rodríguez, born in 1898, who was recognized as a preeminent potter in Tonalá.
The artist was accompanied by her mother, Toni Neuhaus, to the opening of the show, which attracted numerous German and Mexican dignitaries.
Only one month after the show in Berlin, Trude Neuhaus was on her way back to Mexico, this time as a married woman, the wife of Rudolf (Rodolfo) May. May was born on 17 June 1894 in Nuremberg, Germany, and served in a Germany artillery unit during the first world war. By the mid-1920s, he was living in Mexico City. While May was not in New York at the time of Neuhaus’ show there, he passed through the city en route to Germany at the end of November 1925.
In March 1926, the newly married couple returned to Mexico from Hamburg on board the SS Rio Bravo. The ship’s manifest lists them as Rudolf May, a merchant aged 32, and Trude May, aged 30. (Trude would actually have been 27 years old according to the US immigration document referred to earlier.)
A decade later, “Trude Neuhaus-May” was the co-applicant with Angel M. Diez for a patent and trade-mark for a “mechanism for veering the headlamps of automobiles”. This patent was granted in Mexico in 1936 and in the U.S. two years later.
Both Rodolfo and Trude became naturalized Mexican citizens at some point prior to when Rodolfo visited Germany for several weeks in 1937-1938. Rodolfo (unaccompanied by his wife) entered the U.S. on his way to Europe on 23 November 1937 and landed at New York on his return on 4 February 1938.
In May 1955, and again in May 1959, Rodolfo and Trude took an Air France flight from Mexico City to New York; it is unclear if New York was their final destination or whether they were in transit to Europe. These flights list the address of their Mexico City residence as Amores #211 (Colonia del Valle).
Rodolfo died in Mexico City in March 1961 and Trude died there seven months later.
Trude and Rodolfo had three children: Beatriz, Rodolfo (1929-1996) and Luis (c 1932-1965).
Among the many questions still unanswered is whether or not Trude Neuhaus continued her art career after she married and returned to live in Mexico—the only known works of this artist all date back to before her exhibitions in 1925 and 1926.
The only auction record for Trude Neuhaus is for a painting entitled “Indian mother and child” (date unknown) which sold in the U.S. in 1984 for $500.
Can anyone help fill in some of the blanks about this “mystery artist”? If so, please get in touch!
Sources
Luis Kabikef. 1926. “Exposición de cuadros.” Berliner Tageblatt, Año 4, #2 (February 1926), 8.
New York Times. 1925. “Miss Neuhaus shows paintings.” New York Times, 1 Nov 1925, W20.
Acknowledgment
My sincere thanks to Willem Eppink (see comments) for allowing me the use of a photo of a Trude Neuhaus painting in his possession.
Note: This post is an extended version of a post first published 13 December 2015.
Other mysteries relating to Lake Chapala authors and artists:
Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.
José López Portillo y Rojas (1850-1923) was born in Guadalajara. He graduated as a lawyer in Guadalajara in 1871, before spending three years traveling in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. On his return, he published his first book: Egypt and Palestine. Notes from a trip (1874).
He began an illustrious political career as deputy for Jalisco to the national Congress from 1875-1877. Shortly after that first experience of national politics, he returned to Guadalajara and became a journalist, teacher of law, and member of that city’s literary circle.
The group included other young Jalisco writers such as Antonio Zaragoza and Manuel Álvarez del Castillo, one of whose relatives, Jesús, would later start the El Informador newspaper in Guadalajara, which remains one of the city’s most important dailies.
In 1880, López Portillo y Rojas returned to Mexico City as a deputy. In 1882, he became a state senator. In 1886, he joined with Manuel Álvarez del Castillo and Esther Tapia de Castellanos to start a new publication in Guadalajara. La República Literaria, a magazine of science, art and literature quickly became nationally famous, but only lasted until 1890.
In 1891, López Portillo published the first transcription, albeit partial, of Father Antonio Tello’s invaluable 17th century account relating to Lake Chapala. In 1892, he published his only book of verse Transitory harmonies. By 1902, López Portillo was living in Mexico City and had joined the Partido Científico (Scientific Party). After the fall of Díaz, he held various federal government posts before becoming Governor of the State of Jalisco (1912-1914). For a brief period in 1914, he was appointed as Foreign Relations Secretary in the government of Victoriano Huerta, during the time when the U.S. invaded the port of Veracruz.
He left politics shortly afterwards and dedicated himself to teaching and writing. He left a vast body of work, ranging from travel accounts, poems, and literary criticism to historical and legal essays, short stories and novels. His best known collection of short stories is Stories, tales and short stories (1918). His best known novel, The parcel (1898), relates the fight between two hacienda owners for a worthless parcel of land.
At the time of his death in Mexico City on 22 of May, 1923, he was director of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (Mexican Academy of Language). One of López Portillo’s grandsons, José López Portillo y Pacheco (1920-2004), served as President of Mexico between 1976 and 1982. In Guadalajara, the Casa-Museo López Portillo, a museum and exhibition space honoring the family, can be visited at Calle Liceo #177.
A short story about Lake Chapala, entitled “José la garza morena” (“José the Great Blue Heron”) was published in Cosmos (a monthly magazine published in Mexico City) in June 1912. It is a tale about someone finding a heron that has been shot and wounded, and trying in vain to cure it.
The story starts by remembering the times before Lake Chapala’s shores has been altered by civilization:
When I visited the lakeside hamlet of Chapala for the first time, now many years ago, I found everything in an almost primitive state, better than now from some points of view, but worse from others.
The author compares the Chapala of earlier times with the situation during the Porfiriato (when he was active in politics as a supporter of President Díaz):
Not a sign back then of the picturesque villas that today adorn and decorate these shores from the town to El Manglar, which is the house where Don Porfirio Díaz used to stay during the time, happy for him, of his all-embracing command; but everywhere was thick scrub, cheerful orchards with severe rocky places, which were in harmony with that rustic and unspoiled landscape.
The scene is set; the action begins with an evening trip in a rowboat on the lake. The beauty of the lake, as depicted by the author, creates an impression of decadence and morbidity, because there are no signs of life out on the water:
But that scene of glorification seemed dead and desolate, without any bird to make it cheerful; not a stork, nor a crane, nor a duck stained the burnished horizon with its graceful silhouette.
Further on, the author continues:
The lake appeared magnificent and solitary under that divine show, as if it were another asphalt lake, a new Dead Sea. But it was not always thus; and the recollections of better times engraved in my memory transformed this most unhappy spectacle because, before the rising tide of civilization invaded these places with platoons of armed hunters with shining rifles, flocks of ducks would rise suddenly into the air from the marshes as the boat approached.
The second part of the short story is about someone finding a heron that has been shot and wounded, and trying in vain to cure it.
Note: The translations included above are by the author of this post, which was first published 18 June 2014.
Credit and reference:
My sincere thanks to Dr. Wolfgang Vogt of the University of Guadalajara for bringing this short story (and his analysis of it) to my attention.
Vogt, Wolfgang (1989) “El lago de Chapala en la literatura” in Estudios sociales: revista cuatrimestral del Instituto de Estudios Sociales. Universidad de Guadalajara: Year 2, Number 5: 1989, 37-47. Republished in 1994 as pp 163-176 of Vogt (1994) La cultura jalisciense desde la colonia hasta la Revolución (Guadalajara: H. Ayuntamiento).
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However, I was forced to revise my opinion after my able and indefatigable research assistant in Mexico, Sra. Maricruz Ibarra, managed to acquire scans of the entire book. Realizing that the novel was not simply a throw-away romance prompted me to try once again to seek more details of its elusive author.
The “gringa” of the book’s title is Abilene “Abby” Painter, a 25-year-old Texan who is trapped in “an abusive, torrid relationship” with Antonio Velez, a famous Mexican bullfighter. In the words of Publishers Weekly, “her self-esteem is so paltry that she serves as a sexual doormat for her swaggering lover” whose “pride in his animal trophies points up the obvious analogy between his mistresses and these slain creatures.” The student protests and their aftermath finally open Abby’s eyes to what she really wants, but can she escape without losing her life? In addition to sex, violence and death, the book explores the full range of animal instincts and the dichotomy between chance and choice in individuals’ lives.
Seaton wrote that, “In the little Indian town of Ixtlahuacan [de los Membrillos], they make a famous quince wine. It is good, if you like it, but rather sweet, and more like a cordial.”
McClain’s supervisor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), suggested she undertake research in Guadalajara and/or Lake Chapala. When McClain visited Ajijic in 1965, she knew she had found an ideal place for her work.
I was barely able to contain my excitement. The Johnsons were an
